The "Off" Day

The "off day" is vastly different from the "day off". It's the day when you go into the gym or step onto the trail, fully intending to go harder, lift more, run faster than you had the last time...but you just can't. Something in your body won't let you.

Let me explain why this is the most frustrating thing to me. Off days are bound to happen. That's what any good lifter or runner will tell you. But when I start to have an off day, apart from feeling a bit crappy about myself, I really want to know why. I want to know if it was because I didn't sleep enough or maybe I slept too much. Was it my diet the day before? Was it lack of supplements?  Breakfast content or amount? Emotional exhaustion? Previous overload on a workout? I want to know this because I want bad days, "off days", not to happen.

Yesterday was an off day. I couldn't squat nearly what I could the past several weeks. I felt weak, a bit lethargic, and frustrated. It wasn't mental exhaustion: my head was definitely in it, but my body was not. But WHY I ask again? I spent a long time thinking about this. As a scientist I only like when results change as a direct cause of tweaking a specific variable. For example, if I was having an off day in the gym and had kept everything the same (diet, supplements, workout routine etc) except for getting 2 hours of sleep the night before, then I would be ok. I would understand. Action --> Outcome. But unfortunately for my brain, my body doesn't work like that.
So I went over a list of changes and similarities compared to previous Sunday workouts.

1) This particular Sunday I had eaten two bowls of ice cream the night before: (Probably not helpful)

Possibly the most delicious night snack ever.

2) I had taken the puppies on an extra 1.5 mile jog on Saturday (Maybe not helpful?)
3) I did an extra warm-up set with light weight to make sure my form was good. (Good/bad?)
4) I had gotten the same amount of sleep and eaten the same breakfast I usually do. (Good)

So what was it?

Here's the problem with this sort of thinking: lifting isn't linear. Working out, be it running, lifting, swimming, biking etc is not just the sum of a bunch of factors. Well, it is, but those factors aren't separable per se. Just because I walk an extra mile one day, doesn't translate into a weak workout the next day. I know this because I've had days where I didn't change anything I usually do and had an "off day" anyways.

I have come to see it as more of a threshold thing. There are all these factors that go into having a good workout or an "on day" like good nutrition, adequate vitamins and supplementation, enough sleep, good hydration, no overexertion etc. Then there are the opposite of these things that can go into having an "off day". But its not just a specific one that decides this. Its a combination and it depends on the severity of the variable under consideration. Did you get 6.5 hrs or 3 hrs of sleep? That matters. Maybe both aren't enough, but one may be much worse that the other.

Then there are outliers. There are just days when, even if you think back and you've done everything "perfectly", that sometimes you just have an "off day". And those ones (the frustrating ones for me), I'm trying to learn to just let go of.