An "Off Day"

Here's the scenario:

You go to the gym, feeling mentally and physically prepared for your workout. You warm up for a couple of minutes, fully aware that warming those muscles up with greatly benefit your training. You stretch and head to the weights. You feel ready to tear it up!
 
And you fall flat. Really flat. You feel tired halfway through your first set and immediately know something is not right. You feel weak in your next set so you try to give yourself a pep-talk and mentally focus as much as you can. You try to summon that inner strength. But you're STILL flat.

Ever have one of these days?

Well I did, TODAY, when I went to the gym at around 6:30pm and it sucked. I just couldn't seem to give it 100%...I felt fatigued way sooner than I expected and I tried so hard to think aggressively and fight any mental blocks off. But I couldn't. I had to lower my weights by the 2nd or 3rd set and I was sweating heaps. And then my lower Ab workout...well...in my opinion it was abysmal.Then I had to push myself through 30 mins of cardio...which I usually enjoy after weights.

I probably sound super hard on myself, but honestly, this is the first time I've had an "off" day since I started a new phase of serious training. And it threw me off big time. Sure, I've had workouts where my energy was a little lacking, but I hadn't experienced such a weak effort like I did today. And it made me angry because I felt ready and I wanted to have a good workout.

I called my husband and complained for a few minutes...and when I got off the phone I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself. I realized that a bad day at the gym very likely happens to everyone once in a while...and I should feel good about finishing the workout anyway. I finished it - did not go home like I wanted to. And then I got to thinking about the different things that may have lead to an off day:

- Nutrition: did I eat enough carbs to ensure my energy stores were full? Was my pre-workout meal sufficient? I had a rice cake with almond butter and a banana and I had some carbs in every meal before then. I figured it was sufficient but maybe not today. Also, I had a coffee earlier while I studied - did I experience  a caffeine crash? Or did I properly hydrate after consuming caffeine?

- Rest: or lack thereof. I am actually sleeping really well lately, getting around 8 hours every night. So maybe I need a rest day from training. There actually hasn't been a single day since the journey began that I did absolutely NO kind of physical activity. Even when I skipped evening cardio and weights, I would go on my 45 min morning walk. I wouldn't think that the walk would inhibit a body's attempt to rest, but then again, a full day of complete rest wouldn't hurt either.

- Mental blocks: blame it on the overcast weather? I don't know...I feel like I tried to get competitive but it wasn't cutting it. But then I thought of personal trainers and wondered if I would have experienced much more success if one was there coaching me. Maybe sometimes we just can't push ourselves in the way that a good trainer would.

Those are all the possible factors I have so far...anyone else have any ideas?

When I got home, I did a simple Google search on this topic and found an interesting article on Bodybuilding.com. If anything, it reassured me that I'm not the only one who has gone through this - and that it will likely happen at another point down the road.

What do you do when you're having a tough work out?