Wellness Wednesday – Feeling ‘Meh?’ Adjust Your Workout With Autoregulation

By Ed Lippie, founder and CEO, Momentum Wellness

In 1992, one of my college football teammates told me he gave himself five to 10 minutes in the gym before making a decision about continuing his workout. He explained he could tell how productive the workout was going to be within five to 10 minutes, based on his warm-up plus a set or two. 

My teammate had unknowingly been deploying a subjective version of “autoregulation.” This is simply the practice of modifying workouts based on an assessment of relevant data points. Fast-forward three decades, and there’s wisdom we can tease out of my teammate’s practice of self-assessment. 

A Set of Data

In the 1990s, the metadata that went into my teammate’s self-assessment would have likely included the following:

• sleep quality
• muscle fatigue
• muscle soreness 
• injury status 
• overall stress level

In team settings that use sports science, each of these elements are often scored individually. Then they’re tallied as part of a “readiness” metric that’s used as a way to quantify the impact of past training sessions, and inform future training sessions.  

It’s OK to Modify Your Workout

All it takes is a stressful day and/or a poor night’s sleep to take the steam out of our best workout intentions. That is when the principle of autoregulation can be applied. Instead of powering through the toughest workout of the week on limited energy, it’s more advisable to modify and/or switch the workout altogether. 

In my experience, the best way to apply autoregulation is to start with a plan for the week. Then modify each day’s plan according to how you feel on that day. In 2024, the ubiquity of wearable technology allows us to supplement subjective assessments with objective data points. This enables us to generate a more comprehensive data set. 

For example, I often use the HRV scores I collect from my smart ring and a chest strap in combination with a subjective “check-in” of how I feel to decide how hard to push myself on a given day.

With that said, it’s important to contextualize any single data point within trend lines to better understand your capabilities and not rely solely on a single reading, whether it’s subjective or objective.

6 Self-Assessment Questions

No wearable? No problem! Just use a more scientifically validated version of my former teammate’s method. You can take the following self-assessment on a 1-to-5 scale. 1 is “I strongly disagree” and 5 is “I strongly agree”:

• I woke up feeling refreshed and energized
• Today I feel recovered and eager to exercise
• Today I am happy and in a good mood
• The muscles I need for today’s intended workout are not sore or fatigued
• Today I feel mentally sharp and energized
• I am not feeling any physical or mental obstacles to exercise today

The results from this self-assessment can guide you on how to proceed with your exercise plan.

Here’s a tip on how to integrate a self-assessment into your daily routine: Write it down in a journal. This can help you maintain consistency and allows you to plot longitudinal results to detect insightful longer-term trends.   

If you’d like to explore the use of wearables and/or how to apply a more scientific version of autoregulation to your exercise and wellness routine, please reach out to me directly.

Have a healthy day!