Feeling Good vs. Feeling Strong: Mutually Exclusive? Maybe, but Maybe Not
Going into this meet, I had approximately one good feeling workout in the 10 week preparation period leading into it and was still able to walk away with a total that was reflective of my effort, with that said, 10 weeks was enough data for me to realize what I was doing was simply too much for me to recover from, regardless of what I was capable of in the past, this led to a breakthrough meet in the months that followed.
In my years affiliated with sports performance, there has always been something I felt I could not describe, but certainly felt tangibly.
I remember my days of track and field, drowning in repeat 300s, feeling pretty beat up by weeks end where we would have our meets, only to run pretty well in my events, primarily the 200m. I thought to myself, “Huh, I feel not at my best, but I am moving close to my best, why is that?”
Side note, this is why I pursued a degree in exercise science, expecting to find these answers, newsflash, all you learn to do is take blood pressure with a manual gauge while someone is on an exercise bike and understand why prescription medication is necessary for some people… anyway
I felt as if this was something I always experienced in each sport I did. I kind of knew just by instinct, more was not always better, however, there was a barebones amount of work necessary to perform. Up until very recently, this concept was missing in powerlifting and I wanted to expand upon my findings as a coach of a wide variety of lifters, as well as provide some fixes if you deal with this yourself, in your own training.
Enter: The Feeling vs. Readiness Continuum
In order to explain this concept, I think we need to look at 4 specific scenarios that are fairly pervasive within training for absolute strength.
You subjectively feel bad, but objectively you are performing well.
You subjectively feel good, but objectively you are performing bad.
You subjectively feel bad, and objectively you are performing bad.
You subjectively feel good, and objectively you are performing well.
To me, all 4 of those scenarios are independent of the other and lead to a series of possible issues with another series of possible solutions. Let’s break each one down further.
Feeling bad, performing well.
I would say out of the 4, this one is the hardest to explain to people, on average. I think unfortunately most of the time coming up, we are taught that energy/effort is directly equated to performance. However, when we look at it, how many times per year do we really feel truly euphoric and are completely ridden of all fatigue? How many times do we still perform well in spite of that? Quite a bit, for most.
What this looks like, is your objective measures are there, however the relative effort to get there, is not as easy as we maybe would like.
Going into that even further, that usually manifests as:
In a given block, you simply never feel very strong, but there is no performance detriment.
You may have a lagging session that consistently presents itself this way, or it may be a given week.
What does that mean? A few possible things.
The lowest hanging fruit here is you are an athlete that needs a higher training volume in order to express strength. However, generally speaking, a higher training volume means more accumulation of fatigue.
You are doing something outside of training that is causing training effort to be higher than what is indicated on video. It could be you are in a deficit of calories, sleep deprived, over-worked from manual labor, etc…
You are doing a bit too much in another realm. Maybe you are overdoing the effort on high-fatigue accessory movements. Maybe you are overdoing your cardiovascular training.
Is this a bad thing?
In short, no. If performance is there, there is really nothing to panic about. The main issue though, is this can quickly blend into performance decrease, quite quickly.
For some athletes, it takes rewiring their perception about performance. Meaning, we have to stop equating feeling good to feeling strong, we will cover the disconnection in the next concept.
As a coach, you might have to explain to the athlete the objective measures to reassure them, essentially breakdown their progress/movement quality in lieu of anything else and explain that doing less, for them, might mean regression and to expect that should you decide to slash workload.
Beyond this, it calls to attention how you should taper the athlete, meaning, if they perform well under high fatigue, a massive taper will probably lead to maladaptation and regression.
Feeling well, performing bad.
Second in line for hardest to explain to people, this one is an interesting concept, both theoretically and in practice. It’s not totally common, but it does happen in specific scenarios.
For this concept to resonate, I usually like to point out the fact that, you can take 2 weeks off of all training, and then take a heavy single, going into that session, you will feel awesome, but the chances of you being able to produce your top end strength are very much not in your favor.
That is why I think 95% of all coaches, and to be frank, 100% of all modern coaches, would concur that taking a week of rest, and to go further, deviating drastically from what you normally do the final week of a block, assuming you have a well established trend, is asinine at best.
This usually manifests as:
The athlete feels good going into each given session, but their movements feel clunky and there is a disconnect between how they feel subjectively versus what they are able to load on the bar.
The athlete is coming off of layoff, and expects weights to fly when getting back into it, only to be humbled, quite heavily, when they actually get into their first heavy workout back.
How else can this come about?
Simply put, if this is happening on a consistent basis, the main thing is you are being understimulated, in more digestible terms, not doing enough. As we established in the prior point, there does need to be a requisite level of work being done, in order to not only express strength, but also reinforce technique. The biggest issue though is that is not a one size fits all solution. What is barebones work for some, is not nearly enough for others. I have some athletes who bench twice a week, for 6 working sets a week, where as others bench 4x per week for up to 20 total sets a week!
There is a disconnect between exposures. Again, we already stated that you don’t need to feel good, in order to perform, for some people, this means they need to touch heaver weight, more often, in order to have that groove for their primary session. So, if you bench somewhat heavy on Sunday, then don’t bench heavy again until Thursday, and this occurs for you, you might need either more workload on the earlier session or another session in the middle of the week to bridge that gap.
Is this a bad thing?
This is an easy one, ya, it’s not great. However, I found that this is rather easy to clear up, assuming you have the means to do so.
What I mean by that, is a lot of my athletes can get away with, and frankly benefit from, more workload, however the time needed to get that extra work in, is not afforded to them based on their lives outside the gym. If you have a husband/wife, a few children, and a full time job, there is only so much we can program effectively in order to keep workouts to the 90 minute range. The good news is, we can increase frequency to equate for this, within reason.
Feeling bad, performing bad.
This is pretty much worse case scenario for a coach and athlete, feeling subjectively bad and then reassuring that feeling with performance not being there, it is quite the ordeal and not one we should be welcoming of, really ever.
Now this one is rather straightforward, but how it occurs is quite variable, in my experience.
This manifests as:
The athlete is doing too much to recover from and as such, performance is suffering. Remember how we said there is a requisite level of workload for everyone, unique to them? Well there is also a threshold that is too much for someone, unique to them of course, that effects recovery and performance just as much. I see this happen a ton in athletes who come from background that encourage the “more is better” mindset and the solution for all their issues is to do more, work harder, etc… If you ever did DUP circa 2017-2018, you know what this looks like.
The athlete is drastically under-recovering, either per session or systemically, and that is causing performance to decrease and to be sluggish. This one is really easy to identify, if, and really only if, we are honest with ourselves or to our coaches. If you sleep 5hrs a night, barely consume protein, barely eat in general, and the only time you drink water is to wash down a caffeine pill, you are asking to feel awful and eventually, your performance will match that. We cannot cheat physiology chronically, maybe acutely, but not chronically.
Program design is not balanced. Meaning, you are taking your primary sessions at weird intervals, and it is not allowing for proper recovery in between. That, or you are literally making every day a heavy day and that will lead you to feeling pretty smoked after some time.
Is this a bad thing?
Well, ya. We don’t train to feel weak and perform even weaker. This is about as worse as you can get. However, I feel this is the easiest to fix.
I talk quite heavily on low hanging fruits and usually solutions to this are right in front of your face. Are you working manual labor, long hours? Probably should not be squatting 3x per week, for 15 working sets per week, taking top sets on all 3. Are you in a spot where you know you will be studying more and having to dedicate less time to nutrition and recovery, think BAR exam for lawyers, medical exams for medical residency, etc… Probably should avoid sky high training volume. You see, the hardest thing with this concept, is being honest with ourselves. Personally speaking, I really had to look myself in the mirror and be honest as I was dealing with this for quite some time and I had to face the facts that I could no longer recover from what I once was able to, and that was a hard pill to swallow, but right after that I kickstarted again.
This is why I recommend proactive deloads, instead of reactive ones. I don’t think we have to walk ourself into regression and feeling awful, in order to take a down week, feel free to disagree there.
Personally speaking, any time I have had this come about in my, or my athletes training, it has almost always been attributed to fluctuations in things outside of their control paired with doing a bit too much/under recovering. It is quite difficult to lift weights, with high effort, and get exponentially weaker, so there is a quick fix, in a relative sense to sew this up in most scenarios.
Feeling good, performing good.
The Mecca. The Apex. Nirvana.
This is pretty much where all lifters want to be, all coaches want their athletes to be, and for good reason, this is when training is the most fun, where the most results stem from, and in general, signals a lot of positive feedback loops for the athlete involved and in some cases, reassures them that their work is being reflected with personal records and things, “moving the way they should”.
Now, I think if you have trained at a high level for at least a couple of years, you do know that periods of training like this typically come in waves. To my knowledge, I have not come across a single high level lifter who has experienced a total utopian-like linear progression with no hiccups or poor sessions, on their way up in the sport, again, I could be wrong there.
But when this does occur, what are the possible reasons why?
You have dialed in external variables. Typically when people are experiencing waves like this, you are adhering to sustainable protocols outside the gym that promote recovery and are leaving you feeling and performing better because of it. In my own experience, the best ever stretch of training I had was in college, my final year, where I only had 2 classes in total, was eating with the proper macro breakdown, was getting 8.5-9hrs of total sleep per day (this is when I could take 1hr naps which were like steroids), and was able to train without interruption, at the times I wanted to, and generally speaking, could work at the pace I wanted to. These days, I am not afforded nearly as much of that.
You are training at your max recoverable volume/intensity. This is tough to do because it is so individual, but every once and a while, you find a perfect blend of working sets per week, accessory volume, and intensity exposures per week/block that just leads to a great response from the athlete. This is pretty much riding the borderline at it’s apex as if you do just a little bit more, you will end up in no man’s land.
You are adhering to program. Now, this is not saying all coaches programs are gospel and they all should be looked at as, “if I go off program a bit, I could die”, that is not what I am saying, however, if you and your coach have been working together for a while, I would be willing to bet what they have down for you, in the manner they have it down, is for a reason. Basically, what I mean here, is the athletes that see RPE as a suggestion and not as a prescription, add 5-10lbs extra here and there, typically are not the ones who experience the waves of training where your feeling matches your output, in my experience. This is not to say alterations are not needed, but I think most times, program adjustments for athletes not in total control of everything else, are akin to patching up a massive hole with a single strip of duct tape, it’ll help, but it won’t solve the issue.
We know this is not bad, but what can we take away from it as coaches or athletes?
Well, if you are a coach, the easiest thing to quantify here is your prescription yielded results and in this sport, where things are notoriously finicky, that means something. Maybe you don’t use the same exact prescription in your next, but you piece together principles that led to that success. Certain rep ranges, intensity exposures, etc… To be honest, finding what does not work for an athlete, helps pick what will work, more often than the other way around, in my experience.
As an athlete, I think you have a very keen opportunity to decide what the major contributors were that led to this occurring for you. Think as objectively as you can, were you in a calorie surplus? Were you in a period of low stress? Were you consistently adhering to program? There is an answer there, but again, you need to be objective. To give a tangible example, an athlete of mine was really flat-lining at the end of his bench cycles, and we identified that his consistent extreme overshooting of his secondaries was contributing to it, within 2 blocks of not doing that, he benched an all time PR single. But if he ignored that and kept doing it, we probably do not have the success we eventually did.
The total and honest truth, though, is sometimes there is no reason, and if there is nothing you can pinpoint that is out of ordinary, don’t question it, especially if you have been in purgatory with progress for a while.
Main Takeaways
So I think now that we have an understanding of this continuum, what are the main things we should pay attention to, in either role?
Well, I think the biggest takeaway I had for my own athletes, is not adhering to standard dogma of tapering and being able to interpret consistent trends within an athletes training.
If I have a 60kg female bencher, who week 4, of each block, performs well on bench, despite no reduction in training volume, why would I reduce it leading into a competition or big test?
If I notice that keeping secondary intensity high for a lifter who squats in the 600s, tanks their primary session, I know that I either need to: taper off intensity the final week of a cycle, or keep it low the entire time.
If I have an athlete who is going through a tough time and their lifts are tanking, I know at the very least, we need to equate for other stressors in our next cycle.
As an athlete however, I recognize that it is hard to take setbacks or periods of down training as anything but failures. In the year of 2023, I have had very high highs in training, but also terrible lows, and I am as human as anyone in that, it I will second guess my ability.
However, learning this concept has allowed me to be objective and make the decisions necessary to either: keep a strong stretch going, or dig myself out of a tough stretch.
So, the next time you are still hitting PRs, and but you just have to “try” a little harder, realize you very well could just be an athlete who performs well under high fatigue, and getting yourself to consistently feel good, might not lead to the top end strength outcomes you desire.
As always,
To Utopia!