Not Every Workout Is Supposed To Crush You

“We’re not going to work that hard today,” she says.

I’m on my exercise bike, and the words coming out of the svelte instructor’s mouth catch me off guard. I’m used to hearing things like, “Quitting is a luxury we can’t afford!” and “You can do anything for fifteen seconds!” or “You came here to get stronger, not smaller!” 

But as a familiar Taylor Swift song starts playing in the background, the instructor lays out the plan for the class and reiterates, “Not every workout is supposed to crush you.”

The irony of this mentality is I don’t ever expect a workout to crush me because I don’t try that hard when it comes to exercise. 

A little over a decade ago, I signed up to run the California International Marathon Relay with a handful of new friends. My memory is fuzzy on a) why I was asked to participate in the first place (I am not a runner), and b) why I said yes to the invitation (did I mention I am not a runner?). Early in our marriage, one of the first couples we met in Sacramento generously adopted us into their network of friends, half a dozen other married couples who all went to college together. Roughly four years younger than most of the women in the group, I was desperate for them to like me, which is probably why when someone mentioned they needed one more team for the relay, I eagerly raised my hand and volunteered myself and my husband. The next morning I downloaded a training plan from the Internet and started running laps around my neighborhood. 

On the actual race day, we got up at the crack of dawn and made our way to the start line. I felt nervous and anxious, but everyone on our team assured me time and time again the relay was meant to be fun, not competitive. I nodded and nodded and then ran my little heart out. Brett and I were assigned to the first leg of the relay, around six miles. I don’t remember much of the race itself, but I know I had to stop a few times to catch my breath.

Here’s what I do remember: when we got to the first relay point, where we’d tag our next running partners to continue the race for our team, my brand new friend Kara, who I barely knew, greeted us with a dramatic, “WHAT TOOK YOU GUYS SO LONG?!” and then immediately took off sprinting with her running partner, Bethie, yelling, “C’mon, we have to make up for lost time!” 

This story is still a joke between us. My friend Kara is incredibly intense when it comes to exercise. She is the kind of person who works out at 4 am. The kind of person who packs workout clothes for vacation and will absolutely make use of the hotel gym (as opposed to packing workout clothes with good intentions and then never even putting them on—not that I’ve ever done that, wink). The kind of person who goes to those boot camps where you push tires across the floor while an instructor with muscles bulging out a tank top screams at you. 

As for me? I like to walk. I like to do a few crunches before I hop in the shower. I like pilates and yoga. I guess you could say I like workouts that don’t crush me. 

My creative endeavors, though, are a different kind of relay race. If I am undoubtedly an underachiever when it comes to exercising, I am most certainly an overachiever when it comes to my writing. I work and work and work. Revise, revise, revise. I do not settle. I do not stop to catch my breath. I pursue every piece with excellence as though an Olympic medal is at stake. “Good enough” is not in my vocabulary. “We’re not gonna work that hard today” is not a mantra of mine, ever.  

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, my own propensity to turn every little thing I write into a laborious, crushing, exhausting process. Every time I have an idea for something to write about, even if it starts with two simple sentences, my mind immediately wanders to the full potential of the piece. I see a paragraph, seven paragraphs, no, make that 2400 words. All or nothing. Riveting essay or bust.

My friend Rach Kincaid recently left social media but has been blogging daily ever since. Her posts are short and charming, and somehow she manages to always say something profound even if she is only writing two sentences. She often writes one lovely paragraph and hits publish like it’s no big deal. A quick catch and release. 

We’re not going to work that hard today.

I struggle with brevity, with simply “letting a piece fly” as my friend Callie says. I want to be able to sit down and write three lovely sentences and hit publish, but I can’t seem to wrap my head around the idea that not every writing assignment is supposed to crush me. 

For the past two years, I’ve been writing a book while keeping up with other deadlines, forcing my butt in the chair every morning at roughly 5:30 am, churning out essay after essay, chapter after chapter, newsletter after newsletter. I’ve written blog posts and freewrites and everything in between, watching the tally of my collective word count go up up up, which is like a drug to me.

A couple of weeks ago, I began feeling trapped and resentful of my own writing practice. Suddenly burdened and exhausted by the own impossible standards I’ve created for myself, writing stopped feeling life-giving and started to feel like it was siphoning actual joy out of my soul. Every idea, every tiny scene I started composing in my head, had to meet its full potential or else. Or else what? Or else I had failed, I guess. I could not stop writing until I had explored layers and nuance and metaphors galore. I had to dig deeper, and deeper, and deeper. I had to make the piece better, stronger, richer. I had to write more, more, more.

Not every workout is supposed to crush you.

The morning I heard those words on my exercise bike, I had a tiny revelation: I might be crushing my writing goals, but I am also being crushed in the process. I am being crushed under the weight of my own expectations, my own self-imposed deadlines, my own propensity to go the extra mile every single time.

(WHY AM I LIKE THIS?!) 

There’s a reason we warm-up and cool down. There’s a reason we stretch and recover. There’s a reason we take water breaks. There is a time to sweat, absolutely. There is a time to push yourself to the end of your own limits, there is a time to see how far you can go. But there is also a time to come up for air.

Last month, I decided to participate in the Exhale blog hop because I wanted to give myself an easy writing assignment just for fun. I sat down and wrote my entry in one sitting, smiling and chuckling to myself the whole time. When I finished, I passed my laptop over to my boys, who laughed hysterically at what I had written, a certain validation I didn’t realize could feel so good.

What a gift, to remember that writing can be fun—that we don’t have to crush ourselves, that sometimes writing can be easy and breezy, like coasting on a flat road singing along to “Glorious” by Macklemore, pedaling along to the beat with a smile on our face.

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This month, try taking a “recovery day” with your writing. Give yourself permission to write the thing that sounds easy, the thing that sounds fun. Make a list of all the places you’ve written. Write a haiku. Write a stitch of dialogue between you and your kids that made you laugh. Try the “I love” prompt. Consider writing two honest sentences. Or simply write a stream of consciousness.

Fight the urge to crush your writing session.

Take a deep breath, and before you even begin, say, “I’m not going to work that hard today.”