Last week, while sitting on the rowing machine for the second day and feeling slight kinks and protests work out of my back, I was thanking my younger self for teaching me to take it easy on my first day.

First Day: Resistance/Weights

Back when I was in college (the first time around), I knew a lot less about the limits of my body than I do now. I decided to try out rowing one day, so I jumped on the machine and found that it was easy! Great! So I stayed there for about three times longer than I’d been planning. And then the next day came…Pain. So much pain. I was sore, and not in a good way – I was sore in the ‘it hurts to even think about moving’ way. It was a couple weeks before I could get back on the rowing machine and start working my way up again.

It was painful, but instructional. I learned after that experience that sometimes you have to quit while you’re ahead. In almost any resistance exercise that I do – weights, rowing, even biking – I know that until my body adjusts, I have to force myself to stop long before I’m tired.

First Day: Cardio/Aerobics

This is a different animal. There’s less I can do to control it, but still, it was the same story when starting kickboxing, running, swimming, or any other cardio-heavy workout I’ve done. When I started kickboxing I was fairly out of shape, but I’d been running a little so I didn’t think it would be that terrible (I never do). Within 15 minutes, I was dying. Wheezing, gasping for air, wondering why I let myself get so out of shape. But it always happens this way with cardio. It’s the exact opposite of when I start resistance – instead of my body telling me it can keep going, it wants to stop, curl up in a ball, and be done. And the first day is so, so much worse than any other day. After the first day, I can muddle through. After the first week, I’m pretty much fine. Oh, every change to the routine will throw me a little, a minor version of the first day, but nothing is like the real first day. And it’s a lot easier to push through the really crappy days when I know they’re going to be really temporary.

Better Knowledge = Better System

Maybe this pattern is just me, but I’ve run into it over and over, and I like knowing what’s coming. When I knew less, I would quit cardio workouts because they were too hard, and overreach on weights, and neither way was encouraging my attempts to get healthy. And because learning the hard way sucks, I offer my pain for your benefit. What’s true for me may not be true for you, but if you recognize these patterns in your experience, at least know you’re not the only one. It’s nothing complicated, just something I see that I find interesting. But anyway, I don’t go in for Profound Complex Life-Changing Fitness Rules, because I think that sometimes the simple things are the most helpful. What do you think?