Physical activity is key to building a healthy body that is fit, resilient, and long lasting. Consistent training can help us accomplish incredible athletic feats, and we can build fitness much faster than we’d expect if we train thoughtfully.

However, one bad workout can be all it takes to knock us off of our fitness path and make us fear or resent working out altogether (that said, if you want to learn about building sustainable fitness practices, start HERE!). Have you ever thought about why we have a negative bias and why the bad workouts stick better than the good ones?

If you’ve been in any sort of psychology, economics, or leadership class in the past decade, there’s a chance you’ve heard of what’s called a negativity bias. Simply put, negativity bias refers to the human tendency to place a greater emphasis on the bad events when compared to the neutral or even good experiences.

For reasons your main man G is unqualified to expertly discuss (namely, survival), we tend to dwell on bad events in hopes of avoiding future losses (also consider reading about loss aversion, a similar concept). This often leads to us avoiding experiences because we fear the bad result more than we value the potential benefit (even if the benefit is more substantial than the potential bad result!).

Do you have a bad memory of someone calling you something offensive from years ago that sticks in your brain? Have you ever doubted a skill you know you have because someone said you are no good?

We are often programmed to look at the bad side of things, and its no different when it comes to fitness.

If we want to build consistent bodies that are strong and athletic, we need to learn to train to with a focus on the future rather than maximizing our exhaustion in each workout.

Negativity Bias and Fitness

Physical activity and fitness are particularly susceptible to negativity bias because the goals of these activities are generally to push ourselves to be better. We exercise with the idea that we will get stronger and be able to do more, and we often pursue fitness with an intense desire to change from where we are today. While it’s great to want to improve ourselves and our abilities to move, we have to be careful to avoid overdoing it.

We most often see the negativity bias in fitness play out like this:

We aren’t happy with how we look and/or feel and want to make a change. We have resolved to whip ourselves into shape, and sign up for a gym or workout class. Our selected workout routine (if we’ve even done so) says we will need a few weeks to notice a change, but we think we can do it better. As we approach the first workout, we build up energy and excitement to do the routine.

The workout comes, and we push it to the max. Maybe we are working at a level we used to find normal or maybe we are new to the workout altogether and think going hard is the only way.

Once we finish the workout, we are exhausted. Everything hurts, and we find ourselves too sore to do anything effectively. We may even tell our friends and loved ones about how sore we are (as though they want to hear it!).

The next workout might come around, but in your head, you want nothing to do with it. Working out is tough and painful and you don’t need that in your life.

Our enthusiasm to become better can be a great motivator toward a healthy lifestyle. However, it can also distort our perceptions of fitness and cause us to build negative associations with exercise. These negative associations can be most impactful when we overdo it for our first workouts or first after an extended period of inactivity.

This leads us to our next section, discussing the anchoring effect.

The Anchoring Effect

As we have already discussed, we tend to dwell more on the bad than we do on the good. Whether its a fear response, survival technique, or a bit of both, the fact is that bad most often outweighs good pound-for-pound.

Along with having a bias for negative events, we as humans also tend to overvalue our first exposures to something new. This bias, aptly called the anchoring effect, is most commonly characterized by our tendency to rely heavily on the first bit of information we receive about a subject, binding our perceptions of the new subject to this first experience. Often, we rely too heavily on this first experience, distorting our perceptions of the activity or event.¹ This is true anywhere from gift shopping to fitness.

The anchoring effect is precisely why we must thoughtfully approach our first workouts. If we lead with an overpowering workout, there is little chance we will forget it anytime soon. And once we have a bad impression of working out, we can always find a good excuse to avoid doing it.

We will always bias in favor of negative experiences and our first exposures to something new. In order to push past negative biases, we must strategically approach fitness with an eye to reduce the bad and replace with good.

¹(note: this is a heavily relied-upon strategy in legal negotiation tactics. Often, lawyers will try to get a number out to the jury’s ears first or lead with a number in settlement discussions with the idea that the rest of the negotiation process will be built in relation to that first number).

Avoid Beating Yourself into Fitness

It’s easier to stick with fitness if we enjoy exercising. While it’s important to push to be better, it’s key to avoid beating yourself up in the process, especially at the start.

For much of my youth athletic career, I trained to be tougher than any other person on my team. However, no matter how much I exercised, I always had stress in the back of my mind about the next workout because I knew it was going to require every iota of my energy. It’s hard to get back into a gym when you know you’re going to get throttled.

When we train to the absolute max for each workout, it’s hard to avoid developing negative associations with fitness. Even one bad workout is enough to plant a negative image of exercise in our minds, which may have us avoid a type of workout or even workouts altogether. I find that I can reduce negativity bias in exercising by adjusting my focus to overall fitness rather than maximizing each workout.

What does it mean to be the toughest? It’s often a question of scale. Do you really need to be the toughest for each workout, or is your objective greater? If you can sacrifice winning at a practice to preserve your aim toward building a tougher system, you will build more sustainably. Most importantly, we must listen to our bodies so that we can understand how much more we can handle.

As we progress in fitness, we will better understand our bodies and learn how we can push. There’s a huge difference between completing a burner workout as a highly-trained competitor as compared to a novice athlete (for more on this, consider reading about the concept of progressive overload). The key is to keep ourselves in a position to learn and avoid getting stuck in bad places.

Consider Fitness in Chapters, Not Lifetimes

There is no good way to avoid all bad workouts. Sometimes, we need to push ourselves and some days feel better than others. I find that I can combat negative associations related to my fitness training when I structure my workout routines and focuses to act more as chapters in my lifetime series of fitness as opposed to looking at fitness just as the long-term goal.

Yes, all exercising should be designed with the long-term goal in mind.

However, I find that when I am struggling with a workout or had a bad experience with a type of training, I can push past these issues by slightly changing my focus and giving my mind the chance to view it as a new chapter in my fitness routine.

For example, I tend to cycle my primary cardio fitness workouts (ex. shifting from running to biking to jump roping as my primary form of cardio). Sometimes, when I’m focusing on one of these styles, I will do something or land in a way that puts a negative view of the exercise in my mind (ex. I’ve gone on a run on a cold winter morning without stretching enough and shocked my calves, leading to a lot of soreness after the run). In these situations, I try to move myself onto a new chapter of fitness (i.e. temporarily shift from one primary workout to another) and take a break from the troubling workout.

I find that by shifting focus and temporarily stepping away form a frustrating exercise, I allow myself to keep moving and build positive associations with exercise in general. Additionally, I find that these new chapters allow for the sensation of a new start, letting me shift from my previous goals or records and focus on my current situation. After a bit of a break, I try reintroducing the troubling workout so that I can paint over the negative images with something fresh and pleasant.

Our fitness goals and standards constantly change, and it’s important to give ourselves the opportunity to try something new, take a break, and build positive emotions toward fitness.

Thoughts, questions, concerns? Let me know!

-G