You should feel energized from your workout. Sure, after you finish a really tough workout you may need 10-20 minutes to recover, but if you are regularly hitting a wall mid-workout or leaving the gym feeling like you need a nap to go on, you are overloading your system and over-training.

This one is tough, especially if you use exercise as a form of stress relief. It is important to understand that exercise in itself elicits a large stress response from the body. We experience a lot of benefits from the acute adaptive changes in response to that stress (a boost in energy, mood, metabolism) and a healthy body can easily return to normal functioning afterwards. However, if your bucket is getting full, a high intensity workout is enough to push you over the edge.

If you are struggling with stress, think about taking more rest days between your workouts and opt for lower intensity movements like strength training, yoga, walking, or hiking. You can still enjoy your high intensity workout but consider taking the intensity down several notches. It will actually be more beneficial to scale the rep scheme, lower the weight, and think about just moving your body instead of pushing your limits.

This might require you to leave your ego at the door for a day (which also will help empty your bucket) but your body will thank you in the long run.

Life is all about finding your balance. Just because you aren’t on the verge of a mental breakdown does not mean that you are not stressed out. If you’ve been living in high stress for a while, you may even feel like you are handling it well or that you aren’t that stressed at all. Keep in mind that if you get to the point of feeling overwhelmed, your bucket is already overflowing.

The key here is learning balance and flexibility in your lifestyle to keep stress at an optimal level. If you take on more stress in one area (like a new project at work), you should anticipate reducing it somewhere else (drop the intensity of your workouts). You just have to recognize when water is pouring in and have an arsenal of ways to let it out.

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