By Doc | Stronger Personal Training
Let’s start with a something most fitness blogs won’t say.
Sometimes the hardest part of a workout has nothing to do with the workout.
It’s the getting there. The getting out of bed. The deciding that you matter enough to show up for yourself on a day when life and the world feels heavy.
Sound familiar? Then this one’s for you.
Janet’s Story
I have a member — let’s call her Janet.
Long hours as a nurse. A failed marriage behind her. A current relationship that takes more than it gives. A stepson who adds to the weight rather than lifting it. And a mental health journey she’s been navigating mostly alone for a long time.
She doesn’t think very much of herself. Confidence has never come easy.
But she finally got herself through our door. And since then she’s been making real, meaningful progress — the kind you can see, feel, and measure. She still shows up for herself, even on days when she doesn’t want to.
And yet.
There are still days where she calls it depression. Days where she doesn’t want to come in. Doesn’t want to do the thing. Feels like she’s not doing enough or making enough progress fast enough. Like the gap between where she is and where she wants to be is too wide to cross.
I understand that feeling more than she knows.
My Story
I’ve never been clinically diagnosed with depression. But I’ve lived in some of its zip codes.
The first time was college. Three jobs. Summer classes. A body dysmorphia quietly running in the background telling me that if I stopped working out I’d become the overweight kid I used to be again. Training was my only stress relief — and the stress of trying to protect that time was starting to feel worse than not training at all.
I grinded through it. No internal reflection. No framework. Just white knuckles and stubbornness. Hard work is necessary, but sometimes it just leaves you laying in loose gravel and burning rubber.
The second time hit harder.
COVID. Nina post pregnancy. Rhett less than a year old.
I had just lost my job and started my first business out of necessity — not inspiration. We weren’t making money. I was sleep deprived. Stressed beyond what I thought I could handle. And my body was telling me everything I didn’t want to hear — poor recovery, sluggish workouts, a system that couldn’t keep up with the demand.
I felt the weight of the world in a very literal way.
And I still showed up. Not because I was disciplined. Not because I had it figured out. That white knuckle stubbornness resurfaced, and I didn’t want to go back.
That’s the thing about movement during dark periods. Sometimes that’s all it is…movement. Steps forward, even small. It may not make the centerfold, but it keeps you from losing that ground you fought so hard for.
The Rules We Set For Ourselves
Here’s where Tony Robbins comes in. You may not be a fan but bear with me, this can change everything.
In his book Awaken the Giant Within, Robbins talks about values and rules. Values are what matter to you — health, family, freedom, love. Rules are the conditions you set for when you get to feel like those values are being met.
And here’s where most of us quietly destroy ourselves.
We set rules that are almost impossible to win.
He gives the example of a woman named Laurie. Her highest value was love. But her rule for feeling loved required that every person she met accept and approve of all her beliefs. That she be THE perfect mother and wife. That she EARNED it.
Here lies the problem. Her love came at a cost and theoretically her highest priority — but her rules made it nearly impossible to BE loved.
The fitness version of this is everywhere.
“I’ll feel healthy when I lose 30 pounds.” “I’ll feel strong when I can lift X.” “I’ll feel like I’m making progress when the scale moves.” “I’ll feel like I deserve to be here when I look like the person next to me.”
These are losing rules. They hand control of your emotional state to outcomes you can’t fully control and timelines that don’t cooperate with real life.
And Robbins says something that stopped me cold when I read it:
“Life will give you enough pain on its own if you don’t follow through. You don’t need to add to it by creating an intense set of rules that makes you feel lousy all the time.”
Read that again.
You are adding pain on top of pain. The depression, the stress, the dark season — that’s already hard enough. And then you layer on rules that guarantee you’ll feel like you’re failing even when you’re not.
Rewiring the Rules
Laurie changed her rules. Her new rule for love: “I experience love anytime I express love, give love to others, or allow myself to receive it.”
Suddenly she was in control. Suddenly it was achievable. Suddenly she could win the game every single day.
Here’s what (like Janet) that looks like applied to fitness during a dark period:
Old rule: I’m making progress when the scale drops and my body looks different.
New rule: I’m making progress when I show up. When I move my body. When I choose myself for one hour.
Old rule: I’m healthy when my diet is perfect and my workouts are exactly as planned.
New rule: I’m healthy when I do something — anything — that moves me in the right direction today.
Old rule: I deserve to feel good about myself when I’ve earned it through results.
New rule: I deserve to feel good about myself because I’m trying. Because I’m here. Because that took courage today and courage counts.
This isn’t lowering the bar. This is setting the bar somewhere you can actually clear it — so that momentum builds instead of stalls, so that showing up reinforces itself instead of feeling like another failure.
What Working Out During Depression Actually Looks Like
It doesn’t look like your best workout. It doesn’t look like a PR or a personal breakthrough.
It looks like getting there.
On Janet’s hardest days, showing up to the gym is the workout. The act of choosing herself — over the voice that says she’s not worth it, over the relationship that depletes her, over the exhaustion of a long nursing shift — that’s the rep that matters most.
The weights are almost secondary.
And here’s what I’ve watched happen over time with members like Janet: the physical changes come. Slowly and then all at once. But more importantly, something shifts internally. The rules start to change on their own because the evidence starts to accumulate. I showed up on Tuesday when I didn’t want to. I showed up on Thursday when everything hurt. I showed up and I didn’t fall apart.
That evidence rewires the rules without you even noticing.
The Practical Side
If you’re in a dark period right now and trying to figure out how to keep moving, here’s what actually helps:
Lower the minimum. Your only job is to show up. Twenty minutes. A walk. Whatever the smallest version of the thing is — that’s the goal. Done beats perfect every single time.
Change the rule for success. You showed up. That’s a win. Full stop. Don’t let your brain move the goalposts the moment you clear them.
Find somewhere that meets you where you’re at. This matters more than any program or protocol. If the environment makes you feel worse for being there, it’s the wrong environment. The right place makes showing up feel like the reward, not the punishment.
Tell someone. A coach. A training partner. Someone who will notice when you’re not there and care enough to ask. Isolation is one of the heaviest weights you can carry. Community helps put it down.
Be honest about what you can give. If you only have 70% that day. Give a 100% of that 7 out of 10. A seven out of ten effort on a hard day is worth more than a ten out of ten on an easy one. Honor what you actually have available instead of measuring it against what you had last week.
The Bottom Line
Keeping moving when life gets heavy isn’t about discipline. It’s not about motivation. It’s not about being stronger than your circumstances.
It’s about designing rules you can actually win. Showing up as the version of yourself that exists today, not the one you’re trying to become. And finding a place where that version is welcome.
Janet is still showing up. On the hard days and the harder ones.
That’s not a small thing. That’s everything.
If you’re in that place right now and need somewhere safe to land — we’re here.
One rep at a time,
Doc