What a low-impact spin class reminded me about overachieving, rest, and the life I actually want

For most of my life, a workout didn’t count unless it ended with me in a sweaty puddle on the floor. If the class said push, I pushed harder. If the instructor offered a modification, I assumed it was meant for someone else. I wanted to do more, and I wanted to do it the most, even on the days it felt like I might not survive the cooldown.

In my twenties, that approach mostly worked. My body bounced back quickly, and I took the soreness as proof that I’d earned something.

After Jack was born, I took up running to lose the baby weight, and for a while it was one of the best things I’d ever done for myself. My distances crept up, my pace got faster, and my endurance was better than it had been in years. And yes, the weight came off. I was proud of that, and I still am.

But somewhere along the way, my old mentality slipped back in. It wasn’t enough to keep improving; I had to beat my distance record and my speed record, and I had to do both at the same time, every time I laced up. You can probably guess how that ended. A severe pain in my hip took me off the road, and honestly, it has never been quite the same since.

A different kind of workout

These days my routine looks a lot gentler. I alternate between low-impact spin rides and walks with a weighted vest. On the bike, my goal is to break a sweat without pushing hard, which for me means keeping my cadence at or under 100 RPM and my resistance no higher than 50. If you ride Peloton, you know there are plenty of classes that blow right past those limits. I know because I used to take them.

Staying inside those numbers is harder than it sounds when you’re wired the way I am. The music builds, the instructor calls for a climb, and every competitive cell in my body wants to crank the knob. During one of those rides, Peloton instructor Jenn Sherman was cautioning the overachievers in class (hi, that’s me) about staying within the limits, and she said something that stopped me mid-pedal: “I know you can do it, but you don’t have to.”

I’ve thought about that sentence almost every day since.

Can and should are two different questions

That one line sums up most of what I teach now. Being able to do something has never been the same as needing to do it. When I overdid it in my workouts, my body paid the price. When we overdo it in our lives, the cost runs deeper, because what wears down isn’t a hip joint. It’s our peace and, over time, our sense of who we are.

This is the heart of what I call the Competence Trap. When you’re good at handling things, you keep getting handed more things to handle, and because you can, you do. You say yes to the extra project at work and the last-minute favor for a friend, and you quietly absorb the mental load that comes with both. Before long, being capable becomes the very reason you never get to set anything down.

Rest isn’t the opposite of progress

I can’t think of a single fitness expert who doesn’t stress the importance of a rest day. Rest is when much of the real work happens. Muscle fibers knit back together stronger than before, inflammation has a chance to recede, and your body settles back into its normal rhythm. Skip rest long enough and the progress stalls while the injuries start piling up.

Our nervous systems need the same thing. When every margin of the day is filled with giving, doing, achieving, and managing, there’s no room left for the recovery that lets us shift out of fight-flight-freeze and back into a place where we feel safe and connected. That recovery is also where new neural pathways get a chance to form. Without it, we stay stuck in an old rhythm that may keep everything running smoothly for everyone else while it slowly stops working for us.

What a low-impact life could look like

So here’s what I keep coming back to: what would happen if you put the same kind of limits on your life that I put on my spin bike?

You might build rest into your week on purpose, the way a good training plan schedules recovery days, instead of waiting until something sidelines you. You might catch yourself reaching for the resistance knob, so to speak, and decide to leave it where it is. You might stop doing something simply because you’re able to.

None of this has to be dramatic. Slowing your pace just a little and reclaiming a few of those margins, even if they’re only moments, gives you room for whatever restores you and reconnects you with the woman you are underneath all the doing. I’ve found that a low-impact effort can have a surprisingly high-impact result.

Try One Thing

Think of one thing on your plate right now that would be perfectly fine at 80% effort. Maybe it’s the birthday party that doesn’t need handmade favors, or the report that’s already good enough to send. Let it be good enough this week.

Then ask yourself what you’d do with the 20% you get back. (Let’s be honest, for those of us who are overachievers, it’s probably closer to 30%.) Spend it on something that fills you up instead of draining you, and pay attention to how that feels.

I know you can do it all. You just don’t have to.