We’ve all experienced the guilt of a missed workout; and even worse, an unexpectedly missed workout. Skipping a day is fine when it was planned weeks in advance, but when it’s an hour before your workout, and you realize you won’t make it, you can’t help but feel bad. This is where the “makeup” workout comes in. How can I make this next workout so intense that it makes up for the last one I missed? Everyone has asked themselves this question, but rarely do they give the right answer.
Most people shouldn’t make their next workout more intense to makeup for a missed workout. It can lead to a punishment mindset and possibly overtraining, both of which can ruin your fitness progress. Instead, you should either workout like normal or decrease the intensity so you don’t hurt yourself. Even better, you can reflect on why you missed the workout to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Why Not Workout Harder To Make Up For It?
While you can slightly bump up the intensity of your next workout, most people want to destroy themselves by doubling the intensity. This is a really bad idea for two reasons. First, it encourages the “I need to punish myself” mindset of fitness, which is very destructive and short-sighted. Seconds, you’ll likely over train on that makeup day, leading to either slower progress or more missed days at the gym.
The “I Need to Punish Myself” Mindset of Fitness
Most people start exercising because they don’t like something about themselves. People often think things like:
- I’m too fat
- I’m so weak
- I’m such a lazy person
This negative talk leads them to start exercising. However, exercising out of self-hate is a downward spiral. Exercising because of how “bad” you are will make you choose exercises that hurt to do, that makes you really sore after, and makes you feel that “you got what you deserve.” Although you may never say those exact words to yourself, the way these people exercise reflects that negative self-image.
Instead of this, you should have a self-love mindset with exercise. You shouldn’t exercise because of how fat or weak you are; you should exercise because you want to take care of yourself. In other words, take care of your body the way you’d care for your child or family member.
Also, exercising for the sake of taking care of yourself will significantly increase your adherence to fitness long-term. Nobody can stand punishing themselves for more than a month or so. However, if you’re caring and treating yourself, you can keep it up for years on end. Take this missed workout as an opportunity to reevaluate your fitness mindset.
Overtraining on Makeup Days
Another problem with pushing extra hard is the potential to overtrain. Ironically, your body is more susceptible to overtraining after you’ve missed a day or two. Despite this, people use this time to push themselves as hard as possible. A more suitable approach would actually be to reduce intensity, then work your way back up to what you normally do.
If you do decide to push yourself, and you do end up overtraining, you’re much more likely to miss additional workout days because of the following symptoms of overtraining:
- Low energy and fatigue
- Chronic soreness
- Brain fog
- Poor sleep
If these symptoms sum up how you feel after most of your workouts, you’re likely overtraining. See our article here to find out if your workouts are too intense.
Even if these symptoms don’t bother you, the effects may slow down your progress as well. Overtraining means you’re not giving your body enough recovery to handle the next workout. This means during your next workout, you not only won’t have the same energy to work at your normally intensity, but you will also further damage your body more than it can recover from.
In short, overtraining is never good. Since “make up” workouts can easily lead to overtraining, it’s smarter to simply continue your routine like nothing happened.
The Right Way to Makeup for a Missed Workout
The recommended solution is to continue like normal, but below are additional step you can take to maximize the opportunity.
Reflect on Why You Missed the Workout
The number one thing you can do is reflect; why did you miss that workout? How often do I miss a workout for the same or similar reason? Most people will say it was only a one-off situation; the day suddenly got hectic so they didn’t have time, but otherwise they would’ve been consistent that week. However, those same people are often not tracking their workout and seeing they may have used the same excuse multiple times in the past.
Below are a few common reasons why someone will missed a planned workout.
- Too tired
- Had to stay later at work
To combat these reasons, here are a list of actions you can take to make sure it doesn’t happen again:
Change When and How Long You Work Out
This works great if schedule changes are the main cause of missed workouts. By switching from evening to morning workouts, or going from 90 minutes to 30 minutes, you can greatly increase consistency over time. This can also include switching from gym workouts to at home workouts. Remember, what matters most is being consistent, not having as many fancy machines as possible.
Change The Type of Exercise You’re Doing
People who feel tired after their workouts definitely need to change the exercises they’re doing. Most people spend an hour doing intense cardio or group exercise classes. However, by switching to a more simple routine like strength training or even stretching, you’ll find that you want to go to the gym rather than have to.
This is especially true if you’ve had a stressful day. The worst thing you can do is add even more stress. Instead, you should still exercise, but either at a significantly lower intensity or by focusing on mobility and stretching. This will give you a calm, relaxing moment you deserve after a hard day.
And again, this can also include switching from gym exercise to home exercise. Exercising at home is almost guaranteed to improve consistency, and there are plenty of bodyweight workouts to follow online.
Go to the Gym Less Often Each Week
If the above actions are not viable or didn’t work, this may be your best bet.
Most people start their fitness journey with a 5-7 day per week workout plan. It may last a couple of weeks because their motivated, but once life starts to pick back up, that routine may be very unrealistic. It’s important to set a goal that can work no matter how hectic your week gets. In fact, you can see great results by training just once a week, which we explain in the article here.
Although reducing time in the gym sounds like you’re quitting, or that you’re not working as hard as you should, some people may actually see more results by doing this. Look back at the symptoms of overtraining listed above. If you find yourself skipping the gym for those reasons, you could have been doing too much exercise than your body can handle
On the flipside, you may not be providing your body with proper recovery after each workout. Again, more detail on that can be found in the overtraining article, but here are common reasons why people aren’t recovering enough:
- Poor sleep
- Inadequate nutrition
- Too much stress (workouts, diet, job, family, etc.)
A Small Increase in Intensity
If the missed workout was truly a one-off event, then you can consider bumping intensity just slightly. Here are the recommended ways to do so:
- Add one extra set to some exercises
- Add an extra exercise or two at the end of the workout
- Add 5-10 extra minutes on cardio
These are general recommendations, but notice how little they change your normal workout. This is what a true makeup day should look like.
When to Decrease Intensity Instead
If you’ve missed at least a week of exercise, you’ll benefit much more from decreasing intensity for as many weeks as you’ve been absent. As mentioned earlier, the body becomes more sensitive to overtraining the longer you’re absent from the gym. Cutting down intensity will ensure you don’t overtrain as soon as you get back.
The table outlines how much to reduce intensity depending on how long you’ve been gone:
| Time Away From Exercise | How to Get Back On Track |
| 1 Week | Same routine, but use 25% less weight than usual |
| 2 Weeks | Same routine, but use 50% less weight than usual |
| 3 Weeks | Reduce weights by up to 50% Also reduce sets and/or exercises by a few |
| 4+ Weeks | Reduce weights by up to 50% Also reduce sets and/or exercises by at least half |
Basically, the longer you’ve been absent, the more you have to reduce both intensity and volume. Doing the same amount of reps with less weight will reduce intensity. Decreasing total sets and exercises will reduce volume.
After spending your first week back at this intensity, slowly start to climb back up to your normal routine. Again, the longer you’ve been gone, the longer this transition will take. To make it easy, just climb up the table until you reach your normal workouts. For example, if you’ve been gone 3 weeks, spend your first week with less weight and volume, then the second with normal volume but still less weight, then the third with normal volume and slightly heavier weights, then finally the fourth at your normal intensity.
This might sound like a slow and tedious process, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.