Power through on bad days or save training for another day

[Pat Hughes]

Hi all - there are some days when I feel really sluggish and tired (e.g. due to a bad nights sleep, stressful day at work etc.) where all the weights feel heavy and I know I'll have to reduce the weight significantly to achieve my reps.

My question is, on days like this should I power through and reduce the weight, or should I save the big lifts (i.e. squat/deadlift/press/bench, whichever I may be training that day) for the following day when I know I'll be feeling better. I've done this in the past and have achieved my reps much more easily with a higher load. If postponing the big lifts, should I just focus on supplementary lifts for that day so I'm at least accumulating some training stress?

Thanks

[WonderCat4Life]

Let the RPE auto-regulation do its job and train according to schedule.

[Pat Hughes]

Thanks for the response, I thought that may be the case - cheers!

[ionRod]

My question is, on days like this should I power through and reduce the weight, or should I save the big lifts (i.e. squat/deadlift/press/bench, whichever I may be training that day) for the following day when I know I'll be feeling better.

I don't know about your situation, but life taught me that you can't tell if the following day will be better for sure. Life happens. What will you do then? Postpone the lifts even further?
I train anyway on schedule and if the next day really is better, I don't regret having trained the day before, because now this new day will provide me good resources for recovery. That's how I look at it.
And another aspect is that once I let my schedule drift because of a "bad day", it will tend to happen more often because I will always have to make a judgement: "how bad is today's day? Is it as bad as the one I had last week?" and so the bar will keep sliding down. Instead I say "I don't care how bad is today compared to last week, because I lifted last week, so I am lifting today".