Patrick Dempsey · September 24, 2026 · 5 min read
You know the session. Legs are flat, the warm-up didn't warm anything up, and there's a voice saying you've done the hard part already, just get through it.
I used to think the honest answer to that voice was to push. I now think the honest answer is: you don't have enough information to know, and the two mistakes are not the same size.
Below: the three states you can be in, why nobody can tell them apart in real time, what the prevalence numbers are actually built on, and the one sentence to write before your next hard day.