Consistency is the key to success, especially when it comes to fitness goals. But while almost everyone knows the importance of consistency, it seems so few of us practice it.
It’s not entirely our fault. The fitness world has concocted an illusion of what training should be: a hyped-up person giving it their all, sweating and panting furiously. This person lives by the mantra of “no pain, no gain” and by their sheer mental toughness, they achieve their goals. Those who cannot live up to this image are deemed lazy and weak.
But what if training was fun? What if training was a pulling force? What if training was addictive? Achieving your fitness goals would be so much easier. These seven steps will make training something you look forward to.
1. Give 70%, Not 100%
Giving it 100% means you’re pushing your limits. Your lungs are burning and your muscles are throbbing. You’re sore, hurting, and aching. It’s hard to give everything you’ve got every single practice. You have to stop and rest, and now your 100% becomes 0%. You’re so tired from giving it 100% that you make up excuses to do 0% for longer and longer.
Before you know it, you’re not exercising anymore. Along comes your New Year’s resolutions or some motivational speech and you restart the cycle, giving it 100% until you feel exhausted and quit. You might have even injured yourself, which could put you out of exercise for months and years.
What if you did 70% (or less)? Your body will still adapt. 70% is not 0%. Instead of starting and stopping and starting and stopping, why not start and continue?
Your 70% changes daily, since your energy changes daily (due to numerous factors like sleep, nutrition, and mood). But as long as you give your 70% at that moment, the practice will have just the right amount of challenge and become enjoyable.
No longer do you need to prep your mind and get hyped to exercise. You shouldn’t need to get hyped to do something good for your body in the first place.
Then how come all you see in the media is hyped athletes giving it 100%? Isn’t that the way everyone should train? What you don’t see is their countless practices of 70% (or less). You only see the competition in which they give it their all.
In fact, athletes have specifically designed intensity phases (peaking and tapering) so that they don’t overdo it before a competition. Peaking is having training sessions build up in intensity, so athletes are prepared for the competition’s intensity. Tapering is the recovery period just before the competition. Even the best athletes don’t give it 100% every day.
If you compete, you’ll also need to modulate intensity for optimal performance on that date. But for most people who just want to stay in shape, my advice is simple: give it 70%.
2. Let Go of the Pressure To Be at Your Best
There is so much unnecessary pressure around exercise. You have to feel so motivated so you can push this weight, do this number of reps, or get this time. Because if you don’t do it, you’re not pushing hard enough. And if you’re not pushing hard enough, you’re not going to achieve your fitness goals.
This pressure of having to be at the top of your game prevents you from enjoying exercise. And when you don’t feel up to this pressure, you end up not exercising. You find excuses to skip until you’re ready to hit it hard. Because if you work out easy today, it's a “waste of a workout”, as if going easier somehow made you weaker.
If you run a mile in seven minutes, does every time you walk make you weaker, as if you’re getting your body used to the slower pace? Similarly, if you usually use 30-pound dumbbells but today you use 25-pound ones, are you getting weaker because your body is getting used to a lighter weight?
Let go of this pressure and just show up. Some days you’ll feel good and some days you won’t. Those days you feel well and crush it will progress you. Those days you feel bad and went easy will develop the habit of exercise. Even if you don’t crush it, there are areas you’re still improving on.
3. Stop Obsessing Over Progression
What if, on those days that you went easy, you didn’t improve? Does it even matter? Let’s take a step back and apply this obsessive progression mentality to other areas of our life and see if such a mentality makes sense. If it didn’t, why would we apply this mentality to exercise?
If you’re supposed to progress every single time you do something, every single time you cook, is your food supposed to taste better? Should you be more efficient? Should your cooking skills improve every single time?
At work, is your work getting better every day? Do you hype yourself up before work so you can be even better? If you’re not writing better content, creating better videos, or doing a certain thing better, are you beating yourself up?
Every time you meet a friend, do you ask yourself if the relationship is getting better? Is your communication getting better? Is this friendship progressing every single day? And if it’s not, do you meticulously analyze what’s going wrong?
You may think, well, I understand you may not progress every day but within a month or year, you should be progressing. I agree with you. But what if you didn’t? What if you exercised one hour every day and did not add anything more to your routine?
The results you get are whatever results you get from your routine. It keeps you strong to a certain degree, gives you cardiovascular endurance to a certain degree, energizes you to a certain degree, etc. Why do you always have to constantly progress and do more? Why can’t you just be feeling good and looking good?
If you want to be the best at something, it comes with a steep price of effort (effort that cannot be spent elsewhere). Know why you want to be that good. Is it because you need to prove yourself? Is it because it’s the only way you can find your self-worth? Is it because you would see yourself as less if you weren’t crushing it?
If you want to be the best for any of those reasons, you’ll always be losing. There’s always someone faster, better, and stronger. Even if you make it to the top, there’s always someone looking to knock you off the top.
There are other areas in your life that you can focus on. You don’t always need to be stronger and stronger or faster and faster. Of course, if you’re a competitive athlete, you should worry about progression. But you should know why you want to be the best.
4. Train at the Same Time Every Day
It’s harder to make excuses when you have blocked off a chunk of time every day to train. Exercise becomes a must when this time comes.
Physiologically, there is a best time to exercise. But the best time to exercise for you is the time that you can be consistent with. And for most people, that would be earlier in the day. Why? As the day goes on, things happen and unexpected situations pop up. You find more reasons (valid or not) to talk yourself out of training.
Training at the same time every day also gives you more energy for your workouts because your body adapts to regular training schedules. And when you feel more energized for a workout, you are more likely to develop the habit of exercise.
5. Keep It Simple
It’s simple: if you keep training, you’re going to stay in shape. If it becomes easy, you make whatever you’re doing harder. If it stays hard, you don’t change a thing. Done.
Don’t add so much pressure and expectation because, in the end, you end up not training enough. And if you are training, you’re forcing yourself all the time, drowning yourself in caffeine and music.
Take out the unnecessary fluff and just look at your exercise as a way to keep you strong, healthy, and energized. And who cares how you’re going to do it? You’re just going to do the best you can.
6. Be Kind to Yourself
Just by showing up, you’ve already won. I’m serious. You don’t need to train to the brink of death for acceptance and approval. The only bad workout is the one that didn’t happen.
If you miss a workout (or many), don’t beat yourself up. Just jump back on the routine as soon as you can.
7. Do the Same Exercises
If you constantly do new things, you keep your body guessing and unfamiliar with the movement. Your body has to think about the movement. You spend more time figuring it out than actually doing the exercise.
Instead, when you do the same exercises, the movements become second nature. No longer needing to think, you’ll find it easier to lose yourself in the movement.
Feel free to change things up when the movement becomes easy, but never do new movements just because of their novelty.
Consistency Beats Intensity
Some may point to athletes who’ve made great progress with high intensity and sheer discipline. But could they have been better? How is their body now? Are they injured? Have they undergone multiple surgeries? Are they still training the way they did? Are they even training at all?
Practicing all the steps above is difficult. Letting go of your ego and accepting yourself is a tough journey. But it’s worth it. Before you know it, you end up getting in really good shape because you’re consistent. You’re actually having fun. And you breeze past your fitness goals.