Happy New Year, Viking Family! In 2021, we heavily pushed consistency over intensity. James Clear put it best:
“INTENSITY: - run a marathon - write a book in 30 days - silent meditation retreat CONSISTENCY: -don't miss a workout for 2 years -write every week -daily silence Intensity makes a good story. Consistency makes progress.”
He’s not wrong. When it comes to nutrition, you’re going to have great results if you’re consistent with good eating habits. If you regularly get the protein you need, and eat plenty of veggies for your micronutrition, the occasional pizza/burger/beer meal won’t do any damage. However, if you’re regularly indulging in pizza/burgers/beer, and try to undo it by fasting for 24 hours immediately after, you won’t see results.
The same goes for sleep. If you’re chronically sleep deprived, one night of 10 hours won’t make up for it. The goal is to (hopefully) get 8 hours per night.
When it comes to exercise, consistency is definitely important. Performing an epic workout once a week that wrecks you for the rest of the week will not get you as fit as you want. Coming to the gym day after day is more likely to get you there. However, consistency in exercise is only the first step.
To get the results you want, you must train with focus and intent. We’ve previously discussed the law of accommodation. Doing the same exercise every day will cause your body to adapt to a point where it doesn’t change you anymore, and you’ll stop seeing results. You need to progressively overload yourself. At Viking Athletics, this means to follow the daily instructions, so that you can achieve the goal of that day’s workout. If you’re supposed to push hard, then dig deep and give it your all! If we want you moving at a conversational pace, then back off on the intensity and talk to your classmates during that workout. Your coach will help guide you through the workout.
If you just show up and go through the motions, then don’t be surprised if you stop seeing results. Or, if you care too much about the whiteboard, and you let your ego distract you to the point of dishonesty – shaving reps, changing your times, etc., all so that you can have the best score of the day – you DEFINITELY won’t make progress. We have a whiteboard, and we track results, so that YOU can monitor YOUR progress. That’s what matters at the end of the day – your results. How you compare to anyone else is irrelevant.
That’s not to say that you should never “mail it in.” We all have days where we feel off, and we just want to move. That’s fine and doing it occasionally can help prevent you from overtraining. BUT, if that’s what you’re doing CONSISTENTLY, then we have a problem. If we don’t challenge ourselves, we don’t change. Consistent challenge leads to continued adaptation.
If you’re not getting the results you want, then something is off. Most of us train for 1 hour out of the 24 in a day. And your coaches only see what happens during that hour. If you train with focus and intent, but don’t get results, we can rule out your training as the issue. Talk to a coach, and we can help figure out the culprit. It could be stress, sleep, hydration, or nutrition. And, once we identify the culprit, we can create a plan to help fix, or at least mitigate it. That’s what we’re here for. See you in the gym.