How To Train Consistently

Consistency is everything. You could do the perfect programme in the best-equipped gym, but if you miss training sessions, then it could all be for nought. Consistent execution brings the plan to life. Let's define our terms. Consistency means (a) working out on the days the programme calls for and (b) performing the workouts as planned. You train when it's time to train and you do the reps, sets, and weights you said you would do.

There is no training principle more important than consistency. Consistency is not the only thing you should optimise for, but it is the first thing you should optimise for. The game of fitness becomes more fun when you know you'll stick to the plan. You can start treating your training programme like a one-person experiment. You know that you'll stick to the plan, so you get to see if the plan works.

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly. This is true as long as you don't take unacceptable riskswith safety. This applies to training. Suppose someone gave you the perfect training programme, tailor-made for your situation and your genetics. Would that be worth doing? If yes, then doing an imperfect program with the aim of perfecting it over time would surely be worth your while.

Your first training programme should hopefully lead to some decent gains. You will learn to set better goals, train better, and to stop making as many mistakes. This leads you to your second training programme, which is hopefully better. Assuming consistency and constant improvement, your fourth, fifth, and, sixth training programmes are likely to be miles ahead of your first one. But you cannot get to the fourth, fifth, and sixth programme if you do not stick to the first programme.

You may overestimate the speed of your progress. Progress in fitness is asymptotic at best. That is, your results may shoot off rapidly at first, and slow down as you approach your genetic limit. You continue making progress at an ever slowing rate. In reality, the results are more likely to follow a sigmoid curve. You struggle with consistency at first. Then you get consistent, but your training programme could use some work. Then you dial your training in, but your nutrition and sleep are lackluster.

The game becomes fun once your training, nutrition, and sleep are all dialed in to a reasonable degree. The gym becomes your laboratory. You make changes one at a time, and you actually see the results. The rest of this essay is about the obstacles you face with training consistently, and how you might overcome them. I wish you good reading and good luck.

The Ideal Programme

You may be hesitant to commit to training at first. You want to know that your efforts will pay. You spend time researching the ideal programme. You dive into the anatomy and physiology. You cultivate a selection of credible voices to listen to. You become knowledgeable in the theory of strength and muscle building.

Maybe you do a sport like jiu jitsu or football. You want to train to improve your performance. Should you train for strength? Should you train for muscle size? How about power and mobility? Amazon is filled with books on the topic. You can access troves of information at the click of a button. Time is money. You want to spend it well.

Your first training programme will probably not be ideal. I started training consistently about two years ago. I started by running and doing some pushups. That is a far cry from the kind of training I do now. My training at the time probably did very little to advance me to my current goals. I don't even like to run! From that perspective, my first training programme was a waste of time.

But I got started. Getting started allowed me to sharpen my goals. I realised that I didn't care about my 5K time. I learned that I don't like running. I saw the light. I realised that I just wanted to get bigger and stronger. I was moving in the wrong direction. The consistency of my running practice allowed me to reassess my goals. By progressing towards the wrong goal I realised the goal was wrong to begin with.

Your first training programme may be your worst, but it won't be your last. Your goals will shift. You will discover new things about yourself. Training is a form of well-intentioned self-inflicted suffering. Suffering invites reflection. Reflection invites recalibration, and sometimes a different aim altogether. It can be better to pursue the incorrect goal than to pursue no goal at all. It's OK to realise later that you need a different goal.

It would be best to start with the right goals and the right training programme straight away. This would be more efficient. Some people manage this. They are called by the heavy weights, start training for strength, and never look back. Others come to realise that their initial goals and training programme were misguided. They pivot. How can you find out which one is you? Only by getting started.

Doing your own research is valuable. It allows you to learn more about training, nutrition, and recovery. However, research should never come at the expense of practical experience. Information is only as valuable as the problem that it solves. The practical problems you encounter determine the information you need. It is a waste of time to solve a problem you never encounter in the first place. Doing too much prior research may hence be a poor use of your time.

Time and Effort

Working out takes time. You're busy. You work. You have commitments to honor. You have people to take care of. You want to have fun. You cannot justify the time spent on training. An hour spent on a gym habit is 60 precious minutes you can't spend on something else. The opportunity cost of training is undeniable.

Training is tough. You sweat, you suffer, you shout. You wake up, and you have pain in places where you didn't even know you have places. Your muscles hurt doing normal things, like getting up from a chair. Maybe you didn't eat well. It's 5:40 AM. You're hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. Your would train more effectively in a better state of mind and body.

Training costs you. It requires time and energy. You're tired when you get home. Your productivity isn't the same after leg day. You miss social events and phone calls. Perhaps you wake up early to train before work. You sleep less and feel tired at work. Perhaps this is the only way to fit training into your schedule. These are some of the genuine downsides of training. Some of these issues have workarounds, others do not.

The sacrifices are yours to make. You alone can determine if it's worth it. If you want to be muscular, you have to train. If you want to be slim, then you have to eat within reason. If you decide that training is for you, then I hope to be able to help you on your journey. If it's not for you, then voila.

That said, there are ways to make it easier at the start. Your first training programme will be your worst, but hopefully not your last. You can start with a programme you enjoy. You can start with exercises that feel natural.

The gym can be quite intimidating. Overcoming this is one of the first steps. In the beginning, you may be one of the smallest or one the most overweight people at the gym. I was uncomfortable at first. In fact, I was too intimidated to even go to the free weights area at first. This was a year-and-a-half ago. Now I feel at home at the gym. I've even muscled up the courage to ask a competitive bodybuilder about his training. Voluntary exposure is a Hell of a drug.

Not all gyms are made equal. Some are better than others, based on your goals. But, to optimise for consistency, you must optimise for ease of execution. I suggest starting out at the gym closest to you. You should do a programme you can tolerate in a place you can get to. If that means running in the nearby park, then so be it.

Not Rewarding

Training may not feel rewarding. You look the same after a training session, but sweatier. After a whole week of training, there is no percetible difference. A month goes by, and you haven't even gotten a compliment. Some people are drawn to heavy lifting. They enjoy the heavy weight, the burn, and the pain. This might not be you.

You feel incompetent. People at the gym look at you like a weirdo. They judge your clothing. They think your technique sucks. Maybe you're a skinny guy. Maybe you're out of shape. The gym is full of monsters who have been lifting for years, and some of them undoubtedly use steroids. You're at the bottom of the pile. The humiliation gets to you. You don't like it.

Let's distinguish between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is when you train because of who you want to become or because you enjoy it. Extrinsic motivation is when you train because others reward you for it. People often encourage us to focus on intrinsic motivation. But honestly, extrinsic motivation is more fun. It's nice to receive compliments and attention. However, this takes time to achieve.

Before you can rely on extrinsic rewards, you have to get by with intrinsic motivation. The initial motivation might be pure excitment and novelty. There's something cool about lifting weights. But, novelty by its nature fades away. Training becomes a grind. In the depths of the grind, in the absence of extrinsic rewards, the internal drive is all you can rely on.

With time you get better at training. The weight on the bar increases. You notice changes in your appearance. Finally, after months and months of training, you start getting external validation. Extrinsic motivation requires a lot of work to achieve. Intrinsic motivation gets the work done.

But the effort doesn't stop when the compliments start. You need to keep training, session after session after session. You won't always feel like it. Some say that the sessions you don't want to do count the most. I disagree. Each session should be very similar in quality, load, and effort. Each session should therefore produce a similar stimulus for your body to adapt. Quality and effort might even go down when you feel demotivated. If anything, the sessions when you don't feel like training might actually count for less, not more.

The problem is, that if you stop training, then you stop yourself on the path towards your goals. Big muscles can shrink. The compliments can stop coming. You need to maintain the habit. Some amount of intrinsic motivation is therefore necessary all-year-round. Each session is a small step on a long journey. If you stop the steps, then you stop the journey.

You start training with the desire to become someone new. External validation rewards you. Intrinsic motivation keeps you going when the journey gets tough. The final evolution occurs when the pursuit of excellence becomes the motivation. The fact of doing a better rep, a heavier rep, just one more rep starts to drive you. The pursuit of excellence is not the same as the goal of excellence. It is neither intrinsic nor extrinsic motivation. It is spiritual motivation.

Not Genetically Gifted

Perhaps you don't think you're genetically gifted. Perhaps you were never any good at sports. Maybe you consider yourself a hard gainer. You trained before for several months. You thought your training was good and you ate a lot of food. But alas, nobody noticed the results.

To determine if you are genetically gifted or not, you have to put it to the test. You have to train, eat, and sleep well for several months. You then compare yourself to when you started, and see if you made decent gains. Getting close to your true genetic potential could take a decade or more. Some people literally double their bodyweight over years of training. This implies a low initial bodyweight and really good genetics for gaining muscle.

Speculating about poor genetics may be used as an excuse. You can take comfort in the idea that the game is rigged against you. You might even be right. The pursuit of muscle hypertrophy and strength may be futile for you in particular. You might even argue that muscle building is pointless existentially. But how do you know if you don't try? And when I say try, I mean really try.

Training requires you to accept discomfort and uncertainty. The sacrifices have to be made without the guarantee of results. The results you want may be far away. I am lucky in some sense to have achieved a body I like in only a year-and-a-half of resistance training. But I didn't know for sure if it would happen. I had to make sacrifices under uncertainty.

It is also easy to dismiss the results of others as a product of gifted genetics. Better yet, you can assume they use steroids. Alas, some of them do. However, one's genetic limit is not very useful to focus on. Rather we should focus on how far away from our genetic limits we are. For all you know, you may have the potential to become an absolute beast. But what if you never find out? Are you willing to accept that?

The genetically gifted have a greated existential burden placed on them. The idea of wasted potential is incredibly uncomortable. This is worse the greater one's potential is. The higher your potential, the greater a duty you owe your existence to make it manifest. If you are a true genetic freak, then anything less than eventual Gold at Mr Olympia would be disappointing.

Conclusion

Consistency is a behavioural problem. How can you pursue something consistently, when the pursuit is difficult and the results are uncertain? I struggle with this in some areas of my life. But with training, I manage to stay consistent. Why is that the case?

I started by running and doing pushups. The Russia-Ukraine war had just begun. Finland was not yet a part of NATO. I wanted to be ready to fight, if push came to shove. I then joined a gym and started training with kettlebells. After a couple months, I started getting compliments for my improved looks. I then began the Starting Strength Novice Linear Progression. My gains skyrocketed.

I'm still making gains, just a bit more slowly. I also manage my sleep and nutrition more intelligently. I do this while working full-time. I am more invested in the process now than ever. I was intrinsically motivated at first. Then the extrinsic validation kicked in. I've even caught a glimpse of what I would call spiritual motivation. However, my motivation at present is mostly based on identity.

I consider myself a recreational bodybuilder. I train, eat, and sleep the way I do because I want to look better, with and without clothes. I wake up at 5:40 AM to train before work. I do it because, well, it's what I do. It's part of my life. It's part of who I am. Becoming that way took time. The evidence for my identity were the reps, the sets, the workouts, and the results. I became a lifter. So I lift.

How do you get to that point? How do you motivate yourself in the absence of external validation? How do you persist when the alarm rings and you just want to sleep? Start simple, start easy, but start. Put every factor you can in your favour. And for the love of God, don't stop. In the end you can have what you want.

Recommended Reading

If you would like to learn more, then pick something from the reading list.

Books

The links below are affiliate links. They net me a small commission.

1. Starting Strength Basic Barbell Training, 3rd Edition: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Starting-Strength-Mark-Rippetoe-ebook/dp/B006XJR5ZA/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1697367982&sr=8-1&_encoding=UTF8&tag=aaroblog0b-21&linkCode=ur2&linkId=6a8deb4c20174d40fb24335460d9e5c2&camp=1634&creative=6738

2. Practical Programming for Strength Training, 3rd Edition: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Practical-Programming-Strength-Training-Rippetoe-ebook/dp/B00IU8YETW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1697368165&sr=8-1&_encoding=UTF8&tag=aaroblog0b-21&linkCode=ur2&linkId=4901a8738aff860b049f77d393af4c96&camp=1634&creative=6738

3. Scientific Principles of Hypertrophy Training: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scientific-Principles-Hypertrophy-Renaissance-Periodization-ebook/dp/B08WKNGSLW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1697368223&sr=8-2&_encoding=UTF8&tag=aaroblog0b-21&linkCode=ur2&linkId=02aad2f41fb8d9385ceb159119400a56&camp=1634&creative=6738