When it comes to making long-term progress with our exercise goals, we need to be able to achieve consistency - increasing strength or fitness requires regular training over a long period of time.
But paradoxically, there are times when our very desire to make long-term progress can repeatedly disrupt this consistency, thus ensuring we never make that long-term progress. In fact, we are achieving another kind of consistency - being consistently inconsistent…
If you have a long-term goal that involves making considerable improvements to your strength or fitness, it is sensible to approach your workouts with the view to doing better than last time. After all, trying to improve your pace, reps, distance or whatever it is, is necessary for your long-term goal. For some people, having that narrow focus of “no matter what, I get in there and try to do more than last time” is just the ticket - it is a rule that simplifies their priorities and directs their efforts. However for others there are vulnerabilities to having this as their sole focus.
The singular aim of performing better than last time is fine under the right conditions - if you have sufficient energy and recovery time, for instance. But that’s not always the case. For example sleep deprivation, long work hours and stress can easily impact your body’s ability to perform and also to recover. The reality is sometimes you’re just not going to perform better than last time as far as objective metrics are concerned. Equally, you may also find it more difficult to be inclined to put down 100% intensity each time (but that's a different topic!).
To explain via metaphor, consider earthquakes - nobody wants them but they happen, so in earthquake-prone cities you’ll find skyscrapers built with a foundation that allows them to flex to absorb the tremors. Equally, if you’re trying to hike across mountainous terrain you don’t just plan to hike as the crow flies - you plan out the best route possible given the terrain.
So if we become fixated on the idea that we have to make objective progress every single time, we can end up doing the exercise version of trying to hike as the crow flies or constructing something that is too rigid to withstand disturbances to our foundations. We end up struggling through workouts only to achieve worse results and fail to recover, or our routine gets disrupted, or we fall off the wagon altogether. We need a broader foundation to create the stability we need to be consistent.
One solution to this is to ensure that your workouts have aspects to them that are valuable and/or enjoyable to you independently of objective performance. To give a personal example, when pushing hard isn’t an option, I (Chloe) will ignore reps and focus instead on doing the exercises in such a way that they just feel inherently good to do. This may mean dropping the weight or reps and stopping plenty short of failure, so it’s less likely to boost my numbers. But it also hasn't done nothing. What it definitely does is give me an enjoyable experience, thereby making the workout easier to engage with and creating positive associations for next time. It reminds me of some aspects of weightlifting that I inherently enjoy, and it’s also a chance to focus on improving the way I do the exercises themselves.
With that being said then, is your approach flexible enough to facilitate consistency amidst the ups and downs of your life?
Chloe
Psychology of Movement
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