Mastering Consistency: The Key to Crafting Your Perfect Workout Routine.
Introduction
Forget about chasing the perfect workout routine. It's time to shift your focus to the one thing that truly matters: consistency. Yes, you read that right. In a world obsessed with optimization and quick fixes, consistency is the unsung hero of fitness success.
People always ask questions about what is best, optimal or how to achieve a result the quickest. Although these can be helpful questions, for anyone simply looking to maintain their health, rather than do specific athletic training or body building, they’re often not helpful.
The best routine is the one you can maintain consistently.
In this post, I hope to explore the reasons why consistency is what will get you the results you want, why prioritization is not something you need to concern yourself with (yet,) and keep you focused on what it is you’re really trying to achieve.
By remaining consistent in what you do, it becomes more than just what you do. It becomes who you are.
The Power of Consistency
"It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It's what we do consistently." - Tony Robbins
Success is achieved through the accumulation of daily effort towards a goal. Rome was not built in a day, it was built through consistent work towards its completion. Without consistency, you won’t be able to accumulate enough victories to maintain your routine or habit.
A common mistake that many people make when trying to begin a fitness routine is that they try to go too hard out of the gate. If you do not currently have a fitness routine, pick a manageable goal and stay consistent. Add more on top once you have found you’re able to handle the changes. The point is to be consistent, do not burn yourself out with a pace you cannot maintain.
The more frequently we engage in an activity, the more it becomes a part of who we are. Our habits define us more than many other aspects of our lives. By consistently following a fitness routine, we shape ourselves into individuals who prioritize physical activity. For example, someone who exercises twice a week for 8 weeks establishes a stronger fitness habit than someone who exercises intensely for 3 weeks but then stops for the next 3 weeks.
By maintaining and adhering to a regular practice that we can handle, we can accumulate the small victories we need until we have become the kind of person who engages in that practice.
Common Pitfalls of Chasing Perfection
Building on the importance of consistency, let’s take a look at some common pitfalls while chasing perfection.
People often feel like they need to begin building a workout routine with the perfect number of sets/reps, optimize their rest periods or need to push themselves as hard as they can in order to get the perfect workout. If your job is not based around the gym, these are all things that likely do not need to concern you.
With that in mind, let us consider that we are all unique creatures with our own likes and dislikes. We have anatomy that may be different from others and certain exercises may be better suited to us than others.
If you search for the best workout split, the best exercises for a certain muscle group, or the best number of reps you will get as many different answers as there are people with opinions on these things, some of which are supported by scientific studies. These don’t answer other questions such as "are these people dealing with injuries or movement limitations?”, “how old are these people?”, “how tall are these people?”, or a number of other questions that may be relevant. What is perfect or optimal for others may not suit you.
If you attempt to build the perfect routine with the exercises that the top influencer has said are the best, but you hate the exercises, how long are you going to keep it up? If they say that you need to beat yourself up every time, and you don’t want to do it again, are you going to come back to the gym?
When I began working out, I had awful mobility in my lower body and found many exercises difficult or impossible to perform. I tried to perform barbell squats because a video told me it was the best one, but I found that my body did not want to sink towards the ground and I became incredibly frustrated with myself and my attempts. I became less and less motivated to attempt any of these “best” leg exercises and for a time stopped training my lower body altogether. I would have been much better off with some “less optimal” exercises that better fit my personal needs, than trying to fit myself into the mold of what was “optimal.”
Tips for Creating a Consistent Workout Routine
Now that we’ve explored why we should be consistent, let’s talk about how we can achieve consistency.
Consistency in your routine can be best achieved by building your workout that you can be consistent with. If you have to spend time pumping yourself up, pleading with yourself or otherwise dragging yourself to get into the gym, how long are you going to keep it up? Make it easy to stay consistent, aim to enjoy the experience.
Pick exercises that you like (and that are safe.) If you go into the gym with a routine packed with exercises that you are going to dread doing, you’ll be unmotivated to start, unfocused while you perform them and miserable when you finish.
Pick exercises and modifications that suit your personal anatomy. Many machines in the gym are optimized for people between 5’8 and 6’ tall and people outside of this range may find these machines do not work for them. Pick exercises that are comfortable and modify exercises to fit your limitations and anatomy.
Set realistic goals and schedule your workouts. If you can only guarantee 3 days a week, do not create a routine demanding 4 or 5 days a week. If you know you only have an hour, do not stuff more exercise sets than you can possibly fit in to that time. Schedule these workouts and stick to them.
Begin slowly, and increase gradually. Know your mental or physical limit and begin accordingly. Start with fewer days a week, or shorter sessions that you know that you can maintain and increase the load when you can manage it. Remember, the key is consistency, so you need to work within a manageable range.
Create a music playlist that gets you pumped up and motivated. Create a music playlist to increase your enjoyment of the experience, or to keep you motivated to keep going. A good playlist will also block out the noise of the people around you, or the music they may be playing on the speakers. Make sure it’s a playlist that does not have you wanting to skip songs, or you might find you spend too much time trying to optimize for the right song, right now.
Balancing Consistency with Optimization
While consistency remains paramount in achieving fitness goals, there's room for optimization to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. Gym-goers often waste time moving between exercises or getting distracted by their phones, hindering their progress.
To strike a balance, design your workout around your gym's layout while prioritizing exercises that target your key muscle groups. Minimize unnecessary movement between stations to maximize your workout time and intensity.
Additionally, track your progress diligently and adjust your routine when necessary to avoid plateaus. By focusing on both consistency and optimization, you can achieve sustainable fitness results in the long run.
Conclusion
Remember that someone who does something consistently is more likely to achieve their goal than someone who only does it when they feel like it. Consistency is the key to reaching your goals, not optimizing or finding the “perfect” routine. Remember that we are the result of our habits, and that our habits are the things we do consistently in our lives.
By focusing on consistency, rather than optimization we stack up small victories until we become the kind of person who does the things we want to do; optimization can come later. To summarize:
Make your workout experience enjoyable: pick exercises you like, that you are suited for and that you can consistently do, make a music playlist that makes you want to keep coming to the gym. It’s about the experience as much as it is the result.
Set realistic goals and stick to them. Schedule your workouts to keep you honest and consistent.
Begin slowly at a level you can maintain, and increase the load gradually. This is a lifestyle change, not a quick fix.
Stay consistent, but optimize where you can.
Track your progress, steadily improve and switch things up when necessary.
“Every journey begins with a single step.”
Take one step, then another, then another in the same direction. If you try to break off into a sprint, get tired and give up, you’ll fall back to where you began. If you try to optimize from the beginning, you’ll find you’re pulled into too many directions.
In conclusion, remember that consistency in your fitness journey isn't just about the actions you take; it's about becoming the person who consistently engages in those actions. It's not merely about working out regularly; it's about embodying the identity of someone who prioritizes their health and fitness.
When you reach a point where exercise is not just something you do, but a fundamental part of who you are, that's when you truly unlock the power of consistency in achieving your fitness goals." Ask yourself who you want to be, and work towards becoming that person.
