Everyone I coach, at some point, says to me “Okay, so what if I did your program, and then I add in this other stuff on these other days? Because then I’ll make all the gains you promise, plus more—I’ll get results even quicker!”
The underlying assumption here is that more input (e.g. strength training) = more output (e.g. muscle mass).
And I think almost every human being at some point has adopted that rule into their understanding of the world.
But here’s the thing:
That is just not how human beings are designed.
Ignoring this core principle of human physiology and acting as if ‘more work = more results’ debilitates almost everyone, despite (and in fact because of) their best intentions.
It also throws many people off from trying a pursuit (be it learning a language, getting in shape, reading books, whatever) because they think that if they can’t dedicate stupid amounts of hours per week to it, it’s not worth trying.
But the human body (including our mind) doesn’t function with a simple in–out equation.
The only consistent factor necessary for all real success is time. Not time spent doing the thing, but just time. Passing. Allowing the body to rebuild, rewire, adapt. If you’re trying to change yourself (e.g. grow 10kg of muscle and get to 10% body fat), you only need the necessary stimulus to signal the body to change. And then you need to give it time (and rest!) to implement that change.
Consistently do this, and with enough time passing overall, you will get to where you want to be.
In fitness, this might look like doing the basic 5 movement patterns, training them as intensely as possible for a couple of reps per week (total ~40min work), and spending the rest of the time recovering.
So why is this so concept so tricky to apply?
Because it requires belief that this is real, and that it works, and that if you follow it for long enough you’ll get the result. If that belief isn’t strong enough, no high achiever is going to have the patience. Instead they will start to think they’re being lazy and could be getting more out of it. And so they’ll quickly slide back into doing more and never truly test the minimal approach for themselves. (I’ve been there—it took me a long, long to time to discover this.)
But you need to realise one thing.
There is a cap on how much change your body can make in a week.
And the necessary stimulus to elicit that change is a lot less than people think it is intuitively.
That’s what I want to prove to people with the fitness thing. The results are visible, so you can see this principle in action. It works.
So what happens when you (try to) do more than that necessary work? Well, your body’s too smart for that. Body, mind, it’s all a genius integrated system. And it knows what you’re planning. So if you go hell for leather and do as much as you can, it will dilute the quality of the work.
Ever heard of not feeling motivated to train?
Ever heard of procrastination?
These feelings (and your resulting action) are your body forcing you to reduce the work you’re doing. It’s not physically capable of outputting the level of work you’re aiming for (be it strength training or writing or study), and so it handicaps you from being able to perform at the highest level you are capable of.
The result is diluted, lower-intensity work. In other words, the same total work you would have done in less time, stretched over a longer period.
Naturally, this isn’t fun, because you’re now burning through your one most precious and limited resource for no reason: your time.
So a better strategy, then, is to plan from the outset to do an amount of work that will elicit the growth in your body that you’re after, to do it with all the intensity and fervour you can muster, and then step away from it.
This might mean limiting down your productive, creative work time to 4 hours a day (something I applied late in my honours year and started getting more done per day than I had in the previous months of 9-hour days). It might mean strength training only one set per week of the basic 5 movements, for a total of 40min work (a protocol which has allowed me to reach the highest levels of muscle mass and strength of my life, despite training the least I ever have).
This is just how the body works, and as soon as you accept it and test it, I can guarantee you will never look back. It’s the reason my strength students training one set per exercise per week are blowing it out of the water and making stupid progress with their physiques.
Do less. Do the minimum. Give it everything you’ve got, and let time pass. See what happens to you over the next 3 months.