“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”– Aristotle
“Any time you see what looks like a breakthrough, it is always the end result of a long series of little things, done consistently over time.”― Jeff Olson
We hear and read quotes like these ALL THE TIME, I mean really, they’re everywhere, yet, the majority of people never take them to heart. They read it and think, “Oh yeah! That’s it! That makes so much sense!” but never actually put these principles into action in their own lives. Why?
The truth is, the small actions that will truly lead to your ultimate success are boring, they aren’t super exciting and they don’t seem particularly hard to do.
30 minutes of exercise, increasing your daily steps by 1000 at a time, running intervals of 30 seconds, taking one less bite of food per meal, tracking your calories. All of these may not seem like a lot and by doing it for a few days, it may not actually yield any noticeable changes. But, what if you kept going for months or years?
1 week out of the gym didn’t cause you to lose all of that college sports muscle and conditioning. One month didn’t either. Rather, maybe 6 months or longer of consistent inactivity (again, for whatever reasons you had) is what caused this.
One day of overeating didn’t put that extra 10, 15, 50 pounds on you. One week probably didn’t either. Rather, maybe 6 months or longer of consistently overeating (whether you were still active or not) is what caused the weight to accumulate.
This took time!
Okay... So then, if this works in negative ways, why are we SO shocked and even in disbelief at it working in a positive way? And how do we expect the undoing of such long term choices to happen overnight or really, any faster than it took us to reach this point of wanting improvement.
Pretty soon, you’ll have turned a difficult task only aimed at getting results right now into a daily habit and maybe you even begin to enjoy it! This is where real and lasting change begins to happen.
When jumping from program to program, you never allow time for any important adaptations to take place from mental to physical. For these reasons (among others) consistency is easily the most important component when working to accomplish any goal you may have, be it in or out of a gym or having to do or not to do with fitness. Without consistency, training programs can be unorganized, and in turn the body has a harder time adapting, and forget forming habits, this is nearly impossible!
Fundamentally, a lot of things happen in the body during exercise. When it is done consistently and over time, these reactions cause positive permanent change in the body which enable you to become stronger, grow, or run (literally and figuratively!) more efficiently. It’s difficult to know exactly when such changes will occur. But being consistent will increase your success in realizing these important adaptations sooner rather than later, or worse yet, never.
Different types of exercise are going to elicit different adaptations, however, there are just too many adaptations and that is not the purpose of this article! For fun, here just a few examples reported by the CDC:
Improved ability of muscles to use fat as energy
Stronger ligaments and tendons
Increased VO2 max and lactate threshold
Increased number of capillaries in muscles
Cardiac muscle hypertrophy
Increased force production
These long-term benefits are seen only after consistent training over a period of time. All of this leads to… you guessed it.. Looking better, feeling better, increased strength and movement quality which all equates to improved health and ultimately better quality of life…. which is likely what many goals are centered around!
All because you just kept getting up, showing up, remained consistent, even on the bad or boring days, you still showed up, even on the days it seemed like nothing was changing, you still showed up…
If you ever want to get anywhere, JUST STOP STOPPING!!
Read Lauren's story here.
References
“Consistency Over Intensity: The Key To Lasting Gains.” AuthenticGrowth.com: Finding Freedom Through Self Discovery, www.authenticgrowth.com/consistency-over-intensity/.
Hardy, Darren. The Compound Effect: Multiplying Your Success, One Simple Step at a Time. Da Capo Press, 2013.
Olson, Jeff, and John David Mann. The Slight Edge. Success, 2013.
Peters, Hannah. “In Training, Consistency Is the Key to Your Fitness Goals.” In Training, Consistency Is the Key to Your Fitness Goals, 2019, www.nifs.org/blog/in-training-consistency-is-the-key-to-your-fitness-goals.
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