Consistency: The Real Secret to Making Progress
Do you struggle to stay on track?
Maybe you miss a training session.
You have a chaotic week at work.
You eat differently from how you'd planned.
You go on holiday.
Then suddenly it feels as though you've fallen off.
Here's the important thing:
One missed workout isn't inconsistency.
One takeaway isn't inconsistency.
One bad night's sleep isn't inconsistency.
Your results aren't determined by individual moments.
They're determined by what you do repeatedly over time.
That's consistency.
Consistency Doesn't Mean Perfection
People often confuse the two.
If you planned to train three times this week and only managed twice, you haven't failed.
You trained twice.
If most of your meals support your goals and you went out for pizza on Saturday, your diet hasn't been ruined.
You ate pizza.
The danger isn't usually the individual deviation.
It's the thought:
“Well, I've messed it up now, so what's the point?”
One missed session becomes a missed week.
One meal becomes an abandoned diet.
A small deviation becomes permission to completely stop.
That's what we're trying to avoid.
Consistency isn't never going off course. It's becoming good at returning to it.
Progress Requires Repetition
Most fitness goals are frustratingly resistant to one-off heroic efforts.
You can't build significant strength in one workout.
You can't dramatically improve your cardiovascular fitness with one run.
You can't build substantial muscle from one meal containing plenty of protein.
You need to repeat useful behaviours for long enough that their effects accumulate.
Train. Recover. Repeat.
That's considerably less exciting than most fitness marketing.
It's also considerably more useful.
Life Will Get in the Way
For most of us, fitness isn't the only thing happening.
You have:
Work.
Family.
Children.
Friends.
Travel.
Illness.
Holidays.
Unexpected emails at 4:55pm.
Some weeks will be easy.
Others won't.
So a good plan can't depend upon your life remaining perfectly predictable.
Rather than expecting obstacles to disappear, we can become better at planning around the ones we know are likely to happen.
That's what I call:
Shaping Your Path
If you want to behave consistently, make the behaviours you want easier to perform.
Don't rely entirely on willpower.
Your environment matters.
Your schedule matters.
Convenience matters.
Preparation matters.
If you're trying to improve your diet but get home starving every evening with nothing useful available, that's a predictable problem.
So change the environment.
Have some quick meals available.
Keep convenient sources of protein around.
Buy fruit you'll actually eat.
Make the useful option easy to choose.
The same applies to training.
If getting to the gym becomes impossible whenever you work late, have an alternative.
Maybe that's:
A shorter gym session.
Training at a different time.
A 20-minute home workout.
Moving the session to tomorrow.
It might not be Plan A.
That's fine.
A good Plan B is considerably more useful than a perfect Plan A you can't do.
Use Motivation While You Have It
Motivation is great.
Use it.
When you're feeling enthusiastic, that's a brilliant time to:
Book your training sessions.
Prepare some food.
Write your programme.
Pack your gym bag.
Arrange your environment.
Remove obvious obstacles.
You're essentially using the motivated version of yourself to make life easier for the version who gets home tired on Wednesday evening and can't be bothered.
Because that person is coming.
Plan for them.
What Should You Do When You Fall Off Track?
First:
Don't panic.
You haven't destroyed anything.
Don't punish yourself with an enormous workout.
Don't starve yourself because you ate too much yesterday.
Don't wait until Monday.
Just ask:
“What's the next useful thing I can do?”
Then do that.
Your next meal can be normal.
Your next workout can be normal.
You don't need to repay some imaginary fitness debt.
Return to the routine as quickly and uneventfully as possible.
Take Ownership Without Blaming Yourself
This is an important distinction.
Let's say you regularly plan to train after work.
But your job frequently produces last-minute problems that keep you at your desk for another hour.
You could say:
“There's nothing I can do. Work keeps ruining my training.”
Maybe work genuinely is the reason.
That doesn't mean it's your fault.
But if this happens regularly, there's still a useful question:
“What part of this situation can I control?”
Perhaps you train before work.
Perhaps that isn't realistic.
Maybe we create a shorter session for late-working days.
Maybe we move that workout elsewhere in the week.
Maybe you keep some equipment at home.
Ownership isn't about blaming yourself for everything that happens.
It's about directing your attention towards the parts of the situation where you actually have some influence.
That's where solutions live.
Have a Minimum Version of Your Habits
I really like this approach for consistency.
Decide what the minimum useful version of something looks like.
Your normal workout might take an hour.
Your minimum workout might be 20 minutes.
Your normal walk might be 45 minutes.
Your minimum might be 10.
Your ideal dinner might be something you've cooked from scratch.
Your backup might be a convenient meal containing a decent amount of protein and some vegetables.
The minimum isn't necessarily what you're aiming to do forever.
It's what keeps the behaviour alive when circumstances aren't ideal.
Something doesn't have to be optimal to be useful.
Don't Try to “Make Up” for Everything
If you miss Monday's workout, you don't necessarily need to cram two workouts into Tuesday.
If you overeat at the weekend, you don't need to drastically restrict your food on Monday.
Simply return to what you were doing.
Consistency is built over weeks, months and years.
Zoom out.
A few imperfect days become considerably less important when surrounded by hundreds of reasonably good ones.
Make Consistency Measurable
If consistency is something you're struggling with, track the behaviour rather than just the outcome.
Instead of only tracking:
“Have I lost 5kg?”
you might track:
“Did I train twice this week?”
Instead of:
“Am I fitter yet?”
try:
“Did I complete my three planned walks?”
Outcomes can take time.
Behaviours happen today.
And behaviours are the part you have the greatest ability to influence.
Consistency Beats Intensity
A spectacular week followed by three weeks of doing nothing isn't particularly useful.
I'd rather somebody train twice every week for a year than train six days per week for three weeks and disappear.
The same principle applies to nutrition.
You don't need fourteen days of dietary perfection followed by a weekend where you decide none of it matters anymore.
You need an approach that's good enough to continue when:
You're busy.
You're tired.
You're away.
Your motivation disappears.
That's when you discover whether the plan actually works.
The BearWolf Approach
This connects several of the principles we've already discussed.
Planning gives you direction.
Focus helps you execute.
Consistency keeps you doing it.
And when something gets in the way:
Adapt.
Your training doesn't need to be perfect.
Your nutrition doesn't need to be perfect.
You don't need to be perfect.
You need to perform useful actions often enough, for long enough, for them to add up.
Or, as I keep saying:
The perfect thing you don't do will never be as good as the decent thing you do.
The Bottom Line
Consistency isn't about staying perfectly on the path.
Life doesn't work like that.
You'll stop.
You'll get distracted.
You'll take a wrong turn.
Sometimes circumstances will genuinely knock you sideways.
The skill is becoming good at getting moving again.
Make useful behaviours easy.
Plan for predictable obstacles.
Have a Plan B.
Take ownership of what you can control.
And when things don't go to plan, don't waste another week feeling guilty about it.
Do the next useful thing.
Then do another.
That's consistency.