The secret to long term training success

There is a lot to be said about training but one of the number one rules to becoming better each and every day is consistency.

Consistency will ultimately overpower a cheat day here or there in your diet, a late night out drinking with the boys (or girls), and a few missed training sessions. Consistency leads to greatness…

Consistency is also something that will keep the long term gains coming day in, day out, each and every week.

There are a ton of one off, get-fit-quick, training plans out there that promise to get you ready for _______, but very few that are designed to become part of who you are as an athlete and make you better day after day.

Any coach can beat a new athlete over the head with volume and see gains in the first few months of training but is that really the path to long term strength & fitness? Probably not.

Consistency is the key to success inside and outside of the gym so you need to make sure you have a plan and program that is going to help you improve over the long run.

How do you get fast, improve your endurance, and maintain your strength gains?

A consistent, well thought out, long term program that you can ACTUALLY do!

How do you stay injury free and protect yourself against injuries?

A consistent focus on movement skill and movement quality.

You just can’t be the type who gets distracted by what everyone else is doing, jump from program to program, and get the gains you want. This never works over the long haul…

If you’re constantly second guessing the program you’re on you may be in trouble. This typically leads to ill-informed modifications, a plateau in gains, and, ultimately, injuries and other problems down the road.

An example?

Check out this Barbell Shrugged Interview with Jim Wendler, the creator of 5/3/1 where he talks about all of the questions he gets from people looking to modify his original strength program. Attempting to make modifications to help them get stronger AND faster AND CrossFitter (New word) AND everything else…

This is a great example of how people have an incredibly hard time sticking to one program and putting in hard work day in and day out. However, I can attest, if you stick to 5/3/1 as it was written and designed you WILL see big gains from it. But, after a few weeks it will also be boring, and hard, and not as sexy anymore.

There is an amazing amount of free training advice, information, and training programs out there to be downloaded and followed but very, very few of them are designed with a long term plan in mind. Many are marketed to you as THE training program for [insert special forces title here], banking on the fact that everyone wants to be a badass…

However, once again, most of these programs are great for a few weeks and then the volume catches up to you and leaves you in a broken heap on the ground.

Now this might not be true if you are a hard charging 22 year old but if you plan on a lifetime of rough living and hard routine in the military or tactical community you’ll quickly learn that it’s not sustainable.

So ask yourself a few questions…

Is what you are doing now

1. getting you the results you want &
2. a sustainable way to hit those goals and blow past them in the future?

If not you may want to reevaluate what you’re doing.

Consistency is the secret to long term training success and an incredibly important training (and life) principle you need to pay attention to.