Imagine this scenario: You wake up one morning feeling ready to make a change. Inspired to give it your all, you rush to the gym, work out as hard as you can, and leave feeling satisfied. But the next day, you can barely move – and then three months pass before you convince yourself to work out again. 

Does this scenario sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone. This is how so many people approach fitness. They fluctuate between overdoing it and doing nothing at all. As a result, well, they don’t see much improvement in their health or fitness. That’s because fitness is not really about going hard every time. Sure, it’s good to push yourself sometimes. But at the end of the day, your goal should be to work out consistently. Consistency wins – every time.

Breaking Bad Habits

If you’ve been caught in the cycle of overdoing it for years, this has probably become a habit. You may have a hard time going to the gym without over-exerting yourself. When you jump on the treadmill, you may feel like you’re cheating if you don’t turn it up to 10. When you lift weights, you may feel like a failure if your muscles don’t ache. This is a really hard habit to break, but it is one that’s worth breaking. You won’t be able to work out consistently until you do. And you won’t get the results you desire until you’re able to work out consistently.

Why Consistency Is Key

Whether you’re a boxer, a bodybuilder, or someone who works out for general fitness, one of the biggest predictors of your success is how much time you spend training. Someone who works out 10 hours a week, for example, will almost always see more improvement than someone who works out 5 hours a week. You’ll be better able to spend more hours training if you’re consistent.

To further illustrate this point, consider two athletes:

Athlete A pushes themselves super hard during a one-hour workout on Monday. They’re then so sore that they can’t work out again until Friday when they manage to squeeze in a half-hour session. Their total training time for the week? 1.5 hours.

Athlete B takes it a little easier during their one-day workout on Monday. They finish their workout sweaty and tired, but not exhausted. They stick to exercises that are reasonable for their strength and skill level. As such, they are able to complete additional one-hour workouts on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. Their total training time for the week? 5 hours.

Athlete B will almost always outperform Athlete A because they trained in a way that allowed them to be consistent.

How to Be More Consistent

By this point, we hope we’ve convinced you that consistency is key to success in the gym. So now, you’re probably wondering how you can become more consistent. It starts with breaking old habits. That’s something we really focus on at The Muscle Clinic. In fact, we spend the first 90 days helping you deconstruct your old habits that may not be good for your body, your mind, or your overall fitness. “Going too hard” is one of the most common habits we work on breaking. 

Once we’ve broken your old habits, we can start reconstructing a workout and nutrition plan that takes a balanced approach to health and fitness. We personalize every plan for every client, but consistency is always at the core of our plans. We create workouts that challenge you and lead to improvements over time, but ones that leave you wanting to come back to the gym. If your workouts are leaving you too fatigued, we make adjustments. Our goal is longevity. We want you to stick with this. We want you to enjoy sticking with this!

We also focus on consistency when developing nutrition plans for our members. Instead of recommending a really strict diet that leaves you feeling deprived and ready to binge, we create realistic plans that you can stay with over time. It’s the same concept we described in terms of working out. You’ll get better results following a really good diet all of the time than a perfect diet some of the time. (One could also argue that a diet you can’t consistently follow is not perfect, after all!)

Are you ready to break bad habits and start following a consistent fitness plan? If so, contact The Muscle Clinic. Our personal trainers will work alongside you to transform your body and your mindset.