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Principles of ProgressPrinciples of Progress
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Work/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Deliberate progression/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Iterate/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Composability/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Be better, be specific/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Focus on what matters/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Measure what matters/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Force adaptation/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Microprogressions become progress/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Make it a game/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Be flexible/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Give it timeConnect
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Focus on the 20% of your energy that yields 80% of your progress.
Most of your progress will be made with a very small subset of the things you could possibly do to improve your training, nutrition, and recovery.
Ultimately your resources are limited. You only have so much time in a day to commit to training, nutrition, and recovery, so get the important stuff out of the way first.
Training
Hard, Effective Reps
80% of your progress in your training will be made by accumulating hard, effective reps.
What is a hard, effective rep?
A hard rep is one that occurs close to failure, or <3 RIR. Each set should end on a hard rep.
An effective rep is one that generates mechanical tension by taking a muscle through a full range of motion against a force.
A mental model for thinking about effectiveness of a rep is considering the function of a muscle.
Muscles lengthen, then shorten by contracting and producing force. Most muscles use the skeleton for leverage to perform this action.
A simple example: the lateral head of the deltoid. It's responsible for shoulder abduction, or raising the arm from the side of the body. Think about the muscle fibers of the lateral delt. They run from the top of the shoulder, down the arm, parallel with the arm. When those muscle fibers shorten, they use the shoulder joint as leverage and raise the arm.
An effective rep of the lateral raise takes the delt from the lengthened (arm hanging) to the shortened (raised) position under a load (the torque created by the weight in your hand).
The more hard, effective reps you can accumulate and recover from, the more progress you will make.
Progressive Overload
Progressive overload is the practice of increasing load over time.
If you follow the Deliberate Progression protocol, progressive overload is built in.
Your body will adapt to the mechanical tension your muscles experience due to hard, effective reps, which will increase your strength. Progressively overloading the muscles ensures that the muscles continue to experience the stimulus to force adaptation.
Nutrition
80% of your changes in body composition will occur due to energy balance.
If you're in a hypercaloric state, you'll gain weight. If you're in a hypocaloric state, you'll lose weight. If you're eating at maintenance, you won't gain or lose weight.
Bulking, cutting, or maintaining.
Your macronutrient split--the ratio of calories coming from carbs, fats, and proteins--matters too, but no macro split can overcome the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.
Calories are king, protein is queen.
If you're in a hypercaloric state, eating more than you're burning and gaining weight, you can improve the ratio of muscle gained to fat gained by eating sufficient protein.
If you're in a hypocaloric state, eating less than you're burning, you can improve the ratio of muscle lost to fat lost by eating sufficient protein.
Micronutrients, nutrient timing, 'diets' (keto, carnivore, low carb, intermittent fasting), and everything else people do to try to optimize their nutrition, all fall into the 20% that doesn't matter.
It's not that they don't matter at all, it's just that they don't matter nearly as much as simply eating the right amount of calories for your goal, and taking in sufficient protein.
Recovery
Recovery is important, but 80% of what matters in recovery is simply getting enough sleep.
People spend hours per week doing prehab, rehab, stabilization, foam rolling, stretching, massage, chiropractic, IV's, and whatever else they feel like they need to recover properly.
But unless you have a specific injury preventing you from training properly, all those additional recovery activities cumulatively have probably about 20% of an effect on your recovery.
If you have endless hours to spend on your fitness, sure, devote some time to that extra 20%.
But if you're like most people, and your time is limited, just make sure you're getting enough sleep.
If you do have a specific injury, the most important thing is that you get back to being able to train effectively as soon as possible. Devote as much time as needed to recovery if it's going to get you back to lifting.
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