Consistency not Intensity

At this point, I am probably going somewhere between 13–16 times a month to the gym, much more frequently than I used to in the past. It’s not like I suddenly feel like the Hulk but by the weights I lift each time, I know I am consistently progressing up a notch. By my own measure, its a great metric to see creeping up — not a crazy exponential curve, but just a steady, linear uptick. If I feel extra peppy a particular day, I always use the phrase “Its a marathon, not a sprint” to resist the urge to try to lift something that is much more than what I think I should be doing.

I was watching a video today, where someone said “Its about consistency, not intensity” which I agree with. Intensity might be a flash in the pan, and could just as easily lead to burnout, or in this case injuries. Showing up often at the gym and going through that routine, is far more important than me trying to lift 100 lbs when I could be doing 45 lbs consistently each day.

As the Stonecutters Credo goes — “When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”