Why Your Training Isn't Progressing (You're Using Feelings, Not Data)

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Should I change my training or nutrition approach even if my current protocol has been working? You're following the same plan, but the truth is, man, when it comes to gym as well as anything in life, the big mistake that people make most of the time is using their feelings to drive their decisions rather than using data.

The urge to change usually shows up around week six or week eight, when the novelty is gone and the sessions start feeling the same, and that feeling gets interpreted as a signal that the program has stopped working.

It almost never is. Everything that you do when it comes to reaching your goals should be based upon a data-driven decision that's backed by something tangible that you're actually tracking.

So before you touch the plan, you need to know what the plan was supposed to produce, by when, and whether it's producing it. Most people can't answer that because the goal was never built to be answered. It was a vibe.

The structure that fixes this is smart goal setting, which means your goal has to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound.

Specific means there's no room for "I want to be successful" or "I want to get in better shape." Those are feelings wearing the costume of a plan. It should be something that you have committed to that you can actually measure and put a stake in the ground and say, this is what I'm going to accomplish.

And that leads into the second part, which is measurable, meaning it's a tangible thing that you can actually write on paper and measure something against. A strength number. A body weight. A waist measurement. Something that doesn't change based on how you slept last night.

It should be achievable, meaning this is within the scope of what's possible within the timeline that you've actually set for yourself. The reason this matters more than people think is that an unachievable target feeds the exact problem we're solving: you fail to hit it, you feel bad, and then you change your training based on that feeling.

So it needs to be relevant, which means it needs to align with your larger term goals. This is the one people skip, and it's the one that quietly wastes years.

So like I say, as an example, using health again, if I say that my goal is overall to be a healthy, high-performing middle-aged man who has longevity as his main thing that he's focused on, extending his life, then how is the short-term goal that we're actually measuring with this going to be relevant to that? If you're looking at longevity as your big overarching goal, then we're going to use things like VO2 max, overall strength to measure your progress, not necessarily achieving an 8% body fat.

We have to make sure that there's a direct, relatable alignment between the current goal that we're measuring with this framework and the overarching goal that you have.

Obviously, we know that body fat is going to influence your VO2 max, right? These things are connected, but you can kind of see where if you continue to take the body fat route so far into single digits, now it's actually working against you when it comes to having a long-term goal of longevity. Strength goes down, recovery goes down, hormones go down, and you're chasing a number that's pulling you away from the thing you said you wanted.

And the last part of the smart framework is it needs to be time bound, meaning I actually have to give myself a deadline. Without a date, there's no way to tell the difference between a plan that failed and a plan you haven't finished yet.

When it comes to having a time-bound goal, obviously that needs to fit within the A of the framework, which is it needs to be achievable. To simplify this, I can't have this unrealistic expectation of losing 100 pounds in 12 weeks.