Patience Patience Patience

I see far too often people getting into the gym and beginning to train towards their goals, whatever they may be, and having some form of expectation that they will make significant progress quickly. What we need to remember is that Rome wasn't built in a day. We need to readjust our expectations on how long progress in the gym actually takes and the patient required to do that. A big part of this is that people are not willing to do the boring base building work that is required in the gym rather they would prefer to jump straight into what they see seasoned athletes doing online. There is a huge aspect to gym training that should be boring, slowly progressing movements and phases of our training. For example someone who is entirely untrained coming into the gym should spend a decent period of time developing their own movement patterns that they haven't properly explored since they were a child. The basic human movement patterns squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, rotation and gait (walking/running) are greatly unexplored by people after the age of 18 and in some cases younger. These basic human movement patterns are the foundation of which all of our gym base training is built we can't expect to have not squatted or rotated in any meaningful way for over a decade and then come into the gym and load these movements up and execute them properly. Many sports scientists and coaches will recommend a mesocycle of about 4 weeks (more or less depending on how quickly people are adapting) to develop these key movement patterns again before trying to load them up and achieve a strength adaptation.

Going back to the original issue that people don’t want to come into the gym and progress slow because they have don’t feel like they don’t have the patience to build their base over a number of weeks, month or even years. This problem is especially obvious when looking at the younger athletes coming into the gym wanting to be the fastest player on the pitch or strongest in the scrum for their game on the weekend. There needs to be a a looooong term outlook on training towards a goal not just the immediate impact it will have (which is very little).

The peak of the pyramid can only be as high as the base is large. Build the base and steps of technique, hypertrophy, strength and power in relation to each other.

-AJW