Work Out Harder, Not Smarter
Takeaway Points:
Due to the nature of fitness, working hard (and harder) is often more important than having an optimal program.
Smart exercise programs are built so that they require more effort the longer you use them by prescribing heavier weights, doing more reps/sets, and doing more difficult exercises. A program that doesn’t do this will cause your gains to become stagnant if you keep using it.
There is no such thing as a perfect program, so worry less about if the exercises are the “right ones” and focus on making sure you are putting in the hard work to continuously challenge yourself.
When it comes to getting results in fitness, it’s true that sometimes working out smarter is overrated.
Yes, the reality is that there are smarter and less smart training methods. You can certainly put a lot of effort into a bad program and get no results.
But ultimately, in order to get results when you train for a long period of time, you HAVE to work out harder, over time, by definition.
A smart exercise program is what determines whether or not you can get results from following the program. A poorly designed program will jumble a lot of things together, waste time and effort, and produce minimal results.
A smart exercise program provides a few primary advantages over a poorly designed one:
The smart plan selects movements which are appropriate for your skill level and goals, and will actually provide the desired adaptations you want.
The smart plan selects an appropriate level of challenge in terms of the volume and intensity of the exercise, and then scales this over time.
Where appropriate, the plan includes methods for measuring progress, assessing problems, and addressing them with the right kind of adjustment.
A big part of what makes the challenge level appropriate (and how to scale it over time) is pretty simple - you need to be able to keep the workout hard. You need to continue working harder over time, and the program just provides you with the right pathway to follow to do that.
Many exercisers near the start of their training career might think that it’s about finding some magical program, but it’s usually not about the program - it’s about scaling it over time the right way, and that’s where people get stuck.
It’s not about having the perfect program - it’s about progressively pushing it harder over time to keep getting results. A smart program is ultimately about ENABLING you to continue pushing yourself by setting you up on the right path to continue doing so.
Now, just like no one program is perfect, no one coach is perfect either. Just because someone's an expert in some portion of the exercise field doesn't mean that they really have any clue how any other piece of it functions.
I will be wholly honest with the fact that while I'm good with bodybuilding and powerlifting after two decades of training within these areas, I'd be the first to admit that I know little about a lot of other training methods, like Olympic weightlifting, or CrossFit.
But that's not my job; my job is to bring to clients what I do know, and use every tool in my disposal to help them attain their fitness goals. It's the same with most of these trainers out there. After over a decade of professional experience, I’ve certainly mastered the required information!
But the second point I'd like to make is that most of the time, expertise in all areas doesn't matter.
So what if you don't know the right way to swing a kettlebell? So what if you still use exercise machines? Here's a little secret: in many ways, it's very hard to hurt yourself.
That's not to deny that some lifts are dangerous. Deadlifts without the right form will quickly wreck your back. Benche presses without the right form can wreck your shoulders, and of course if you're an idiot and lift heavy without a spotter, you can drop a bar on your neck. But for the most part people are aware of the big dangers. Where it doesn't matter is in a lot of the smaller stuff, where it's more of a gray area.
Most people worry way too much about inconsequential little things and spend a lot of time thinking they have to be “perfect” or follow a perfect program to get results. The reality is that even many poorly designed programs CAN be somewhat effective if you push it hard enough. They won’t be AS effective as a well-designed program, but you can still see results.
I should also note that this doesn’t mean to argue that every workout has to be a 10/10 effort. This would quickly burn you out, and isn’t recommended. What it means is that you should be consistently training at an 8-9/10, and that you need to regularly increase the challenge over time as you get better to keep yourself within that target. Objectively, the difficulty will increase, but it will FEEL relatively similar because you have improved.
The ultimate takeaways are these:
Working out harder is the primary goal of a smart program.
In some situations, an inferior program, pushed harder, will get you further than some fancy “optimal” program that you never push yourself on, or don’t consistently follow.
You shouldn’t worry about having the perfect program, and should worry more about putting in the effort if you want results.
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached thousands of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
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