This time three years ago, you made up your mind to get the body you want. You were going to get up early, go to the gym, and train like Mr. Olympia. You were going to meditate, read a hundred books, start a business, and probably try Ayahuasca. You and about half the country wanted a better body, made a resolution, and few came close to accomplishing this goal. But let’s just say you did achieve your goal. Did you maintain it?
The problem is even if you were one of the few people who reached their goal weight/body/shape, chances are you didn’t maintain those gains the following year. The next year was Covid, and we all know what special hell that was for each of us. So, I guess the question is:
How do we maintain our gains/progress under the most challenging conditions?
Covid happened in the second year of my doctorate program; I had just gotten married, I had my first son, and 13 months later, I welcomed my second son. I had no time, little energy, and it felt like groundhogs’ day. With all that going on, no one would blame me if I let myself slack off on training, eat whatever, and put on a few pounds. A little of that happened. I’m not perfect, but the slide stopped, and it can stop for you if you apply these four skills.
After applying these skills, I defended my doctoral research with distinction, started my business, and maintained the lean body I wanted. Not to mention spending all the time I could with my kids. My life is simpler now that I have given up the struggle with difficult feelings and leveraged these skills to maintain the body I want.
Using these skills to maintain the body you want assumes you have some experience weight training and dieting. If not, that’s ok. These are excellent skills to adopt early, and they support other skills you learn along your fitness journey. For now, if you can implement these principles, you can maintain your gains for life or kickstart the body you want.
Skill 1: Learn what maintenance is.
Dr. Mike Israetel over at Renaissance Periodization talks about training volume regularly. He’s awesome and RP is awesome, check them out and buy their stuff. He discusses concepts like maximal adaptive volume (MAV), where you perform the maximum volume for progress (muscle growth and strength). We are more interested in what he calls maintenance volume or MV. Here’s a passage from one of his articles and a link to their Hypertrophy Training Guide:
MV is actually very low, and you can typically keep almost all of your muscle with as little as 6 working sets per muscle group per week. Another piece of good news is that your training loads go up as you build muscle, so the relative effort you must put in to maintain muscle stays stable over the long term. Though we might expect the MVs of advanced lifters to be much higher than 6 working sets per week, they usually aren’t, and set for set, beginner and advanced alike need about the same volumes to keep muscle on.”
– Mike Israetel
So, whether you’re a beginner or advanced lifter, training volume does not need to be that high- to maintain. We may feel the need to spend hours in the gym training, but it is not necessary to hold on to our hard work. Figure out you’re the total number of sets you do for a given body part and cut that in half, probably. Three working sets, two times per week, per body part, will probably get it done if you’re just starting out.
For me, I previously worked my way up to 16-18 working sets of chest, back, and legs (a little higher for legs) over multiple training sessions within a single microcycle (1 week). That training volume was pretty close to my MAV. Knowing my MAV was helpful because I could easily reduce my training volume to MV levels (8-9 working sets and sometimes 6 sets) and train from home. So, with the information from the folks over at RP, I saved myself time and stress, and so can you.
Skill 2: Cut the fat: What can you live without..for now.
A supervisor once told me while discussing my work in a weight management clinic that if patients wanted a shot at maintaining an exercise habit, they had to be able to do it from home 365 days a year in any weather conditions. I don’t believe that advice holds true for everyone. Still, I relied too heavily on the gym to get my training volume, reflecting on my past training. I needed to modify my training so that I could workout from home.
“Ask yourself at every moment, is this necessary?”
Marcus Aurelius
Pull up bar, select-tech dumbbells, a few kettlebells, some bands, and a bench. That’s what I started with. I was able to program all the movement patterns I needed to maintain my gains at home. My idea of maintenance is a body composition I can live with and around 70-80% of my previous strength. To me, at this moment, what is necessary is maintaining the habit of showing up. The bells and whistles of the gym will sing their siren song but tie me to the mast because I am headed home.
Put together a minimal home gym (bands, pull-up bar, bench, and dumbbells), and this will be more than enough to maintain at times of transition (chaos) until you can get back to the gym. Hell, if you can still get to the gym, take a look at your training logs. See if it’s filled with accessory movements, unmonitored rest periods, and intensity techniques that you could do without.
Skill 3: Does it feel uncomfortable? Good. Develop the right mentality (learn to suffer)- Jocko
The Jocko “good” mentality is embracing what is laid before us, learning, and moving in a direction that supports our goals. It is not sulking, complaining, excuse generating, and reason-giving. Covid -good. Sleepless nights parenting -good. Feeling like an imposter -good. Good is acceptance and dedication to action. This mentality limits suffering because it implies -why suffer twice? If that doesn’t make sense, think of the Buddhist teaching of the second arrow. The first arrow is the immediate pain we feel when we get fired, break up, or get injured. The second arrow is the emotional reaction we have to the first arrow.
Embrace suffering by looking at the bad through an objective, action-oriented lens. Reduce suffering by not firing that second arrow. For example, I am writing this in the middle of a sleepless night rocking my sick five-month-old son to sleep. He won’t sleep unless I’m rocking him. I could dwell on the rest I’m not getting or focus on my core value of being a good father, husband, and lifelong learner.
How does this apply to training? Children, school, work, family, and other aspects of life will sabotage your planned times to diet, train, meditate, read, and create. Good. Now that we know those things will interfere, we can avoid the secondary frustration from accompanying these inevitable happenings.
Another benefit of a “good” mentality is it helps us avoid the F**k-it button. You know what I’m talking about. You have success with a diet and training, things are going smooth, and then your girlfriend asks you to go to dinner.
You order something simple like a small steak and veggies. She orders dessert and asks if you’re having any. You say no at first, but she orders the thickest slice of New York Cheesecake you’ve ever seen. After that, you give yourself permission to order dessert- WHICH IS PERFECTLY REASONABLE. It’s that second arrow that gets you. That arrow that says, “well, you already fell off the wagon, might as well jump off a cliff.” A slice of cheesecake turns into a whole cheesecake, which leads to a semi-comatose state.
When faced with a challenge like being offered dessert while dieting, tell yourself good. Then move in a direction that serves your goals and values. Sometimes that’s having a piece of cheesecake, and sometimes it’s passing. The point is not to fret over your situation but to move in the right direction.
Skill 4: Ritualize the habit/behavior- Casper Tur Kuile
A lot of people reading this will have great habits. Unfortunately, habits are broken when life gets hard. We might lose social support, motivation, or any number of random events. So, what’s the fastest way to get on track, and more than that, how do we continuously stack up days of consistent training for the rest of our lives?
We must ritualize our habits.
Our lived experience is a testament to the fact that transcendence and the deepest meaning we experience often come in the most “secular” moments, in that they have nothing to do with formal religion.
Casper Ter Kuile- the Power of ritual
The Power of Ritual by Casper Tur Kuile outlines applications and aspects of rituals to aid us in assimilating them into our lives.
Why rituals? The quote above points to numinous experiences outside of religion. This implies that we should (there are very few shoulds in life) leverage ancient systems of transcendence to connect the deepest parts of ourselves with habits that are generally considered mundane.
How do we do this?
To begin with, Kathleen Mctigue is quoted in The Power of Ritual as saying that there are three critical things to any ritual.
- Intention
- Attention
- Repetition
Intention
Ask yourself, what are my intentions for a single training session, and why am I training at all? People often mistake goals like getting shredded for a bodybuilding competition or looking good at the beach as endgame. Those things are enough to motivate for a while, but eventually, the show is over, and it’s winter again. What is going to keep you training for a lifetime?
For me, the intentions I remind myself of every time I train are 1) I do this so that I can be physically active and comfortable with my kids. 2) I want to look good for my wife, not just for a season or show, but always. 3) I love training and challenging myself physically and mentally. Those are just three of the values that keep me focused on the bigger picture and what my intent is for my training. I love prepping for bodybuilding, but it’s been a decade since I’ve competed, so those values keep me training.
When you are tired or need to train at odd hours and don’t feel like it, ask yourself what are three values that keep you training and make sure they don’t have an expiration date.
Attention
Attention during my training is something I have struggled with because YouTube offers so many high-quality distractions. I tell myself that the music motivates me, but it sometimes eats away more time than it should. So, if you’re feeling bored during your workouts, take ten deep breaths. Focus on your breathing and then refocus on your training. See how much attention you can devote to just the training and the breaths between sets. If you do this, you will save time, improve the connection with your body, and practice something we could all use a bit more of, being present.
From a practical standpoint having your intention set and your attention placed solely on the training session allows you to save time and moderate your intensity better. On a deeper level, it helps you cultivate an awareness that can carry over into your relationships and other responsibilities. We live in an attention economy. Focusing our attention is much more challenging when we never have to be bored (phones, tablets, electronics).
Repetition
Lastly, repetition is essential when trying to develop sustainable rituals. Make your training sacred by 1) scheduling it for the same time each week. If it’s not on your calendar, then it’s probably not that important. 2) create a training environment that is the same each time you step into it. Wear the same shoes and gym clothes (washed, of course). Warm up the exact same way for the specific type of training you perform. 3) Show up even when you don’t feel like it, when you feel ill, and when you don’t have enough time. This last part is crucial because we want to cultivate showing up.
Not all workouts will go as planned. For me, I sometimes cut workouts short to rock my kids to sleep. Further, this isn’t medical advice, and I’m not telling you to train sick. Modify the intensity, maybe just do some light stretching or walking. The point of showing up when you’re a bit rundown isn’t to break personal records; it’s to ingrain the behavior. If you are genuinely sick, you’ll know, and the workout gets rescheduled or pushed. Everyone has off days, and you can’t expect perfection.
Reflect on this. The Jewish Sabbath is sacred for several reasons, and it occurs even when they’re not feeling well. It happens at the same time, with the same intentions, and it cultivates their attention because of the lack of technology. Create a sabbath for your workouts, and you will surely ritualize your training.
So What?
None of these concepts matter if you don’t realize that the problem with any goal you’ve ever had was the endpoint. Not cutting, bulking, or prepping for a competition. It’s what happens in the transition periods where we’ve encountered setbacks.
Transitions are sometimes unexpected, so having these skills and others are important to maintaining the behaviors that keep us optimized. If you can accept maintenance volume, cut out the equipment you don’t need (for now), develop a “good” mentality, and ritualize your training, you will be able to sustain the body you want for good.
Now What?
If you found this information valuable, please feel free to share it, leave a comment, or shoot me an email. More articles are on the way, along with free training templates and some YouTube videos. Feel free to follow me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Further, I will be adding three more male clients for my contest prep (bodybuilding) and body transformation coaching services. Email me, and I can send you an application with pricing and further details!
Get Grinding
If you’re struggling to maintain your exercise, dieting, or any other behavior because of life, I truly understand. These skills have helped me maintain my training while caring for two babies under 18 months old. I also successfully defended my doctoral research, maintained a 4.0 GPA, continued my training as a therapist and strength coach, and made time for my wife. I challenge you to apply these principles to training for ONE MONTH and see if they help you on your journey to attaining consistent performance in the face of adversity.
TLDR
- Learn what maintenance is for you. Quantify what you do now and reduce that volume considerably.
- Cut out excess exercise equipment or other excesses and quantify the minimum you need to maintain.
- A “good” mentality helps you steer clear of suffering and redirects you to take action.
- Rituals help create sacred ground for our training. They pull on often forgotten levers that lie within us from our shared evolutionary history.
STLDR
- Find Maintenance.
- Cut out the excess.
- “Good” mentality.
- Ritualize the training.
