The answer is a lot longer than you might hope for, but you won’t notice how long it takes.

The other day a newer member at The Movement Minneapolis approached me with a question. Now the following isn’t meant to pick on him, as he’s the latest in a long line of people who have asked me the same question, or some form of it. The question was basically:

“How long will it take me to get to x% body fat at y weight?”

In this case the numbers happened to be numbers that would reflect a sort of ideal or dream physique for a male of average height. Sometimes the numbers reflect a huge amount of fat loss. Notably, no one ever asks me how long it will take to lose 3 pounds of fat, or gain one pound of muscle. They’re always life-changing amounts. And before you think I am exaggerating I will tell you, make no mistake, losing 50+ pounds of fat or gaining 10+ pounds of muscle are life-altering events.

Physiologically the answer is really pretty simple and easy to calculate. Fat loss happens safely and sustainably at a rate of around 1 pound per week (men and women), give or take a quarter pound. Muscle gain occurs at about 1-2 pounds per year for an experienced natural lifter (in women it may be a fraction of that.) A new lifter could see a large increase quickly, but that rate doesn’t last.

If it were as simple as doing the math you could lose 50 pounds per year, or put on 10 pounds of muscle mass in 5, let’s call it 4 years.

Except that it’s not.

The number of people who can move linearly and optimally towards body comp changes is so small that it’s not even worth considering. These people are the outliers, the exceptions. If you are one of those people all you need to do is pick a plan and follow it. You could use Off The Floor if you wanted to get freaky strong, Get Stronger Faster to build a solid foundation of athletic strength, LGN365 from my buddy JC Deen if you want to build muscle while losing fat, or jump into Weight Loss Made Simple if your primarily goal is fat loss.

For the other 99% you need to acknowledge a reality. It’s going to take at least that long and probably longer. You may not have the skills or information you need to progress consistently. If you do have the skills, you may not always have the will to do what is needed.

Having a timeline of how long it is “supposed” to take imposes the belief in a false reality upon you. Now when you’re not one-quarter to your target in the allotted time you feel the impending failure and you become discouraged. The timeline itself becomes the thing that negates your progress.

This is depressing.  What can you actually do?

Move towards better one step, one decision, and one day at a time.

Keep showing up to train. Consistently.

Learn new skills that make pursuing your goals easier.

Good things happen to those who show up.

— David Dellanave (@ddn) June 24, 2014

These are the actions that, over time, give rise to mold-breaking and life-changing body composition changes. Show up to the gym three times per week, add a little protein to most of your meals, and skip a snack you don’t really need once in a while and in a year people will be asking you what you’ve been doing after they finally recognize you.

It will take a while, but when you get there you won’t even care how long it took.

“I don’t like that word, regression. I think we should call it a pregression.”

At that moment the roof of the gym parted, angels started playing trumpets, champagne rained from the heavens and a radiant light shone down upon us.

My friend and client, Jane, had solved a problem that had been plaguing me for years.

I hate the word regression. I hate it because it fundamentally contradicts one of my core beliefs that the only thing that matter is starting where you are and moving where you can. Regression implies that you should be “here” but you’re not so you need to do something that isn’t as good. The word literally means a return to a former state. If you’ve never been there then it’s not a regression at all.

However, something that you do before you can do something else is exactly what we’re talking about. A push-up with your hands elevated is a pregression to a push-up with your hands on the floor. You do that now so you can do a full push-up later. You do a full push-up now so that you can do a feet-elevated push-up later. Pregress the movement to make forward progress.

I’m not interested in making people feel small or belittled, but I know for a fact that using the word regression makes some people feel exactly that. If I can change the experience my clients are going to have for the better simply by changing one word that is a no-brainer decision for me.

Words matter. Words alter the way we view and perceive the world. Second only to action, changing your words is the quickest path to changing your thoughts and changing your mind.

What if we were to change the entire perspective of how our clients and we look at and describe pregressions and progressions of exercise by making this simple language change?

 

I knew as soon as the words left my mouth I regretted it. They weren’t my words, and I was just parroting back something I had heard way too often.

“Just keep failing. Just keep failing until you figure it out.”

Ugh. I wince just hearing myself repeat it in my head. It has been bothering me since that day. I was doing an interview with Tyler Bramlett and at the very end he hit me with one final question, “what’s your secret to success?” And that’s how I responded.

Here’s the thing: failure is absolutely an option. No matter what you do at some point you are going to fail. You may fail in a big or spectacular way, or you might fail in some tiny insignificant way. Either way you’re going to fail at some point.

Success however doesn’t come from failure. Success comes from… wait for it… wait for it… success. To be sure you will learn some things from failures along the way to success, and some people will fail more often than they succeed. That doesn’t change the fact that ultimately to succeed, you have to succeed! Success moves you closer and closer to your goal, whatever it may be.

I would argue that even the tiniest successful step forward has a greater net effect of moving you towards your goal than a failure, even if that failure moves you infinitesimally closer to your goal.

Failures teach you what not to do, success teaches you what to do.

You can’t guarantee success which is why it’s so important to just take action even if you ultimately fail. Doing is always, always, always more powerful than not doing. Don’t believe me? Tell someone you’re trying to teach a skill or a task to what not to do and watch them find new and creative ways to screw it up. Tell them what to do and while it may not be perfect on the first or third rep, it will get better and better each time.

Even further, success is not an end state, a mindset, or an outcome. No one is ever “successful.” Rather, success is how we describe a series of successful action steps. Want to be a success or be successful? Rack up the wins.

The takeaway is this: if you can figure out how to make your steps small enough and correct enough that you succeed you will win over, and over again. So if I could revise my statement, I’d say: “Just keep succeeding. Just keep succeeding until your successes get bigger and bigger.”