What if a straight line is NOT the fastest way to the goal?

This one is a waaaaaaay different way of looking at things.

But it’s a really clear trend I’ve noticed with my most successful long-term clients.

I’ll tell you a secret: The human body never does straight-line progress.

At least not with fat loss. You might have a few months of the scale dropping, and then you hit the inevitable plateau.

When I worked in a physical therapy office, I found out that it’s the same with pain — results, then plateau, results then plateau. Same thing with skill building. I think that’s how the body works.

People get awfully frustrated with the plateau, which is too bad. Plateauing is the goal!

Most people’s weight goes up and down, and that sucks.

Your goal, really, is to go down and plateau. You want to create a new normal! So when we go down and then plateau, embrace the plateau. Love the pleateau! The plateau is the goal!

“How Do I Fix It?” is Often The Wrong Question

If you’ve gotten some decent results, and you hit a plateau, the answer usually isn’t to try and work harder or be more restrictive.

The smart play is to put that back burner. Let the new goal you hit become the new normal.  Meanwhile, find something else to work on.

GMB Fitness taught me an important lesson about bodyweight strength: It’s more effective to cycle goals than it is to keep banging away at one goal forever.

In other words, it’s more effective to spend 3-6 months on parallel bar training, and then 3-6 months on ring training, and then come back to parallel bar training, than it is to bang away on either one for a solid year.

<facepalm!> Of course!

My most successful long term clients have almost always followed this pattern:

1.) Focus on fat loss for 3-6 months
2.) Hit short-term fat loss goal
3.) Fat loss plateau

4.) Focus on strength for 3-6 months
5.) Hit short-term strength goal
6.) Strength plateau

1.) Focus on fat loss for 3-6 months
2.) Hit short-term fat loss goal
3.) Fat loss plateau

4.) Focus on strength for 3-6 months
5.) Hit short-term strength goal
6.) Strength plateau

And then repeat that cycle until you’ve hit all of your fat loss goals.  And then, you get to do strength all of the time!

It’s one of those funny things: When you come back after 3-6 months of getting stronger, it’s actually easier to get leaner again.

It’s having your training focus cycle like seasons.

You’ve had 3-6 months to have your food habits become your normal lifestyle. You aren’t stressed about weight loss, so you can chill a little bit, but also keep most of your habits going at some level just for your strength performance.

This re-contextualization of your food habits, from something you’re doing to drive an immediate result, to how you eat just because eating that way matches your values, is a really phenomenal transition.

And it’s easiest to make that transition when your main goal for that season of training isn’t fat loss.

You’ve Got So Many Fun Options

You can powerlift, Olympic lift, do gymnastics, work on bodyweight strength, run a faster 5k than you ever have before, ect.  You can do whatever is fun for you and is going to make you feel strong and capable.

If you chose to start getting stronger on the barbell lifts, JVB and Jen Sinkler have an amazingly cool program that’s sort of a “barbell strength starter program”

There are a couple really cool twists in the program that make it really awesome for total barbell beginners, or “early intermediates”.

Today is the last day it’s on sale, if that’s a program that sounds fun, click here to take a look: Unapologetically Powerful