Get Obsessed With Consistency

“Get obsessed with consistency.” The words hit me like the fastball that got me one of many rounds of stitches, right at the eyebrow.

I was reading a pre-release copy of my friend JC Deen’s Stay Leaner Longer, and while that is a fantastic book that I also think you should check out, that’s not entirely the point of this email.

The quote was from a perhaps well-known in small circles Dubai trained named Amir Siddiqui. Amir is known among other coaches for his irreverent take on training, but also his formidable physique and the results he gets with his fancy-pants Emirati clients.

Amir looks like what Batman would look like if he grew a beard and packed on forty pounds of muscle. This is a guy who walks the walk and doesn’t have to convince you because you can see it.

This quote, this quote about consistency has been ringing in my ears for a couple months now since I read it. The problem, as I see it, is that people get obsessed with goals. Women imagine what it will look and feel like when they lose thirty pounds and they fit into their skinny jeans. Guys think about what they’re going to look like when they hit that 500 pound deadlift. Some literature on goals will even recommend this strategy and really encourage you to visualize down to the last detail what it will be like when you hit that goal.

And then reality sets in and you realize that the goal is months, if not years, away and you wonder if this one workout even really matters. If it makes any difference at all if you just go home and hit the couch tonight. You can always catch up tomorrow.

Except that it does matter, and you can’t catch up. Even if you could, realistically you won’t.

The consistency is what matters. Get obsessed with it. Be more obsessed with making it to your next training session than the end goal you have in mind. Be more obsessed with getting the most out of the training session that you’re in the midst of than how you’re going to feel when you achieve the goal.

When it comes to physical transformation, consistency trumps perfection every single time. In school I learned the hard way what it meant to my overall grade when I got a 0 on an assignment I didn’t do. My grade tanked. Even if I had turned in something half-assed and gotten 50%, I still would have had a better average final grade. At Juggernaut’s Become Unstoppable 3 some folks were talking to Mike Israetel and expressing some awe at just how god damn big he was. He said, “Look guys, there’s no secret. I never miss a training session, and I never miss meals.” I thought back to the previous day when everyone else was sitting around chatting and Mike was lifting. I don’t think he has missed a lift or a protein shake in a decade.

It’s not hopes and dreams that add up to big goals, it’s action.