If you think progress in the gym or setting PRs is all about motivation, think again. In today's QuickWits, we are going to talk about what truly drives progress in the gym. Welcome to the Whits and Weights podcast. I'm your host, philip Pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. Feel and cover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in.

Today we're talking about a very important topic what actually gets you to make progress in the gym? And it's not motivation. Action creates small wins. Small wins push you to take action again, and this is essentially a form of motivation. But I want to get more subtle, more nuanced than this, because here's the thing Consistency, we know, beats motivation any day.

This is a form of discipline, it's a form of showing up and it doesn't rely on an external force or resource like motivation or willpower. So consistency beats motivation every single time. When I think about every time I hit a new PR in the gym deadlift, squat, whatever it wasn't unbreakable will. It also wasn't sheer enthusiasm, especially squats, let me tell you that got me there. It was showing up day in, day out, even when I didn't feel like it. Now you might say, well, not feeling like it and then showing up, isn't that willpower? Let me dive in one more level here. Strength training, which is, by definition, training to increase strength, or pushing past your current limit of strength on an ongoing basis, always going above and beyond your limit from last time, is inherently uncomfortable. That's the thing that doesn't change, no matter how experienced you are. That is a thing for life. So we need to accept that reality.

But there are two things that are absolutely true. Just getting started is often the hardest part. People make excuses. I hear it all the time. I get on calls all the time where it's well, my back is sore, well, I had this injury I'm still recovering from. Well, I'd rather lose weight first. And the excuses go on and on and on, and more often than not it's fear. And simply stepping into the gym and doing a warm-up set that's completely achievable is all it takes to start shifting your mindset to I don't know if I want to or I'm ready to. Yeah, let's do this. Cool, I'm here, let's make it happen. That's one.

The second thing that's 100% true is that having a plan gives you something to go after and to follow, even when you don't have motivation. Something that I'm going to go in today and do three sets of five deadlift because my training program says that's what I'm doing, takes so much decision fatigue out of it, it takes motivation out of it, it takes willpower out of it. Just having a plan and that's another thing that people often fail to do they just there's nothing and then they hopefully get to the gym and then when they get the gym to the gym, they're just doing random exercises. They may have a quasi-plan in their head like, oh, today's upper body day, and they may have even written down their list in the past that they can compare to, but they didn't have a plan going in. And if you leave your workouts or your training to chance and you're waiting for this muse, this motivation to strike, that's where you get stagnant. And the most common approach people take is just not having a plan, not having a routine. Their routine is a lack of a routine. Now imagine a different scenario. Imagine you make tangible steps toward your goals. Imagine being stronger. Imagine being more energized. Imagine that low back pain starting to get less and less. That kind of transformation relies on one thing and one thing alone, and that's a system and a routine.

You might call it discipline, but it's different than willpower, it's different than motivation. It's about deliberate practice, not random effort, where you decide here's what I'm training, here's what I'm training, I'm going to track my progress and I'm going to stick to a program that works for long enough to get the results. And that is consistency. It is a philosophy, it is a principle, it's not just a practice. Consistency is fundamental and if you can adopt this form of action, win natural motivation. Let's call it that we know as consistency and discipline. It's going to revolutionize everything you do in your life. So until next time, I want you to remember this. It is not about feeling like it, it's just about doing it again and again. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights. If you found value in today's episode and know someone else who's looking to level up their wits or weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them and make sure to hit the follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.