Small Changes

Ben Pollack

Want to know the secret to success?  Hard work, optimal recovery, and consistency.  That’s it.

Well, mostly it.  No matter how hard you work or how well you recover, you’ll sometimes run into plateaus that you just can’t push through.  Usually, this is when people change things up and try something new.  But in my opinion, a much better strategy if you’re feeling stuck with your diet or training, instead of trying to find a new plan, is to think about how you can adjust your current plan to work better.

It doesn’t matter which one you’re talking about — With a (good) diet or training plan, you’re constantly making small changes.  Justin is constantly making weekly changes to my plan.  But they’re small ones.  This week, we added 10 grams of protein to each meal on my rest days, and 10 grams of carbs before and after training on my heaviest days. Next week, we’ll make another change of a similar scope.  Justin is the diet expert, so I’ll let him cover that in more detail if he chooses.

But you can do the same thing in your training.  Here’s how.

1. Identify one thing in your current program that isn’t working. Now, by one thing, I don’t mean something like “my squat sucks.”  If you’re not making progress on your squat, you could look at:
   1. The frequency you’re training
   2. The number of sets and reps you use
   3. How heavy you’re going

(Any one of those needs to be changed alone, because they all affect how the other works.  If you change more than one at once, you’re probably going to run into problems.)

2. Decide how to change that one thing.  If you’ve identified lack of squat frequency as your biggest problem, then you could either add a day of squatting (if you think you need more practice) or take one away (if you think you need more rest).
3. Give the change time to work!  You can’t just change one thing one day and another the next.  You must give your body time to adjust, or you’re undermining the entire process.  Justin can make weekly changes to my diet because he’s an expert coach — He’s worked with so many people in so many different situations that he can identify changes that need to be made very quickly.  If you’re not working with a coach, you’re better off giving any one change at least 2-3 weeks before assessing whether it’s valuable.
4.  If the change worked, then great — Keep at it!  If not, revert to what you were doing before, and try changing something else, and repeat that process until you find what works.

It’s actually all pretty simple… but that doesn’t make it easy.  If you need help, I highly recommend my Unf*ck Your Program course, which will walk you through the process step-by-step.