There’s a saying popular in the small world outside the gym that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That if an approach doesn’t work, try another one. Inside the gym, what works is what gets you somewhere. How you get there is much less important than showing up. So what’s the relationship between process and results in lifting? At first blush, the sport feels like a chase. We work out to reach goals: getting strong, looking good. So much of what we focus on and measure — heavy poundage in a powerlifting competition, body fat percentage, the size of your quads — are numbers we’re striving to reach. But while chasing results might be what gets us to start lifting, the sport is all about the process. More specifically, it’s about repetition. For all of the variety of programs people take on to reach their various goals, we all generally follow the same rough path — progressive overload via selected exercises, done over time — to get there. It’s not like the real world: the repetitive process shouldn’t just be rejected if things aren’t working. Rather, it should be […]