WHY TRY HARDER FAILS

Hard work is undoubtedly an important element of success in fitness and life. However, as true as it may be, it clearly isn't working for a lot of people.

Just like telling someone who's struggling with depression or mental disorders to "just cheer up"; telling someone who's not making progress in the gym to "train harder" doesn't help.

Much to the chagrin of newbies and well educated fitness professionals, most of our social media signalling, our community values, and our identity as productive members of society boils down to expressing, celebrating and worshipping hard work.

This is an issue that's close to my heart and suffice to say, I do not share the same sentiment. Thus I will be bringing you on a deep dive into why this happens, how this advice falls flat most of the time at best, and at worst, is actually harmful, and the rare cases where telling someone "just train harder bro" might actually be helpful.

Let's be clear, I'm not against hard work. To put it in perspective, I'm against it when the truth is dumbed down to success exclusively coming down to working harder. It's a poor man's band aid to cover up so much of what's wrong with the fitness industry and the avenues that can be improved.

Let's start off with why this happens. The main reason I believe is that most people simply don't know better, and that's normal. We can't all be experts, hence the existence of professionals.

Herein lies the problem, how do you know who's a real expert and who's a quack with all the conflicting opinions on social media, when you don't even know what you don't know?

Now throw into the mix vain egos and performance enhancing drugs i.e. steroids, you have a perfect recipe for lies and deceit. Would anyone admit to using drugs when doing so would get them entirely discredited, lose all sponsorships, and banned to the shadow realm of social media. The solution to that is obvious,

"Nobody works harder than me."

"It's all hard work bro."

"You're not training hard enough bro."

And social media is rife with them and influencers who may not have any qualifications in said field, other than looking good. Each one more desperate for clout and attention than a lost puppy. Sadly that has led to an influx of intellectually lazy short videos with sweeping generalizations and catchy sound bites. Its overwhelmingly similar to fortune telling, strumming one's heartstrings to the beat of general statements that can be applied wholesale to everything in the space.

Why is that not helpful?

"Work/try harder" is a mere observation. They are correctly observing the problem, but completely ineffective at helping people. A good example where observation is confounded with the catch-all solution 'try harder' is the obesity epidemic. "Eat less. Move more." You've probably heard your doctor saying this, your government, and your school teacher. Even grandma knows it. Yet, obesity is still growing steadily year after year.

You'd be rolling your eyes if you were learning a new language and someone tells you, "you need to practice more to get better." That's self evident. If I want to get better at something, I need to practice more. Obviously, duh. It's the easiest and laziest thing for people to say retrospectively, because it does nothing helpful.

It does literally nothing. Like how can we get you to acquire that skill quicker, to make it easier for you to put forth more time and effort, to help you understand there's a quicker pathway to success? It does none of that.

Instead of asking how can we get people to eat less and move more, I believe a more appropriate question to this problem is, "Why is it so difficult for someone to move more, eat less? And how can we change those factors to allow them to sustainably move more and eat less, for them to sustain weight loss in the long run?"

Well, we need to create an environment that's walkable. In fact, we know cities that have a more walkable environment and higher percentage of pedestrians, generally have lower rates of obesity. Now we're getting somewhere. What if we empower and educate society on how to cook, creating a healthy eating environment, and portion sizes?

Now they can put forth more effective efforts, rather than pulling against a 'push' door. So the solution is not "you're not training to failure, just train to failure." The question should be "Why are they training so short of failure? Are their training modalities in line with their goals? What is their reason for training?"

Now, that's what a great fitness coach/ personal trainer does. We ask you questions, what tools do you have or don't have, what do you know, what don't you know, and make the things you don't know known to you, what resources do you have or don't have, what strategies are you willing to try, rather than forcing things down your throat. Ultimately getting you from your starting point to your destination by overcoming roadblocks in your environment and changing your internal perspective.

FOR WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

Now let's talk about how working harder might be helpful, in what context and for whom it applies.

It's evident that if your aim is off, you can absolutely put forth a lot of effort and get nowhere close to your goal. If your goal is to run a marathon but you're training 1-rep-max squats, suffice to say, you'd not do well in the marathon. Just like you'd hardly earn more by working harder in a minimum wage job.

Hence, putting in more effort into a terrible training program won't help much. There is a very real limit to how much exercise volume your body can recover from, and it's not that high (10 - 15 sets per muscle group per week). Going beyond that only results in accrual of muscle damage and decline in muscle strength and size, and increased fatigue.

If you're already doing over 10 intense sets of exercise for your targeted muscle every week, and you're not getting much pump, muscle disruption, and result - your technique and exercise selection is definitely off.

Doing more of the same thing that isn't giving you result is a terrible idea. Yet, we have an inherent idea that hard work comes above all.

More is not better. Better is you getting more out of what you put in.

If you can get more out of less, that is better.

That is the job of a coach, to make sure you're aiming at the right target using the most effective techniques, and identifying barriers to you being able to put forth more effort.

BOTTOM LINE

1. Know how and where you're aiming at. Find help if you don't.

2. Understand your own competence and capabilities, use your little victories to build up your capacity for hard work.