Just Keep Showing Up
On what makes gym habits, houses, 401ks, and compounded interest work. Persistence.
New year, new me. It is the new year and everyone knows what that means, the gym will be busier than ever before! Fire codes will surely be broken and yes, you will feel like a sardine. I am a regular gym goer and I love the daily grind of working out but it is always a bit of an adjustment to accommodate the people who are just beginning their fitness journey. There’s quite a few people at the beginning but not all last. It is really because of one thing.
Walking into a gym for the first time is not an easy thing to do but it is one of the best things you can do.
Often, my friends will ask me,
“What should I do at the gym?”
“Do you have any programs you could show me?”
“What supplements should I take?”
“What should my splits be?”
I always tell them if I could offer one, and only one, piece of advice to someone trying to build a habit at the gym, it would be to just show up. Just walk through the front door on a consistent basis and respect the plan you set forth on how often you will go. Self-discipline is the highest form of self-love.
Too many people optimize for the best workout plan or the best splits for their body when the best thing they can do is to just walk through the front door of the gym every day or every other day, whatever it may be. No one at the gym is any better than you; they just might be better than you at showing up. It is next to impossible to show up to the gym and not workout but it's possible to have an elaborate workout plan and never walk through that front door.
99% of success is just showing up. In fact, most success is just not quitting and remaining persistent. People don’t stop going to the gym because they can’t keep up with their workout splits, it is just because they can’t consistently show up. Watch what happens to your health when you go to the gym every day for a year or five days every week for a year. There is no single protocol, program, supplement, or pill that is alone going to solve our mental and physical health. It is just a series of daily actions toward a persistent well-being.
Besides investing in their health, sometimes the best investment people ever make is buying a house. Sure, history may not always support buying a home provides great returns but most people buy a house and own it for decades. And what happens if you buy a home and let it sit? It allows compounding to work. People remain persistent in letting the value grow just by sitting on it and letting it work each day.
Look at how most people retire, just by showing up. The reason why we can retire is because every month we show up and load more money into our 401k. It is a dogged persistence to continue to build our 401k, no matter the market conditions, and most people let it sit, just like a home. It is what allows compound interest to work. To quote Albert Einstein,
“The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.”
He not only stated that it is the most powerful force in the universe, but the greatest mathematical discovery of all time. It’s the eighth wonder of the world. Those who understand it get paid by it and those who don’t pay for it. Compound interest works because it is consistent progress over a very long time frame. A little more each day, week, month, or year.
A 401k works because we never stop adding money to it, until we retire, and let it sit. It is not just money or health either, persistence is behind any success in this world. It is what makes any successful person, well, successful. Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, once tweeted,
“Piece of advice I heard in high school I’ve never forgotten: ‘Successful people aren’t smarter than you, they’re just way more persistent.’”
Patient, but persistent. Never rushing, always playing the long-term game. It is not talent, it is not genius, it is not athletic ability, it is just sticking with it. There is talent in refusing to stop and not stopping, ever. That is real talent. Talent is a myth, it is what disguises someone's unwavering persistence.
David Goggins may be the embodiment of persistence. He faced poverty, an abusive father, and struggled heavily academically as a child. In his early 20s, he was 300 pounds and worked as a pest exterminator. At 24, he decided to change his life and apply for Navy SEAL training, except he had to lose 100 pounds in three months before he could even qualify. He would lose the weight necessary. However, he is one of one and that should definitely not be replicated. Eventually, he got into SEAL training and he endured “Hell Week” three times before finally graduating. One “Hell Week” is hard enough but to fail twice and decide I want to do one of the most intense, grueling processes out there again, might be insane but it displays an incredible level of commitment and persistence towards his goal of becoming a Navy SEAL.
And yes, very few, if any of us, are like David Goggins but here’s the beauty of it, we don’t all have to be David Goggins to succeed. It doesn’t take an intense, grueling level of persistence to succeed. It is often just about staying committed and remaining constant each day however little that may be. This is what separates professional athletes from amateur athletes.
The biggest difference between the way professional athletes train in comparison to amateur athletes is the intensity of their training. The best athletes build by favoring longevity over intensity. Prioritizing longevity is the best way to succeed as it allows for less injury, mental burnout, and abandonment of the end goal. It allows you to be persistent and persistence is what allows you to succeed. It's a scientific fact.
Researchers looked at the training schedule of Olympic-level cross-country skiers and in a year, they on average trained 861 hours, just a light 2.5 hours a day. Digging deeper it is quite interesting how they broke out their training between high, medium, and low intensity, judged relative to their heart rate.
Light intensity work (conversational pace) was 88.7% of training hours
Medium intensity work (heavy breathing) was 6.4% of training hours
High intensity work (all-out max effort, short breath) was 4.8% of training hours
A similar study was done for elite runners. The key finding was that in well-trained athletes over five months, a distribution of heart rate based intensity that largely included low intensity work elicited significantly greater performance than a program in which more intense work was prioritized. The ideal training intensity distribution was found to be:
80% zone 1 performance (55%-65% max heart rate, easy training day)
12% zone 2 performance (65%-75% max heart rate, conservational pace)
8% zone 3 performance (80-85% max heart rate, conservation is reduced to a few words)
80% of training being “easy work” is what really allows you to succeed and get the best out of yourself. Why? It allows you show up each day and remain determined. Small progress in a day compounded over time is what gets you there.
The point here is not to encourage you on how you should train, rather it is to point out that longevity is favored over intensity. The best in the world want to be able to sustain their performance. It is not about what is the highest intensity I can do to bring out the most pain, it is what I can do for the longest period so I don’t burn out and keep myself in the game. The longer your time horizon, the fewer people you compete against.
There is value in just showing up. I am no super human and I try to just show up a little bit each day. By just showing up each day, you are already doing more than most other people. It is all about persistence. There are few sustainable sources of competitive advantage. One that I know of is waiting longer than your competition. Outlasting the masses. Patient, but persistent. Never rushing, always playing the long-term game.
Success in life, fitness, finances, etc. is never about how or where you begin. A detailed, elaborate workout plan will only get you so far because it requires action and consistency for anything to ever happen. As long as you keep moving and remain persistent, success will arrive far from where you start. Nothing beats a strong commitment to getting a few small things done each day.
Appreciate you reading.
-Scantron
Super insightful and enjoyable read!