The number one most important factor in all of fitness. This one thing is about as close to the “key” as you can get. Can you guess what it is?
Exercise selection? Nope. Training frequency? Nope. Diet/nutrition? Nope. Sleep? Nope. Supplementation? Absolutely not.
The answer is: consistency. It’s not sexy, but it’s the truth. Consistency is BY FAR the most important aspect of getting fit, whether your focus is gaining strength, losing fat, or anything else.
Consistency will make up for shortcomings in just about every other area of your fitness. If you have a suboptimal training program but you’re consistent, you WILL make progress. If your sleep is off but you’re consistent, you WILL make progress. The same can be said for just about everything else that affects your fitness.
You need to show up to the gym 3 days per week and do the work. You need to hit your calorie and macronutrient targets most of the time. That’s it. If you do this, you will be FAR ahead of the vast majority of people.
Here’s when it gets fun: when you become consistent AND you dial in the other factors, that’s when you get results that cause you to start getting steroid accusations.
There is one more aspect of fitness that’s nearly as important as consistency, and I like to call that the “X Factor”. I’ll go into that in the next post.