Getting Results From Your Workouts: What Matters Most, And What Doesn’t

In exercise, like many other things, there are a few basics that really matter and a whole lot of things that matter very little or not at all. This is best described by the Pareto principle, also known as the 80-20 rule, which states that for most things about eighty percent of our results are due to only about twenty percent of what we do. To put it differently, a lot of what we do doesn’t have nearly as much of an effect on our results in the long run and spending a lot of time thinking about and discussing it while ignoring the basics is like “polishing brass on the Titanic.” To get the best results from your workouts it helps to know the difference so you can invest your time and effort more efficiently.

Ultimately, getting results from your training comes down to just a few things; you have to train hard, progressively, and consistently, with enough volume and frequency to stimulate continuous improvement in all major muscle groups but not so much or so often you overtrain, you have to eat and sleep well, and you have to use reasonably good form so you don’t wreck yourself in the long run. If you are doing all of this you’re on the right track and eventually you will develop as strong and conditioned and aesthetically impressive a physique as your genetics allow. If you’re not doing these anything else you are doing isn’t going to make much of a difference.

Intensity of effort matters. Regardless of anything else you do in your workouts, if you are not training hard enough you are not going to stimulate much of an adaptive response. If you don’t ask your body to do something that is extremely demanding at your current level of functional ability, you’re not giving it any reason to increase that level. Minimally, you should train hard enough that when you finish an exercise the targeted muscles should be so deeply fatigued that you would not have been capable of completing a few more reps. Ideally, you should train hard enough that you achieve momentary muscular failure on each exercise.80-20-rule

Training progressively matters. As you become stronger and better conditioned you must increase the demands of your workout to continue to provide a stimulus for further improvement. If you don’t keep them challenging they won’t be effective. Over time you should work to improve your form, increase the resistance you use and/or reps you are able to perform for each exercise, and increase the pace of your workouts (the work to rest ratio, how fast you move between exercises not during).

Training consistently matters. While you don’t need to work out very long or very frequently for good results, you do need to workout on a regular basis if you want to improve. Use it, or lose it. The body adapts to both use and disuse, and if you’re not challenging your body with hard workouts frequently enough it is not going to maintain the ability to meet the challenge.

Workout volume and frequency matters. If  you don’t perform at least one exercise which effectively targets each major muscle group including smaller muscle groups like your neck, forearms, and calves, you will not develop an overall balanced and proportional physique or strength. Instead you will have aesthetically and functionally weak links detracting from both your physical appearance and capability. If you don’t perform enough exercises in each workout to make challenging metabolic and cardiovascular demands your conditioning will not improve. If you don’t work out frequently enough you will not progress quickly. However, if you perform too much exercise, too frequently, you can overtrain which depending on the degree will also slow or even stop your progress.

Eating right for your goals and getting enough sleep matters. If you are not eating and/or sleeping well you will not be able to put as much effort into your workouts and your body will have a harder time recovering from and producing the adaptations stimulated by your workouts.

Training with proper form matters. If you perform exercises correctly and with good form you will be able to provide an effective stimulus more efficiently and with less wear and tear on your body and less risk of injury. You can train effectively with poor form – and there are many people who do – but the goal of exercise should not just be to stimulate improvements in your functional ability and health, it should also be to avoid undermining them in the long run by causing damage or injuries that compromise your mobility.

What doesn’t matter nearly as much? Almost all of the other things many people and trainers – mostly who don’t know what they’re talking about any way – get worked up over and waste time arguing about. While there may be specific instances where some things are more or less advantageous or practical than others, and there may be some situations where these are important, for the most part they make much less difference in your long term results than the above. Keep in mind I’m not saying these things don’t matter at all; they don’t matter anywhere near as much as many people seem to believe and unless you are pushing the extremes of your physical performance or physique development they don’t deserve as much attention as some people give them.

So, if you’re not getting the results you want from your workouts, before you start to worry about whether you should be doing a fewer or more reps or a different repetition method or exercise for a specific muscle group, or changing the time of day you work out, or using a different type or brand of equipment, or whether you should be using a particular supplement before or after your workouts, ask yourself if you’re doing everything above. If the answer is no you need to focus on getting and keeping these in order before worrying about anything else.

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  • Ronald Oct 20, 2015 @ 4:23

    Spot on! great post! Just great!

  • Greg Roseman Oct 20, 2015 @ 11:11

    That sums it up as best as it can be said. If more “experts” focused on just this, most of the confusion on diet and exercise would disappear. Well done.

    • Drew Baye Oct 26, 2015 @ 16:15

      Thanks Greg,

      Unfortunately this kind of thing usually seems to fall on deaf ears. People would rather argue relatively unimportant minutia than accept that most of their results come from just training hard, progressively, and consistently, with a reasonable volume and frequency, and eating and sleeping well.

  • Kevin Wilcox Oct 21, 2015 @ 18:07

    Hi Drew,
    I have recently come across your site and love it. I started using HIT and really like the basic principles behind it. I have been working out for twenty years and this fits perfect for my age and ability. Is there a certification for HIT? As a trainer what are your certifications?

    I totally agree with this post as well. Too many people try to over complicate things that are better when simple.

    • Drew Baye Oct 25, 2015 @ 19:56

      Hey Kevin,

      Unfortunately there are no longer any HIT-based exercise instructor certifications I would recommend. The best of these were the SuperSlow Exercise Guild’s Level I and II certifications and the Nautilus certification workshops Wayne Westcott PhD and Ellington Darden PhD used to do, but they are no longer available. I offer a two-day HIT instructor workshop in the Orlando area but have very limited availability for these with my current schedule.

  • Bradley Oct 23, 2015 @ 12:32

    Good post Drew!
    Nothing like rehashing the basics!
    I wonder whether I should take creatine or beta alanine before my next workout ?
    after all could make all the difference right!
    lol
    only kidding
    :p

    • Drew Baye Oct 25, 2015 @ 18:11

      Hey Brad,

      You’re right, and now that I think about it I ought to be applying the same rule to my writing and spend more time focusing on the basics that people most need to learn and be reminded of. I’ll have to post a reminder to myself on my to-write-about list 🙂

  • James Oct 24, 2015 @ 16:09

    Another great article Drew, thanks so much for keeping them coming.
    So many times I was victim of this “paralysis by analysis” syndrome I can’t even remember. I surely can’t remember when was, if it was at all, time when things seemed anything remote to being simple. How many sets, reps, exercises, how close to failure, how many times a week, what’s the best exercise for this muscle, what’s for that one…
    Finding HIT, something so intrinsically simple, was the best thing. It’s core principles throw almost all doubts right out the window.

    • Drew Baye Oct 25, 2015 @ 19:27

      Hey James,

      You’re welcome, and I’ll be covering each of these basics in more detail in future articles. Although there are other things that can have an effect on results from training, usually when a person isn’t getting the results they want it’s because they’re not doing one or more of the above.

  • Djordje Nov 25, 2015 @ 13:32

    I started a month ago your Kratos workout and I am loving it.

    As I work as massage therapist, before HIT, I needed to stretch constantly. Now, I fell great, 2x per week, great results in both strength, aesthetically…

    Most of all, a huge burden is off my back, knowing that with such a little time training, I have great results and no worries for lack of time for training, since it only takes up to an hour a week.

    Luck to find your site, keep up the good work.

    • Drew Baye Nov 28, 2015 @ 12:52

      Thanks Djordje,

      That’s the great thing about high intensity training, it produces results that are equal to or better than conventional exercise programs with much less time in the gym, and with much less wear and tear on the body.

  • Donnie Hunt Dec 11, 2015 @ 13:12

    If you listen to alot of HITish trainers current views on training. Alot of them are saying very similar things like you’ve organized here Drew. Not saying that eveyone needs to agree. But when you start asking yourself what should I NOT DO and what should I do. Using common sense along with some technical knowledge. I don’t know how you would come up with a list differing much from what you say here.

  • Stan Ziegler Aug 5, 2016 @ 14:38

    I am interest in how you perform HIT when you are limited by the amount you can lift. I had both shoulders replaced last year due to hereditary arthritis. That limits how much weight I can squat, dead lift and bench. Can I really use increased reps in a set to get results.

    • Drew Baye Oct 8, 2016 @ 17:22

      Hey Stan,

      The effectiveness of an exercise depends far more on the effort you put into it than how much weight you use, and there are many ways to increase the effort required other than adding weight. Increasing the time under load by slowing the reps down and/or increasing rep count is one way to do this, and most people will also find improvements in exercise form can make a huge difference in exercise difficulty. Most people’s form is so inefficient for the real goal of exercise (working the muscles intensely rather than just moving weight up and down) that when they are taught to perform exercises correctly they must cut the weight by half or more of what they would normally use.

  • Lifter Aug 5, 2016 @ 20:14

    Well said! Too many get hung up about every nuance surrounding bodybuilding. I had my fare share, especially during my 20’s when I was obsessed with growing bigger. But over time you come to realise how minute the small things are. Such as supplements…I have always told trainees, “if something works as well as steroids you surely won’t be able to simply purchase it over the counter”. Yet the masses fall for every new “steroid like” scam which comes out.

    Progress over time on the basics has always laid at the heart of growing bigger and stronger. And that isn’t foreseen to change any day soon. No matter what miracle supplement comes along and gets heavily promoted.