What would happen if you cut your training by 89%?

Hey friend,

A 2011 study from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, found this:

After 16 weeks of lifting 3 days a week, 70 adults between the ages of 20 and 75 cut their training down to 1/9 of what they had been doing. One day a week. One set per exercise.

They held onto their strength for another 32 weeks. That's where the study stopped, so we don't know how much longer it would have held. My guess is indefinitely.

27 sets per week for 16 weeks to build it.

3 sets per week for 32 weeks to keep it.

That's kinda insane.

The one thing they didn't change was how heavy they lifted.

It takes a fraction of the work to keep something that it took so much time and energy to build. That's true in the gym, and it's true nearly everywhere else.

The friendship doesn't need the weekend trip. It needs the text on a random Tuesday.

The language doesn't need the full immersion. It needs 10 minutes a day.

The business doesn't need the reinvention. It needs somebody consistently showing up to it.

Here's where it goes awry -

"If I can't go all in, I'd rather not do it at all."

I'm guilty of this, and I've coached plenty of others who have admitted to the same. It sounds like standards, but really it's a fear of failure.

That's how 5 days a week becomes 0. One week goes to shit, there's no smaller version to fall back on, and things just stop.

Almost nothing you care about needs the full version year-round. It needs you to not put it down.

So take whatever you've been all-or-nothing about and find its minimum effective dose. The 20-minute version. The single text. The one set.

Keep it heavy. Cut the rest.

You don't have to earn it again every week.

You just have to not let go of it.

Until next time,

Peter