I am about to shatter all your hopes and dreams.
And perhaps my own in the process.
I’m probably just being dramatic. Like a teenager lying atop of their bed, still in their school clothes, trying to keep their shoes off the covers, lamenting how this person could have possibly asked out that person. Or why they didn’t get first chair in the jazz band. Or why they got stuck on JV for the third year in row.
“Why?!? Why must life be so unfair?!?!?”
But I’ll resist the urge to continue down the path of turning this blog into a John Hughes movie and just get to the point.
Because what I’m about to reveal actually makes a lot of sense and, if you really think about it, shouldn’t shock you at all.
Yet, when I tell people this one little tidbit, I can hear the air leaving their bodies with dismay.
As you all probably know, Kyle and I take all the initial calls with potential clients. If someone is interested in joining or just even knowing more about the gym, they speak with one of us.
This is great because not only does it allow us to connect with a large number of people, it also allows for immediate and powerful market research.
We get to hear about what people have tried in the past, what they are looking to accomplish, what they feel is holding them back and what benefits and outcomes they are hoping to get out of training.
These are always great conversations and it’s wonderful to hear more and more people interested in getting stronger (16 years ago when I first started professionally in fitness, people mostly asked how to get abs) as well as how they believe that training can benefit their confidence, mental and physical health, mood and outlook on life.
When I open up the conversation, two questions are almost universally asked.
(SIDE NOTE: Strangest question I’ve ever gotten - “do you know of a gym that doesn’t play music, at all?”)
The first, of course, is how much does it cost.
Fair enough.
The second, and the one I want to talk about here is, “how long do I have to train?”
Whether they realize it or not, this is just a follow up to how much is it going to cost.
Cause “how much is it going to cost” is really “how much will it cost me per month”.
And the second is “how many months do I need to pay that?”
Because if I said the training was free, no one would really care how much it costs.
(SECOND SIDE NOTE: This isn’t entirely true. Market analysis shows that about 1% of people would stop training, regardless of cost.)
Before I give you the answer I feel like I must tell you that no one should take any kind of financial advice from me. It’s not like I am writing this blog overlooking the beautiful ocean from my villa on the beach in Oahu. Quite the contrary. I’m currently staring at a white, cinder block wall being pestered by seasonal fruit flies as I bang out these seminal words on my outdated laptop.
But the “how long do I need to train'' question is impossible to answer. Because you need to train forever.
It’s daunting, but it’s also true.
Because just like you will continue to make more money, the need to continue training - in some capacity - should be a lifelong endeavor.
But in an effort to put a wet blanket on the fire that is the anxiety you have around that truth, allow me to give you some more gratifying and less daunting answers.
If you are looking to just feel the effects of training and begin opening your eyes to what an effective training session looks and feels like, you need one session.
“Wha, what whaatttt???” you say as your eyes pop out of your head like a cartoon coyote.
But, it’s true. If you’ve just been going to the gym, hitting a random set on the pec deck between eight minute bouts of death scrolling Tik Tok, one session can teach you a lot about what training with focus, purpose and intensity is actually all about.
And if your goal is just to continue to learn and stay in touch with that feeling, one to two sessions a month in an organized training environment can accomplish that.
But obviously, you have to be the right person for this. One who really keeps their ears open and stays present and can bring the feelings and ideas of those sessions to their own training and doesn’t fall right back into the Tik Tok hell.
If you are wondering how long before you can start to see performance or body composition results, anywhere from four to sixteen weeks is an answer I’m confident in. And that range just depends on your starting point.
If you are brand new or have taken a long break from training you’ll actually see progress faster (the magical “newbie gains”) but you’ll have more learning to do and more soreness to overcome.
Real transformations take 6 to 12 months or, in more accurate terms, about 100 sessions. This is where you’ll feel confident in the gym, you’ll see marked increase in performance and technique and, if body composition is your goal, you’ll be able to experience very noticeable changes in that number of sessions as long as you are supporting your effort with appropriate lifestyle factors.
I want to pause here to emphasize the value of seeing things here in the number of sessions rather than just the number of weeks or months. Looking at things this way empowers you to be more in control of your results.
You want to turbo charge your efforts? Great. Get in the gym 4-5 times per week and in 20-25 weeks you’ll be at those 100 sessions.
You need to slow play based on your schedule or finances? No harm in taking things slower, getting in two sessions per week and creating a consistent and sustainable practice that gets you to the next level in about a year.
After 100 sessions you are going to understand a lot about who you are and how you want to move forward. Tired of lifting weights and pushing sleds and want to try something else? You can certainly make an informed decision at that point.
Want to deepen your level of mastery and ingrain this type of training deeper into your muscles, lungs and soul? Then shoot for the next 100 sessions. Or aim for 500, Or see what 1000 look like.
And, at the risk of ending this post on a downer, if you are training for health, longevity and function (which, I’d argue, should be at the top of most people’s lists) research has shown that those things decay fairly rapidly if you cease training. So if you want to be that bad ass grandma that all the kids talk about, you are going to need to maintain some level of training in perpetuity.
OK, I’m about to do something that I never do which is recap because we’ve gone through a lot of ideas here.
You can start understanding the effects of training in as little as one session. One to two organized training sessions per month can teach you a lot about training as long as you absorb it all and apply it to your training. One hundred sessions is a great bench mark for internalizing effective training. Beyond that, it’s up to you to take it where and as far as you’d like. If being able to tie your shoes, walk up stairs and chase men around your assisted living facility as you get older is important to you, make sure you maintain some training routine indefinitely.