Lots of people in our community are having babies or just had a baby.
It’s pretty exciting.
For the record, I love babies. Probably because we have a lot in common.
Babies are mainly focused on eating, sleeping and getting more efficient with their movements so they can rollover, crawl, walk and run. Pretty much same same for me.
In fact, if babies were 230 pounds and enjoyed performing these activities while rocking out to Steve Miller Band’s “Jet Airliner” we’d be identical. We even have the same hair style.
But contrary to what you’ve been led to believe so far, this blog isn’t about babies.
I promise you, no one is more disappointed about this fact than I am.
No. What I want to discuss here are reasonable expectations once you decide (finally!) to engage in meaningful training.
Think of this as an episode of “Myth Busters” minus the awesome scientific equipment and not-so-cool beret. Because when it comes to results from training, most people’s expectations are way out of whack.
Let me start with some of the more obvious ones.
When you start training - particularly with weights - you will likely be more sore than expected for the first one to two weeks. The less experience you have with training or the more novel the training is compared to what you’ve done in the past, the more sore you will be.
This is neither a victory or defeat. Soreness is not an indication that you’ve done anything right or wrong and the actual cause of soreness is still a bit of a mystery (some believe it occurs on the muscle fiber level, some argue that it’s a neurological adaptation. But I’m going to spare you too much of the nerdy, science shit in this post).
The takeaway here is not to panic if you are rather sore from training when you start. And, somewhat counterintuitively, your best bet is to continue training as the movement will help mitigate the soreness. Sometimes the only way out is through.
Next, you are going to feel like a fawn walking for the first time when you start performing compound barbell lifts such as squats, deadlifts and presses. You will shake. Your knees will buckle. You’ll instinctively search for your Mom in the hopes of getting some comfort and a good meal.
The key to this aspect of training is to prioritize competency in the movement and not rush to load yourself up. The nice thing about being new is that you don’t have a bunch of bad habits yet. This is your only chance to learn how to perform these exercises correctly from the beginning and not have to spend years unlearning bad patterns.
The more bad reps you do, the greater the number of bad reps you need to unlearn.
If your goal is to move well, get stronger, improve your body composition and not get hurt, you absolutely want to spend the time here getting these things right. Optimizing the technique will maximize your results.
Plus, your shoulders, hips and knees will thank you two years down the line when you are lifting decent weights without having to pop 8 Advil after training.
OK. Now for the biggie.
If I told you you could be a multi-millionaire with only 2-3 years of work, any rational (and not already rich) person would be like “Wow, that’s an amazing result. Sign me up. I’m naming my first child after you!”
Yet, most people will quit on training programs if they don’t have the body of their dreams in the first two months.
I don’t care what your trainer, influencer or the good people at Ozempic tell you, it doesn’t work that way.
If you are brand new to training and you are following a solid plan, the good news is that you will see results out of the gate. You will move better, be able to lift heavier weights and can expect to lose 1-2 pounds of body fat per week.
These are what are referred to commonly as “newbie gains”. Never in the rest of your lifting career will you see such expedited results. And the good news is that this is really exciting.
The bad news is that the people you likely admire for their incredible body composition, health markers, endless energy and athletic performance accomplish those things after years and years and years of training.
You can start the journey and get on the path quickly but real mastery takes time to develop.
I share this with you at the risk of hurting my own business. Because while I believe that we can get you where you want to go extremely effectively and efficiently as possible, that doesn’t quite have the marketing sizzle of “8 Weeks To The Body Of Your Dreams” or whatever offer the internet is making these days.
So, how long do things take?
Fair question that warrants the most common and equally non gratifying answer in all of fitness. It depends.
How often you train, your other lifestyle factors, how far you are from your goals, your biological age, your training age, your gender and genetics all play a role in the timeline.
But I want to give you somewhat of a concrete answer.
After one session you should have the confidence that what you are doing could actually promote a change.
After two weeks, you should start to feel a physical difference.
After 8 weeks you should be able to see a physical difference and experience an increase in performance numbers.
After 16 weeks, others should start to see a difference.
Which all leads me to my last and most important point. While all these variables impact your willingness to endure and increase your level of belief, they are truly not the point.
The point is to get to a place where training is simply who you are rather than something that you do for an arbitrary and fleeting result.
This should be the expectation. Because the goal is not to win at training. It is to be someone who trains.
Figure that out and you’ll be happy as a well-fed, sleeping baby.