Often I will have conversations with my athletes after a few weeks and it can seem that progress is slower than perhaps expected. Usually, the natural pull is to question if the plan is suitable for them... but I find that is the wrong first question.
BLUF: When results feel slow, there are two honest questions to ask before you blame the process
1. Have you consistently done enough of the right work?
2. Did you expect the result too quickly?
The two things people skip past
When progress does not match the picture in our head, we tend to look outwards first:
- The plan is wrong.
- My body is different than others'.
- Life got in the way.
- Work is too stressful right now
Sometimes there are glimmers of truth in there; But more often the honest answer sits somewhere between two things we would rather not examine: our execution and our expectations.
So, firstly I would say, do not decide the process is broken until you have audited both. Because if you quit at the wrong moment, you will never know whether it was actually working.
Audit one: have you done enough of the right work?
This is the uncomfortable one, so let's get it out of the way. Not "have you been busy", but have you consistently done the work that would actually drive the change you want?
Here's what to look at, honestly:
- Training completed as planned. Not sessions started, sessions finished. Have the planned sessions actually happened, at the frequency, volume and intensity they were meant to? Three good weeks and a written-off fourth is not the same as four consistent weeks.
- Intent, not just attendance. Turning up and going through the motions is not the same as training with purpose. Effort still counts, even when the session is on the calendar.
- Nutrition getting the same attention as training. This is where a lot of people quietly come unstuck. You can train well and still stall if the food side is left to chance. Has it been planned, or improvised at 6pm when you are tired and hungry?
- Data recorded consistently. Body weight, key sessions, how you felt. Not to obsess over, but so you can see a trend rather than react to a single day. One weigh-in tells you almost nothing. Eight weeks of weigh-ins tells you a direction of travel.
- Behaviours actually examined. Have you looked at your daily habits and changed the ones getting in the way, or just hoped they would sort themselves out?
If you run through that list and find gaps, that is good news. It means the plan may well be fine. The constraint is execution, and execution is something you can fix. Better to be consistently good, than sporadically great.
And to be clear, this is not a telling-off. Everyone has gaps. The point is to see them clearly, because you cannot fix a problem you will not name.
Audit two: did you expect it too soon?
Now the other side, and it is just as common.
You may have done meaningful, consistent work and still feel like you are failing, simply because you judged it against a time frame that was never realistic for the scale of change you want.
Here is the thing people forget. A radically different lifestyle is not built in a few weeks. If you want to be a noticeably different, fitter, healthier version of yourself, that is not a fortnight's project. That is months, and years of new behaviours becoming normal.
Sixteen weeks with a coach before thinking you would rather "go it alone", or a free plan you picked up at the gym, can absolutely begin the process. But a fixed window does not guarantee that every person reaches their breakthrough inside it. Some people take longer. That is not failure, that is biology and life circumstances doing their thing.
And this is where it gets sad, because this is where most people quit. They get disillusioned right before the point where it starts to click. They give up two weeks short of the breakthrough, decide it does not work for them, and go back to where they started.
To get something you have never had, you need to do something you have never done. And usually for longer than you first thought.
The trap of the deadline
A time frame is useful. It gives you a target and a bit of urgency. But a deadline you invented in a hopeful moment is not a law of nature.
If changing your health was genuinely important to you, ask yourself this: is it worth abandoning because it did not happen on the schedule you guessed at when you started?
Most of the time, no. If it matters, give it the runway it actually needs.
So how do you tell which one it is?
Run both audits side by side and be honest. Broadly, you land in one of three places:
- Execution is the problem. You have not done enough of the right work, consistently enough. The fix is not a new plan, it is doing the current one properly. Tighten up the sessions, plan the food, record the data.
- Expectation is the problem. You have genuinely put in the work, but you set a timeline that was never realistic. The fix is patience and a longer runway, not more effort. Keep going.
- Both need attention. This is the most common one, if we are honest. Sharpen the execution and extend the time frame.
So, what that means is the answer is almost never "the whole thing is broken, quit". It is usually "do this bit better" or "give it a bit longer", or both.
A simple way to run the audit
Try this. Look back over the last eight weeks, not the last eight days, because a single bad week distorts everything.
- What percentage of planned sessions did you actually complete?
- Did you plan and track your nutrition, or leave it to chance?
- Do you have enough data to see a trend, or are you reacting to single days?
- What is the honest, realistic time frame for the change you want, and how far into it are you?
That way, you can separate the noise from the signal. You stop guessing and start diagnosing.
The key takeaway
The message here is not "work harder" and it is not "just be patient". It is: diagnose the actual constraint before you change anything.
If execution is lacking, improve the process. If expectations were unrealistic, extend the time frame. In a lot of cases, both need a look.
Progress is rarely as fast as we hope and rarely as broken as we fear. Most people who feel stuck are closer than they think. They just needed to know which lever to pull.
If you are not sure which side is holding you back, don't sit on it, let me know. Sometimes a second, honest pair of eyes on your last eight weeks is all it takes.