Progress demands consistency, but consistency doesn’t survive on willpower alone. It needs the balance of joy and discipline. Reflecting on my post last week, I thought there was more to say about how I’ve grappled with this balance and where I’ve landed after mistakes and lessons over the years.

I don’t write much about weightlifting, despite doing it for over six years now. But there are some key parallels with the barbell that helped me understand this balance, and more importantly, allowed me to practice it. That practice carried over into other parts of my life.

If you don’t like it, you wont do it

Discipline matters, but joy is the real glue that holds consistency together. I’ve seen this play out countless times in the gym: if you dread every session, you’ll eventually find reasons not to show up. The same goes for work, study, or any long-term project. If you can’t find a way to enjoy the process — even in small ways — it becomes unsustainable.

For me, this meant experimenting until I found a training style I actually looked forward to, not just one I thought I should be doing. That shift made it possible to keep showing up, week after week, year after year.

You can only perform as well as you rest

Take your rest seriously: put yourself and your well-being before anything else. While challenge and pressure are necessary for growth, too much of either leads to burnout or injury. The physical effort in lifting is the stimulus for progress — not the progress itself! More than 80% of real progress happens during recovery — getting good quality sleep and maintaining good nutrition so that you have the fuel you need to recover and adapt.

I reached a point where I felt like I was plateauing. I took my rest seriously and I put in the full effort every week, but I could not make any progress. Counter-intuitively, the solution was to pull back and “deload” every 4 weeks. This didn’t mean stepping away entirely (though that is needed from time to time). But I was finally able to keep progressing once I regularly started to take a week to work at 60% effort and focus more on the foundations (such as mobility, flexibility and balance).

Bumps in the road do not matter in the long term

A bad week does not make a bad month. Setbacks are inevitable, but shame and perfectionism make them heavier than they need to be. What matters is momentum. As long as you keep moving, the missed days, the missteps, even the failures fade into the background.

This has helped me let go of the illusion of perfect progress. A week where nothing goes to plan doesn’t erase the months of steady work that came before it. In the long run, consistency beats perfection every time.

So take care of yourself and keep your eyes on the long game. Making better choices pays off