I saw this ‘add fitness influencer name here’ doing this cool exercise online.

Should I add this to my program, or this guy does this split routine can I do it? Is the question I am presented with..

I’m going to admit, in my head I want throw myself on the floor and scream. My more measured reaction is ‘Its great they are taking an interest in their training, will this exercise/split work for them’?

If you have only 3 days a week to train, then doing a split body part lifting routine is not going to give you the best return for your time. That really cool looking pistol squat might be possible sometime down the line but if you lack ankle mobility and leg strength, we may need to work on some basic stuff first.

Basic, mundane, boring is what gets results but as I have learned doesn’t get people looking at your social media page. If I put a post of me performing a dead bug variation it may get a few views, a post doing a challenging pull up and numbers are so much higher.

The boring Dead Bug exercise done day in day out helps me have the control in my core to perform the pull-ups. Sorry ‘Wow’ starts with ‘boring’.

So much of the fitness social media content shows the end ‘Wow’ results, but the fact is those people have put hours of the boring stuff to get there.

I’m not great about shouting about what I do, and that’s partly because a lot of the social media content looks so dam perfect compared to mine. My videos show me with bed hair, mismatched gym gear, holes in my socks and sometimes two sausage dogs play fighting (they get more views than me!), but I’d like to think it’s real.

It’s taken me many years of putting the hours in to be able to do some of the stuff I put online, and some of it still needs work. Those that say they have achieved amazing results in only a few months are either playing fast and loose with the truth or spent years training in a different sport and forgot to mention it.

It comes back down to keeping your goals close enough to be achievable but far enough to aspire to. Learn the basic’s do them well and often. Don’t compare your progress to others! Progress is never linear you will have good weeks and bad but keep going and you will improve.