Today’s a pretty big day. Later today I go to pick up a new car, which is pretty sweet in itself, but it’s more sweet in the fact that I have finances in order to cover the next 6 months of payments without having to worry about whether we’re going to have to choose between eating or gas. I’ve been there, it’s not a fun place to be.

This will be only the 3rd vehicle I’ve ever owned and I turn 35 later this year. The first was a 1981 Ford Escort where I had to beg the guy to let me take it versus him hauling it off to the wreckers. His exact words were “I guess this saves me the $50 tow fee.” From there I put $400 into it to get it running with the help of my dad in the garage, and drove it for 3 years before selling it for $300. There was also the $2000 stereo system I put in it, but I was a young dumb kid like you likely were too. I won’t even talk about the hub caps.

When I moved to Edmonton, I took the bus and my own 2-wheel drive set of legs everywhere because I was broke and could barely afford ramen noodles, let alone insurance and gas. After getting a job as an adult, I still walked and bused everywhere for the next 2 years while I got a little more financially stable. The car I finally wound up buying is the one my wife and I have shared for the past 10 years. It’s paid for, and aside from the odd maintenance cost isn’t requiring much from us.

Now we’re at a stage where we can have 2 vehicles to make life a little easier, and also to have options. Previously in the winters if Lindsay wanted to use the car to run errands, she’d have to drop me off at work and pick me up at the end of the day, which is a massive pain for someone who doesn’t want to wake up at 5am ever. Also fighting rush hour traffic to come into downtown is it’s own special hell.

Then there was the schedule alignment to get her to school, me to work, run errands, airport trips, and anything else 2 busy people would have to work out, not including the odd time the car was in the shop over night for some maintenance and we were sans vehicle. Rental cars or taxis are inconvenient at best.

So now we’re able to put out some money for a new car, and went with leasing a small SUV, complete with some fancy options and cool stuff, but nothing that’s going to make us fight for payments on a regular basis.

So you’re probably wondering how me buying a new car has anything to do with fitness. Well, little Miss Impatient, let me tell you.

This has been an evolutionary process, buying a vehicle as needed and not before, not rushing into an impulse purchase or trying to get a new car before I was ready or before we absolutely needed or it were financially viable to make it happen. The way many people approach purchasing things, especially major life event purchases like cars or big screen tvs or furniture tend to be based more on emotion and the concept of instant gratification.

Fitness seems to follow a similar concept. A lot of people get hung up on whether they saw a weight change this week or even this past day, beat themselves up if they didn’t change (even though they may have lost 20 pounds in the past 6 months), or get into a funk if their strength isn’t improving as rapidly as their favourite Instagram fitness model.

While it’s cool to see the scale move in the direction you want or to slide an extra 5 or 10 pounds on the bar, it’s not something that’s sustainable all the time. If I wanted to I COULD go out and buy a new car every year.

For a little while.

Then I would be broke and wind up getting a lot of those cars repossessed. My credit would be in ruins, my mortgage rate would spike, and in the end I would be considerably worse off.

But it would be pretty sweet for the few years where I had a fleet of new cars, right?

Taking the long view of fitness means doing the work between PRs and scale measurements to help set yourself up for success when the time comes. Pushing for constant improvement in each and every way is awesome, but it’s typically very time-limited in it’s sustainability.

In many ways, people will set a goal, hit it, and then try for more right away feeling that they’re on a roll. I see this a lot when it comes to strength. A client will say “I felt really good after my max, so I decided to add 10 more pounds to it the following week, and it went up too!! So I tried to do the same thing the week after to keep up the momentum and wound up failing miserably. Now I suck at life and everyone hates me. I’m such a failure.” I’m paraphrasing and making stuff up for dramatic effect, but you get the gist of it.

Now in an ideal world, I would recommend that adding the 10 pounds and having success is awesome, and should likely stop there for at least a couple of weeks to get used to the new loading and challenge to your body, especially if you’re not looking to compete as a powerlifter anytime in the near future. If we could all see linear progress over time, we would all be world class lifters, but sadly that’s not the case.

Understanding that fitness is in many ways a decades-long process and not something that should be rushed into for the immediate benefits (although they do exist) can help people to buy into the concept that there are times to push hard and times to pull back. When purchasing big ticket items, it’s the same. You won’t always be buying new houses, new vehicles, or redecorating your favourite sitting room, but there’s going to be periods of activity and then periods of recovery or building for the next period.

Personal records are amazing when they happen, but it’s not a requisite to happen every day or even every month. Plateaus are quite common and fine to happen, as they allow you to prepare for the next phases or to set the stage for future progress, so to speak. Staying in a plateau without a goal of where to go next isn’t beneficial to anyone or for anything, so if you have a plateau, at least have an idea of where you want to go next or what you want to accomplish so that you can line things up for it.

There’s a great quote from Ramit Sethi: “Don’t try to be 40 before you’re 40.” This means learn how to build into the life you want versus rushing to be there now. If you’re running a business, don’t hire an expensive consultant when you’re barely scraping by, or hire 3 new staff members without any work to give them. When I was 20, I wasn’t financially ready for 2 vehicles and a mortgage. I am now. When I was 20, I wasn’t physically ready to deadlift 450 or squat 365. I am now. Patience is something that tends to have to be learned, but you’re much better off with it than without it.

Show up, do the work, put in time preparing, and focus on the long term goals while understanding that short term goals are small steps forward. Keep them small, but keep them progressive. Large jumps tend to hurt more than they help, especially when it comes to physiology and finance. If you’re looking to lose weight, consistently losing a half a pound a week is better in the long term than rushing to lose 5 this week and gain back 2 the following week.

Alright, enough talk. Time to go get my new car and then deadlift my face off in the basement. Enjoy the weekend!!