Did you know there are complete non-responders to weight training? They exist! It's true, man. Some people just don't respond to the training stimulus. Their body decides there's nothing to bother adapting to and so no appreciable adaptation ever takes place. And I'll tell ya, if you're hoping to make solid progress in the gym being one of these people is literally the WORST mistake you can make, man. If you decided to be a training non-responder you're not going to build any muscle, you're not going to build any strength, and really you're just going to be a pencil neck for the rest of your life.

The true major culprit that prevents people from getting where they want to go, sabotaging their fitness journey before it ever really even starts, is CONSISTENCY. Or unfortunately, a lack of it. Consistency is the most important factor. If you take nothing else away from this article it should be that little mantra: consistency is the most important factor. Without consistency there is nothing. Fitness, the entire game of physical improvement, no matter what type of physical improvement you are seeking, is all the same: you are trying to build a house. Brick by brick, piece by piece, every single day and every single week, you are building a house. You can only stack so many bricks a day before your hands start to blister, so each day you do what you can. But those last few bricks are always a little bit unstable, a little tenuous, and they'll never really be solid and locked in until they've got more bricks on top of them holding them down sturdy and cementing them in place for good.

So there are no problems! Everything is all hunky fucking dory when you're consistent and you do the work that you're supposed to be doing. You gradually make your way towards your goals as physiology and adaptation dictate. Now, the problem arises when you lose that consistency. You're building your house, laying a few bricks here and a few bricks there. Little victories each day. But like I said, you can only lay so many bricks a day, man. Your hands get all blistered and start to peel open and bleed and all that nasty shit. Eventually you've gotta go home and rest, right?  all that nasty shit. Eventually you gotta go home and rest right?

Another inconsistency error people make is with the type of structure they're building. One day they lay down bricks; then the next week they come in and try to put wood on top of it only to realize that the pieces don't fit together like that; then they try to mold with stucco on a partially pre-existing structure, and the whole thing is a just a damn mess. And they can never finish the house because they didn't use a consistent type of build and they tried to fit together pieces that cant go together.

Adaptation is the same way. It's a series of small bricks stacked on top of one another, but it can't work if the bricks don't fit together to begin with. You can't do strength training this week, and then endurance training the following week, and then bodybuilding training the week after that. If there's nothing to build off of from one microcycle into the next then there will be no adaptation because there is still no consistency. It's a different type of inconsistency from skipping out altogether, but it's still inconsistency. With the popularity of Crossfit these days amongst laypeople - and all the haphazardness that entails - along with longstanding silly notions regarding "muscle confusion,"  this is something that also needs to be noted.

Consistency is the most important factor. Without consistency in the gym then you have nothing to build off of and you won't build an impressive structure in the end no matter how many years you've been "kind of sort of working out." Do you want to build a mansion or are you content with building just a little shack? That's a question you have to ask yourself. I already gave you the answer: consistency.