Leave Room for Improvement

I had several clients start new programs this week.

My advice to many of them was simple: leave room for improvement.

When you’re in week one of a plan and everything feels new and exciting, it’s easy to do too much. Even if it goes well, it can come back to bite you later.

Here are a few examples of what leaving room to improve looks like:

A. Deadlift x5, building to a challenging set in 5–7 sets

On week one, don’t rush to your heaviest possible weight. Leave room for next week and see what happens. More than heroic efforts, we want replicable efforts.

I fell into this trap a lot when I was Olympic lifting. I’d hit big weights in week one, then struggle to repeat them in week two or three. With experience, I learned to take about 10% off my best early on — and then build from there.

B. 3–5 rounds of:
8/s split squat
10/s one-arm dumbbell row
8-breath low plank hold

When a workout shows a range, you don’t always have to do the max. In week one, choose the lower end. Everything else in the workout will take longer than expected anyway. You can add rounds later to build overall volume.

C. Conditioning
10–12 sets:
30 sec @ fast pace
30 sec @ slow pace

When there’s a range like this, start with the smaller number. Use week one to dial in your paces and figure out what “fast” actually means for you. Over the coming weeks, you can progress by adding rounds, upping your intensity, or both.

The big idea here: it’s not one workout that matters — it’s all of them compounded over time.

The more sessions you complete, even at a slightly lower intensity, the better your long-term results. Once you start leaving room for improvement, you’re playing the long game.

— Justin Miner