tl;dr: Spend time with your “weaknesses.”
I’ve made multiple attempts — some short, some long — to “get in shape” so far in life.
Usually, I set myself goals like these:
- “Unlock” some arbitrary exercise or number (30 pull ups, muscle-ups, passing the US military fitness test, etc)
- Gaining X pounds of muscle.
- Losing X inches on my belly
And after spending years bumbling around and hopping from one workout regimen to another, I have little to show for it.
The reason was always clear to me: I wasn’t consistent.
Here’s what wasn’t clear: why wasn’t I consistent?
Health has always been important to me. And it’s not like the goals above weren’t motivating. I had plenty of motivation about how life would finally be like if/when I achieved them. I also had negative motivation — what I would lose if I didn’t follow my health habits consistently.
It’s also not like I “lacked discipline.” I’ve done many hard things in my life that required sincere daily discipline, such as learning Japanese in 12 months, or reaching shodan level in Judo in 12 months.
I tried many hacks to become consistent — every habit-building, dopamine-busting, or otherwise behavior-altering psychology hack that YouTube and books could propose to me, I’ve tried.
The problem was that all the mental gymnastics I was doing were geared towards getting me to show up consistently for my workouts, and then reward myself as condolence for the punishment.
But only recently, the most important realization came to me: I actually hated working out. It did not spark joy.
I was pretending to enjoy it, but I was lying to myself. All I really cared about was progress — getting closer to the goal. Not about the process.
Whenever I felt like I wasn’t progressing enough, my brain found a way to pull the “this is more urgent” card and get me to skip a workout here, a workout there.
Finally this year, I stumbled upon a new philosophy for working out:
To achieve my fitness goals, I will have to rewire my mind and find a way to derive joy during my workouts, not just from showing up or finishing them.
Here’s the mental rewiring I came upon:
“Find your weaknesses, and spend time with them.”
That’s really it. Instead of chasing the feeling of being strong, I began chasing the feeling of being at the edge of my current abilities — the feeling of being weak.
Now, whenever I’m doing any exercise, my intention is to go deeper into the exercise, and find the position or transition in it that is hard for me. And then I try to spend as much time as I can in that position.
This is how I celebrate finding weaknesses.
Let’s take the 3-point bridge for instance:

This has actually always been a very simple exercise for me.
But recently, when I slowed down the exercise, I realized that I’m a wee bit weaker on my left side than on my right side — that is, when my left hand is on the floor, I’m a little bit shaky and had been compensating by gently shifting my weight, instead of staying in the center and using my stabilizer muscles to keep my torso static.
Moments like these are when I now celebrate — I discovered something new and interesting about my body! I found an edge.
When I find a weakness like this, I will then spend more time in it, reveling in the discomfort.
The interesting thing is that after doing it a few times, the position gets easier. And when it gets easier, it means I’ve gotten stronger.
(Note: the key for this to work is to actually be on the edge of your ability, not going above and beyond and trying to hurt myself doing something stupid. Our brains get into a pleasurable flow state only when something is challenging enough to push us to the limit but not destroying us outright.)
Or take the cossack squat:

I haven’t mastered this exercise yet, but now I love spending time in the bottom position on each side. I think I’m slowly becoming more flexible and able to go lower each week, but I honestly don’t care about the timeline anymore. Just finding and spending time on the edge makes me happy.
Now multiply that across 10+ exercises (I do a full-body workout everyday, with GMB’s Integral Strength program), and it basically turns every workout into a chocolate box of celebratory moments.
I used to be in a hurry to “progress faster” from easy exercises to their harder versions — for example, from a normal push up to a close-grip push up, and so on. But now, I do every exercise with the intent of exploring it inside-out, weeding out every single weak area and aiming to fully dominate it. I will do an exercise as long as something about it still challenges me.
P.S. I have to credit Ryan Hurst of GMB for a Q&A he did where he first mentioned the idea of going “deeper” and doing every movement at a black belt level. Only after that, was I able to connect the dots.
Bonus section: building muscle — combining GMB with Convict Conditioning
The program I follow, GMB’s Integral Strength, is not engineered for building muscle, but rather for holistic strength, mobility, and general athletic ability.
Don’t get me wrong, the 30m and 45m workouts can smoke you, but they used timed sets — say half a minute of work or so of work before you rest.
For muscle-building, an approach I’ve always found attractive is the one laid out in the book Convict Conditioning by Paul Wade. The main distinction is that this philosophy is focused on good old sets and reps — grinding out reps and getting close to failure. It builds muscle, but it’s very taxing on the body and mind, and not a fun way to train.
So I’ve found an interesting marriage between the two.
Right after I finish my full-body GMB workout of the day, I follow up with two hard sets of a different movement each day — eg: push ups on Monday, pull ups on Tuesday, squats on Wednesday, and so on.
These are drop sets — so if I get close to failure on the regular push up, I lower my knees to the floor and crank out more reps till I’m done.
It’s very time efficient (10-15 minutes extra max) and I basically get everything I need.
The interesting thing is that Wade recommends the same philosophy I mentioned above for training — don’t be in a hurry, pay your dues, and master every exercise as if it’s the last one you’ll ever do, before you move on to a harder progression.
Now I’ll get into something of a more spiritual / metaphysical nature.
Doing anything this way — fixating on the process, as opposed to progress, kinda feels very liberating and fulfilling, and it’s changing my relationship with time.
As a lifelong over-thinker, over-stressor, constant goal-setter and to-do list maker, I find it very difficult to enjoy the present moment.
As I get older, I’m trying to shift away from being goal-oriented to being process-oriented. That’s not to say that I will stop setting goals, but rather trust that the score takes care of itself if you simply perform at the highest level.
And what better way to perform at the highest level, than to fall in love with it.