six days a week
lifting
the first thing that taught me what showing up actually costs.
how it started
I was the smallest kid in the room and got tired of that being the first thing anyone noticed about me. That is the whole origin story. It was not discipline or some plan, it was just being annoyed enough to do something about it.
The first few months were awful. I had no idea what I was doing. I copied whatever the guy next to me did, changed my program every two weeks because I read something new, and nothing moved. I nearly quit twice, both times for the same reason: I could not see progress, so I assumed there was none.
what changed
The shift came when I stopped chasing how it looked and started chasing the number on the bar. Appearance is a lagging indicator and a terrible feedback signal. The weight is not. It either went up or it did not, and there is no interpreting your way out of that.
Progressive overload is version control for your body. Small commits, every session, nothing dramatic. You do not notice the difference day to day, and then you look at the log six months back and the diff is enormous. The compounding is invisible right up until it is obvious.
now
Push, pull, legs, six days a week. I track every set, which is exactly why I built cal_cli: logging a meal should take one command, not five taps through an app that wants my email address first.
The part that transferred furthest is not physical. It is knowing what a real plateau feels like versus a week of feeling sorry for myself, and knowing that the answer to both is usually the same: go back tomorrow.