When Trying Harder Makes You Worse

The harder I try to force my golf swing, the worse it usually gets.

Anyone who plays golf will know the feeling.

You hit a couple of bad shots.

You start trying a little harder.

You grip the club tighter.

You swing faster.

You start thinking about six different things at once.

And somehow the ball gets even further away from where you wanted it to go 😂

Your instinct is to add more effort.

But more effort was never the problem.

Sometimes fitness works exactly the same way.

Progress slows down.

So you add another workout.

Fat loss stalls.

So you eat less.

Energy drops.

So you reach for more caffeine and push through another session.

You miss a few days.

So Monday becomes the start of another aggressive reset.

Somewhere along the way, doing more becomes the answer to everything.

But more is only useful when more is actually what you need.

Before you add anything, ask what is actually holding you back

If somebody tells me they are not making progress, my first thought is rarely:

“They need to work harder.”

I want to know what is actually happening.

Are they training consistently?

Is the training progressing?

Are they recovering from it?

Is their nutrition supporting the goal?

Are they sleeping reasonably well?

Is the programme realistic around work and family?

Are they doing too much one week and almost nothing the next?

Is the problem effort?

Or is the effort being pointed in the wrong direction?

Those are very different problems.

And they require very different solutions.

1. More training is not automatically better training

There is nothing wrong with training hard.

I believe people should train with intent.

But adding sessions simply because progress has slowed is not always the answer.

If you are already training three times per week, the next step might not be a fourth session.

It might be getting more from the three you already have.

Are you progressing the exercises?

Are you training hard enough when it matters?

Are you recovering between sessions?

Are you repeating the programme long enough to actually improve at it?

Or are you constantly changing exercises, programmes and training styles because you feel like you should be doing more?

Three focused sessions performed consistently can beat five rushed sessions that you cannot sustain.

The question is not:

“How much training can I fit in?”

It is:

“What is the smallest amount of quality training that will keep moving me forward?”

Then you build from there if needed.

2. Eating less is not always the first answer either

Fat loss requires an energy deficit.

That part does not disappear.

But when progress slows, the answer is not automatically another aggressive reduction in food.

First look at what is actually happening across the week.

Weekday intake might be very controlled.

Then Friday night arrives.

A meal out becomes drinks.

Saturday becomes more relaxed.

Sunday becomes:

“I’ll get back on it tomorrow.”

In that situation, eating even less Monday to Thursday may just make the cycle worse.

The better question might be:

Where is the inconsistency actually happening?

Could restaurant meals be handled differently?

Could weekends have a little more structure?

Could protein and food quality improve without immediately cutting calories further?

Could you make the plan easier to follow instead of stricter?

Sometimes the breakthrough is not more restriction.

It is better execution.

3. If your energy is falling, pushing harder deserves a second look

Low energy is often treated like an inconvenience.

Something to override.

More coffee.

More motivation.

More discipline.

Get the session done anyway.

Sometimes that is completely fine.

Nobody feels amazing every day.

But if poor energy has become your normal state, continually adding stress may not solve the problem.

Look at the basics first.

How much are you sleeping?

How hard are you training?

How many genuinely easier days do you have?

What does your nutrition look like?

How much are you travelling?

How much of the week is spent reacting to work?

When did you last have a period where training, recovery and life were actually working together?

Recovery is not something you earn after working hard enough.

It is part of the work.

4. More rules can create less consistency

This one catches a lot of people.

They struggle to stay consistent, so they respond by creating a more complicated plan.

More meal rules.

More workouts.

More tracking.

More restrictions.

More things they are not allowed to do.

It feels productive because the plan looks impressive.

But then real life arrives.

Work runs late.

You travel.

A child gets sick.

You have dinner with friends.

You miss a workout.

And suddenly the system has nowhere to go.

A good plan should not only tell you what to do when everything goes right.

It should tell you what to do when it does not.

That might mean:

Three sessions during a normal week.

Two during a busy week.

One during a genuinely chaotic week.

Normal nutrition most of the time.

Simple defaults when travelling.

A restaurant strategy instead of avoiding restaurants.

A minimum standard instead of another restart.

Sometimes the answer to inconsistency is fewer rules, not more.

The APEX question: what actually needs improving?

This is one reason I built the APEX Performance Framework around assessment first.

Before we add more, we need to understand what needs adding.

ASSESS

Where are you now?

What is working?

What is not?

What does your actual week look like?

PERFORM

Build strength, fitness, movement quality and resilience with training that has a purpose.

Not exercise for the sake of being exhausted.

EXECUTE

Make the plan work around the reality of your life.

Work.

Travel.

Family.

Restaurants.

Busy weeks.

EXCEL

Keep improving without needing another complete reset every few months.

That process is not as exciting as:

“Just work harder.”

But it tends to work much better.

Effort still matters

None of this is an argument for taking it easy.

Progress requires effort.

Strength requires hard training.

Fat loss requires appropriate nutrition.

Fitness improves when you actually challenge yourself.

The point is that effort needs direction.

Otherwise you can work incredibly hard while solving the wrong problem.

Golf keeps reminding me of that.

When a swing goes wrong, trying to hit the next ball 20% harder rarely fixes it.

Sometimes you need to stop.

Look at what is actually happening.

Make the right adjustment.

Then execute it properly.

Your training, nutrition and health deserve the same approach.

Before you add another session, cut more food or decide you need to “try harder” again, ask yourself:

Is effort genuinely the thing I am missing?

Or would I get further by doing the right things better?

Because sometimes the next level does not require more.

It requires better.