not a universal principle. This means that whereas it is beneficial to be physically active every day and get our 10,000 steps daily, working out every day is not necessary and may even be counterproductive.
Training volume, i.e. the quantity of training, is just one aspect of a complex process that consists of at least four interdependent factors: intensity, volume, duration, and frequency.
There is a prevalent but inappropriate overemphasize on the quantity of training (volume, duration and frequency) whereas the importance of quality of training (intensity) is often underestimated.
Volume, duration and frequency are thought to be the crucial factors for best training results because it seems to be logical that the more you train, the better results you will get out of your training. But that is not the case. There is no proportional correlation at all between the time spent training and the extent of physical improvement.
This misconception arises when transferring facts from one context to another. But working out is not the same as working even though both terms contain the same verb. In fact, working out is completely different from working in many ways. If someone has a job and is paid a certain amount of money per hour, then there is a proportional correlation between the time spent working and the amount of money earned. The more you work, the more money you get. Therefore, it may seem natural to suggest applying the same approach to working out.
Falsely assuming that there is a proportional correlation between training volume and training results, however, is to miss the whole point of training.
Intensity, rather than volume, is the crucial factor that decides whether a successful training stimulus can be achieved. If training is not intense enough, there will not be any need for the body to adapt. This is a well-known fact that is often overlooked.
Too much volume may compromise intensity and thereby compromise the effect of the training session altogether. Intensity and volume are inversely proportional. Training can either be intense or long, for example running can either be a long-distance run or a sprint but not both. There is no such thing as a sprint marathon. The same applies to resistance training. The more intensely you work out, the sooner you will fatigue. You can either train intensely or you can train long.
Therefore, training programs should be planned by determining adequate training intensity first, that is a degree of training intensity to surely pass the training threshold. Then all other factors should be adjusted accordingly.
Many people still believe that there is a proportional correlation between training quantity and training results, although they are not likely to not get better results the more they work out. Many people spend hours upon hours in the gym every week, yet they are disappointed with their progress. So why do they not question the concept of “the more the better”? This is no surprise considering what psychologists call effort justification.
Effort justification
Whenever we realize that the results we get out of something clearly do not match the amount of work we put into it, we find ourselves in a state called cognitive dissonance. In order to relieve ourselves from that unpleasant condition we tend to justify the effort and try to convince ourselves that “it is/was all worth it”. This is one reason why things that we have worked a lot on are more valuable to us. Someone who buys an old-timer and spends hundreds of hours working on it is unlikely to sell it a few years later, even if offered much more money than the purchase price.
If you went to dozens of garage sales until you found that out-of-print book which you had been looking for so long, how likely are you to sell it later? If someone studies at a University for years to pass the final exam and get the degree, it will be extremely valuable to that person, even if he or she chooses a completely different career option later for which the degree would not have been necessary.
The Sistine Ceiling paintings by Michelangelo are among the world’s most famous and most admired pieces of art. The fact that it took Michelangelo from 1508 to 1512 to finish his paintings illustrates what an effort it took to create such an outstanding piece of art. It makes us appreciate it even more.
Art is only one example where effort justification can be found. There are many others. Even architecture is one of them. The pyramids of Giza are a wonderful example of this. Although there are many higher and larger buildings today, the pyramids of Giza remain to be outstanding and rightfully remain one the Seven World Wonders. After all, it took presumably 20 years of incredibly hard work to build them and they remained the tallest man-made structures in the world for more than 3,800 years. It is very unlikely that four thousand years from now the same will be said about some of the buildings from the 20th century.
In 1929 Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, mainly for his splendid novel The Buddenbrooks which consisted of 768 pages. On the other hand, the 1954 Nobel Prize of Literature went to Ernest Hemmingway for his great short-stories and his grandiose 99-page novel The Old Man and the Sea.
The bottom line is: We might have every reason to value the effort that somebody puts into something, but whenever actions are taken to achieve a certain result, the key issue always is how adequate these actions are to achieve that particular goal.
More about Nobel Prize winners: In 1905 Albert Einstein finished several publications. All of them were so ingenious that the year 1905 was later called the wonder year of physics. One of these publications was Einstein’s doctoral thesis. When Albert Einstein first handed in his PhD thesis to Professor Alfred Kleiner, his doctoral advisor, Kleiner felt it was brilliant, yet he initially hesitated to accept the dissertation. The only thing that Kleiner criticized was that he felt Einstein’s dissertation was “zu kurz“ (German for “too short”) for a doctoral thesis. It consisted of 17 pages.
A scientist may spend his or her whole life trying to solve a problem or might solve it through a sudden flash of inspiration. Some of the greatest discoveries or inventions were brought about by coincidence. Alexander Flemming (another Nobel Prize laureate) discovered the substance he later called Penicillin when returning to his laboratory after spending some weeks on holiday with his family. When he came back he found one culture of staphylococci contaminated with fungus which destroyed the staphylococci near the fungus. His further research finally led to the development of the world’s first antibiotic. This discovery was responsible for millions of lives that could be saved by fighting serious infections with antibiotics.
But should we value Flemming’s work less because of the fact that the breakthrough in his research happened accidentally? I do not think so. Should Einstein have added some meaningless pages to his already brilliant piece of work? What if Michelangelo had not needed five years to finish his Sistine Ceiling paintings? What if he had finished them within six months? Should this make us appreciate his work less – or even more?
A side-effect of effort justification is that we do not only appreciate something more if we had to spend a lot of time on getting there. We also tend to attribute this success to the amount of work that we spent and underestimate the relevance of the quality of the process. After all, it is the result that counts, not the amount of hours we spend to get there.
We are rightfully impressed when someone says: “My car broke down. I called the mechanic who did not give up until he finally found the mistake after nine hours and then fixed it.” But is it not equally admirable if the story goes like this: “My car broke down. I called the mechanic who took one look at it, found the mistake and fixed it on the spot.” In the first version our appreciation for the mechanic’s effort is most likely caused by his not giving up, his persistence to keep looking for the mistake, but not his quality as a mechanic whereas in the second version the competence and efficiency of the mechanic clearly stand out.
Achieving the same result in much shorter time by improving the quality rather than the quantity of effort, improves the efficiency of the whole process tremendously.
Efficiency and the time factor
Everybody knows the saying “time is money” (usually attributed to Benjamin Franklin). However, this statement is incorrect.