The old adage “work smarter not harder” is incomplete.

It paints the picture that success should be easy and that those doing training plans and strictly adhering to diets as stupid for missing the “1 easy trick to lose belly fat" or overlooking the “secret ancient exercise that will get you jacked in 5 minutes per day”. 

Though I hope (pray) most of you aren’t clicking on those sidebar articles and ads, the message can easily permeate our psyche and unfortunately does in fact make up a large portion of the health, and fitness industry.

In reality, we benefit from working both harder AND smarter.

High effort (working hard) is a prerequisite for success and outside of sheer luck in all forms, effort will always be necessary to achieve an outcome. The gradual and incremental increase in effort over the long run tends to lead to better outcomes. This is the principle of progressive overload 101.

Working smarter is about working on the right things. You can work your arse off on the wrong things and all but guarantee you won’t get to your goals. There needs to be specificity in your efforts. If you want to grow your biceps, you’ll have to train your biceps and if you want to lose body fat, then you’ll have to eat the right volume of calories, regardless of what foods you eat, to do so.

Most people think of the smarter or harder concept as hacking the system. Taking advantage of a loophole that nobody else has discovered yet - a back door to success. A trap door panel to behind the piano that leads to the bat cave. 

That does, in fact, exist. It’s called pharmacology (aka steroids).

For those of us not gearing up - it’s about working harder with effort for a long time and smarter by working on the right things. The actions that have the highest ROI for your goals.

It’s about working smarter AND harder. 

Not either or.