Metrics

"What gets measured, gets managed."

Peter Drucker

In the business world, metrics are a set of measurements that quantify results. After all, if you're not progressing, then you're regressing.

While metrics can be employed in the fitness industry to help ensure results, very few fitness professionals do so. For instance, if you have been working with a personal trainer, or training on your own:

Are you leaner today than you last week? Last month? Last year?

Are you stronger today than last week? Last month? Last year?

Are you healthier today than last week? Lat month? Last year?

The next question you have to ask yourself is "Why not? If you're working with a personal trainer then their training program is not challenging your body sufficiently to cause an adaptation to occur. Same holds true if you're training on your own. It's been said that the definition of crazy is doing the same thing repeatedly, while expecting a different result. If you've been performing leg extensions for the past two years and your legs still look the same, at what point do you come to the conclusion that what you're doing is not working?

Perhaps you're content with the status quo and don't mind wasting money on a trainer who cannot deliver results, only empty promises...it's your money after all. But you cannot be forgiven for wasting time. You can always make more money, but unless you have a Delorean and 1.21 gigawatts, you won't get that time back.

At Banda Performance, we hold ourselves to a higher standard and employ a number of metrics to ensure our client's constant progress towards their goals.

For instance, when training for strength, one of our metrics is for our clients to lift at least 2% additional weight everytime a specific workout is performed. For example, if a client bench presses 100 lbs today, next week they should be able to lift at least 102 lbs for the same number of repetitions. When the weight being lifted exceeds 400 lbs, then we use 1% as a metric.

After all, if you're not progressing, then you're regressing.