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The best thing you don’t do is useless. The good-enough thing you do for years works incredibly well.

“A lot of people stop digging right before they hit the diamonds. It’s the adherence that adds the potency. The best program you don’t do is a useless program.” — Jim Keen, Director of Training at FastFit®

In this episode, Jim Keen and I return to a principle we’ve championed since one of our earliest episodes: adherence is everything.

And there’s a fresh reason to revisit it. FastFit® is rolling out a new streaks feature on our machine’s post-workout summary and in the app. In this first version, you earn a streak for each week you work out at least once. The point isn’t the number on the chest press or your total work output; it’s to remind members that above any single outcome, consistency is what wins.

Why does adherence matter so much? Because you have to stick with something long enough for it to work. As the saying goes, the best diet is the one you’ll stick to, and the best workout program is the one you can stick to. A lot of people stop digging right before they hit the diamonds.

So when we designed FastFit®, the team started by asking a different question than most fitness companies: what are the real reasons people don’t adhere to exercise programs, and how do we remove them?

The first barrier is time. Traditional strength training can mean four or five days a week, an hour at a time. People start in January and fall off by February. FastFit® sessions are 20 minutes—and because isokinetic strength training is so potent, that 20 minutes isn’t equivalent to an hour in the gym. It’s quite a bit better, thanks to greater mechanical loading and demand on the muscles.

The second barrier is injury. People get hurt lifting weights and retreat to cardio, or they get hurt outside the gym and abandon their routine entirely. The testimonials you hear are survivor bias—you don’t hear from the people whose shoulders got wrecked and quit. Our isokinetic resistance is inherently safer because the resistance always matches you: it never becomes excessive as you fatigue, and the speed is controlled and preset. Even better, the physical therapy protocols let members keep training through injury. I share my own story about the time I popped a hamstring racing my 13-year-old son at the beach, couldn’t walk without crutches, and instead of sitting out, used an isometric protocol on the injured leg—applying force up to the pain point, then backing off. In about 30 days, I went from crutches to walking and running again, without the atrophy and the “I went backwards” psychology that makes people quit.

The third barrier is confusion. One YouTube video says 30 sets per muscle group per week; another says one set is all you need. Overwhelmed by conflicting advice, people switch programs every two weeks and never stay consistent. FastFit® removes the guesswork: it’s set-and-forget, dialed in on the screen, adjustable over time by trainers who are the actual experts.

The technology that makes FastFit® efficient and safe also happens to be the most effective. It’s not two out of three—it’s all three.

The episode closes on plateaus. When longtime members stop seeing rapid gains, many conclude they’ve “graduated” and quit. Jim reframes it with an analogy: a plateau is really a cruising altitude. When a plane takes off, everything changes fast and it’s exciting. At cruising altitude, things are calmer and it takes less fuel to stay there. You don’t climb into space forever. And here’s the key point about aging: after about 55 to 60, muscle, bone, and functional capacity decline at an accelerating rate. So, a 75-year-old who has held their strength perfectly steady for a year deserves confetti and a cake—because their peers are all descending, their planes thousands of feet below and dropping faster. Maintaining your cruising altitude is arguably even more valuable than reaching it.

The mistake is comparing yourself to where you started rather than to what would have happened if you’d quit. Stop working out and the plane descends. Father time is undefeated, so the goal is to climb as high as you can and descend as slowly as possible. Strength training isn’t an option; it’s hygiene for the muscles. So pick the approach you can adhere to most consistently, most easily, and for the longest time. Adherence is king.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why adherence matters more than any specific program, diet, or piece of equipment

• The new FastFit® streaks feature and why it rewards weekly consistency over peak numbers

• The three biggest reasons people quit exercise—time, injury, and confusion—and how FastFit® removes each

• Why isokinetic resistance is inherently safer than free weights

• How the physical therapy protocols let members train through injury instead of quitting

• Kyle’s hamstring recovery story: from crutches to running in about 30 days

• Why a plateau is really a “cruising altitude”—and why maintaining it is a major win, especially after 55–60

• Why the right comparison isn’t where you started, but what would have happened if you’d stopped

🎧 Listen to the episode now:

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