Deliberate Practice: How Small Shifts Help You Get Better in the Gym

We’ve all heard the sayings “practice makes perfect” and “10,000 hours to mastery.” They sound good, but there’s an important piece missing from both: What kind of practice are you doing?

Because simply doing something over and over again doesn’t necessarily make you better at it. Sometimes, it just makes you really good at doing it wrong. Practice makes permanent.

A better saying might be: Practice makes permanent. If you repeatedly perform something without paying attention to how you’re doing it, you’re reinforcing that pattern. This is especially obvious in training.

Think about something as simple as an air squat. Most people can perform one without thinking. But are you actually paying attention to: • Where the pressure is on your feet? • How you’re breathing? • How much tension you’re creating? • What your knees and hips are doing? • Whether you’re actually using the muscles you intend to? • How each repetition feels? If you’re simply going through the motions, you’re practicing—but you’re not necessarily improving. 🏋️‍♀️

The Difference Is Deliberate Practice
Deliberate practice means being present and intentional about what you’re doing. Instead of simply completing four sets of ten reps, you’re using those forty repetitions as an opportunity to improve. You don’t need to consciously think about every possible detail at once. In fact, trying to do that can become overwhelming. Instead, pick one thing. Maybe today, during your air squats, you’re focusing on your breathing. Tomorrow, you might focus on the pressure through your feet. Another day, you might focus on creating tension or feeling your glutes working. The important thing is that you’re actively paying attention and trying to improve something.

10,000 Hours Won’t Make You an Expert
The idea of 10,000 hours to mastery, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, is often repeated as though the number itself is magical. But consider this: Most of us have probably accumulated more than 10,000 hours of walking, talking, and communicating throughout our lives. Yet we’re not automatically experts at any of those things. Why? Because time spent doing something isn’t the same as deliberate practice. Ten thousand hours of mindlessly repeating the same mistakes won’t necessarily make you an expert. It may simply make those mistakes more ingrained. Deliberate practice, on the other hand, gives those repetitions a purpose.

Training Is Not Competition
This is particularly true in exercise. Training is not competition. The goal of a training session isn’t simply to survive the workout, finish your reps, or get to the end of the clock. The goal is to learn and improve. If you’re doing four sets of ten, the number ten isn’t magical. Eight good repetitions aren’t suddenly worthless because you didn’t reach ten. The purpose of prescribing ten repetitions is generally to give you a reasonable amount of quality practice—not fifty repetitions and not one maximal effort. Especially when you’re working on rehabilitation or learning a new movement, technical quality and intention matter far more than simply checking off the prescribed number.

Do It Right the First Time
There’s an old saying: “If you’re going to do something, do it right.” There’s wisdom in that. Doing something correctly the first time often takes less effort than doing it incorrectly, reinforcing the mistake, and then having to spend even more time trying to undo it. This applies far beyond the gym. Whether you’re learning a movement, developing a skill, communicating with someone, or building a habit, try not to operate on autopilot. Be present with what you’re doing. Pay attention. Make adjustments. Get feedback. Then do it again.

Small Improvements Add Up
You don’t need to completely reinvent your technique every time you train. Instead, ask yourself: • What am I working on today? • What does this movement feel like? • What could I do slightly better? • What did I learn from that set? • What will I try differently on the next one? And if you don’t know what to focus on, ask a coach. One of the biggest advantages of having a good coach is that they can see things you’re not aware of. They can give you one simple adjustment to focus on rather than leaving you trying to fix ten things at once.

Practice With Purpose
Ultimately, getting better isn’t simply about accumulating more repetitions. It’s about making those repetitions count. Don’t just do more. Do better. Don’t train on autopilot. Be present. Don’t worry about chasing some magical number of hours. Practice deliberately. Because practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect. Practice makes permanent—and deliberate practice is what makes you better. 💡

Keep showing up and stay curious, Coach Everett