How to Start Strength Training—So This Time, It Sticks

The path to strength in the second half of life begins here.

Strength training isn’t the problem. Starting is.
Most people go too hard too soon—or stay stuck doing too little for too long.
They chase someone else’s program, get sore, lose confidence, and fall off track.
There’s one more reason: the expectations you carry about where you think you should be—on day one, day fourteen, or day forty-five—compared to where you actually are.
The solution? Start in a way that actually sticks—so you can build strength that lasts in the second half of life.

Everyone says strength training is the key to aging well.
Doctors. Trainers. Headlines.

And they’re right.

But if strength training is so essential, why is it so damn hard to make it stick?

The answer isn’t a lack of willpower or discipline. It’s how they start.

Why Most People Quit Before They Begin

The fitness industry sells intensity.
Go hard. Push limits. Sweat buckets—or it doesn’t count.

So what happens?

• Some dive headfirst into a program that’s way too much.

• Others play it safe and do so little they never change.

• Many feel intimidated, worry about injury, and stall out before they build any momentum.

It’s a setup for failure.

Without awareness of where you are—or direction for where you’re going—there’s no rhythm. And without rhythm, nothing sticks.

And if you need proof, here’s a story I’ve seen play out more than once…

Do Better Than Bob

Bob had a goal: he wanted to look like GSP, the MMA fighter.

Bob was already a martial artist. He did daily runs. Lifting. Multiple martial arts. On top of that, he slashed his calories to a bare minimum—training like a lion, eating like a kitten.

Meanwhile, work was stressful and home life wasn’t far behind. Bob was running on empty, wondering why all his effort and discipline weren’t paying off.

Sound familiar?

I’d love to say we connected and turned things around in a few months, but that’s not what happened. Bob held on to the story of what he thought would work. He doubled down. More training, fewer calories. More stress, less recovery. Until finally he came back and said: “I’m ready. What I’m doing isn’t working.”

That’s when things shifted. Bob ate more, trained less, and let his body recover. The results? He got stronger, leaned out, and felt better—not just physically, but mentally too.

The lesson: when we go to extremes or do too much too soon, we crash. At best, it’s unsustainable. At worst, it breaks us. Bob was chasing what he thought worked in college—25 years ago.

More isn’t better. Better is better.
Know your starting point. Have a direction. And don’t obsess over the gap between here and there.

Focus on the mile-markers. Stack the wins.
Do better than Bob.

The First Rep Isn’t in the Gym

The first rep isn’t lifting a barbell.
It’s finding your starting point.

Not where you were last year.
Not five years ago.
Not when you “used to be in shape” or where you hope to be.

Right here. Right now.

That’s where strength begins.

Start with Awareness

Noticing your body isn’t just about soreness or stiffness—it’s about connecting with where you are right now. When you pause long enough to notice, you create space. And in that space comes choice: to adjust, to scale back, or to move forward with intention.

Awareness is your compass. Ignore it, and you either push too hard—or spin your wheels.

To make it practical, start here:

• Acknowledge your current capacity—not your past PRs or “when you were in shape,” but today’s baseline.

• Identify your limits—energy, mobility, or strength—where’s the gaps.

• Be honest about your rhythm—how often are you actually moving?

• Check what fits in your life right now—time, energy, season.

• Look at your environment—gym, basement, park, living room floor.

Awareness isn’t about judgment. It’s about truth. And truth is what gives you the freedom to start in a way that lasts.

The biggest trap? Expecting to pick up where you left off years ago—or where you think you should be by day 14 or day 45. That gap between expectation and reality is where most people quit. Awareness closes that gap.

Find the Right Dose

Your first sessions should feel easier than you expect.

That’s not weakness—it’s wisdom. You’re sending your body a signal it can adapt to, not an overload it has to survive. Once it adapts, you can adjust the dose: more weight, more reps, more frequency. Just pick one.

Most people get stuck at the extremes: too much, too soon—or too little, for too long. Both derail you.

Too Much, Too Soon

• Leads to injuries, burnout, and weeks stuck in recovery mode.

• Soreness feels like progress—until you start dreading the next workout.

• Pushing to the edge also creates mental fatigue that makes you want to quit.

• Sets an unrealistic pace you can’t sustain.

Too Little, Too Long

• Leaves you spinning your wheels with no real progress.

• Wastes time and energy, reinforcing the belief that “fitness doesn’t work for me.”

• Leads to plateaus, frustration, and boredom.

• The Minimum Effective Dose turned into your system, when it was designed as a short-term tool.

The Goldilocks Zone
The right dose sits in the middle.
It’s enough to challenge your body, but not so much it knocks you back. It’s progress you can recover from and repeat.

Tips for finding it:

• Listen to your body: challenge, don’t punish.

• Adjust one dial at a time—weight, reps, or frequency.

• Focus on small, repeatable wins. Training is cumulative.

This is where fitness becomes sustainable. It’s not about being all-in or all-or-nothing—it’s about being non-negotiable. You show up, you do the work, and you keep moving forward.

The Movements That Matter

Forget the endless lists of “top 5 exercises.”
Strength isn’t built on lists—it’s built on skills.

There are many variations of these, so you can start where you are, not where the dude on Instagram told you to—he doesn’t know you.

The timeless patterns:

• Squat, Hinge, and Lunge

• Push, Pull, and Carry

But before you load them, you need to earn them.

That means walking, crawling, and hanging.
Push-up and row variations.
Squats and lunges with bodyweight.
Core stability with planks—not for time, but creating tension.

Simple doesn’t mean easy. Simple here means doable—transferable. These skills carry into every part of life.

How to Adjust Any Movement

Progress doesn’t always mean adding more weight.

Regression doesn’t always mean starting over.

Too many influencers tell us we have to “progressively overload” to make change happen. I prefer the term Progressively Challenge. You DO NOT need to add weight to continue to progress. There are many ways to challenge the system without increasing the load (adding weight).

When we want to progress an exercise, we can:

• Make it less stable

• Increase the range of motion

• Get more joints and muscles involved

• Increase the tempo—or slow it down

• Add complexity

• Add more load/weight

When we want to regress an exercise, we can:

• Make it more stable

• Decrease the range of motion

• Use fewer joints and muscles

• Move at a controlled, easy tempo

• Decrease complexity (coordination demand)

• Decrease load/weight

This is what makes strength training sustainable—you’re never stuck. You’ve always got options to scale up or down while keeping the rhythm alive.

What Derails People in the First Month

The first month is make-or-break. Most people don’t fall off because they don’t care. They fall off because they’ve been sold the wrong story.

Here’s what trips them up:

• Soreness as progress. Pain does not precede progress. If you’re in pain, it means you overshot.

• Chasing numbers. Adding weight like it’s a scoreboard.

• Skipping form. Poor technique under load leads to injuries and pain, not progress.

• All-or-nothing. Miss one day, and they quit. Life interrupts twice, and they’re gone.

Strength lives in the middle space. Too much or too little, too soon or too safe—that’s where people break.

Practical Starting Steps

Here’s what it looks like in real life:

• If you haven’t trained in years: Start with walking, push-ups against a counter, bodyweight squats to a chair. Hang from a bar or tree. Twice a week to start—get used to “showing up.”

• If you’ve dabbled off and on: Choose one push, one pull, one squat/lunge, and one carry. Do them 2x/week, at an easy dose. This is just one suggestion out of 1000. Have questions? Ask me.

• If you’ve trained before but want this time to last: Focus less on load, more on rhythm. Can you keep this up for 2, 4, 12 weeks straight? That’s the test.

No matter where you’re starting from, drop the expectation of where you think you should be. Progress isn’t measured against your past self or someone else’s program—it’s measured by what you can recover from and repeat. That’s how you build a practice that sticks.

The North Star

So what’s the principle that cuts through all the noise?

Keep showing up.
Play the long game.
Know where you’re going, but focus on where you are when you’re in it.

Strength isn’t built in a single workout.
It’s built in the rhythm of many small, smart ones stacked over time.

That’s how you stop starting over—and finally make strength stick.

Final Thought
This isn’t about being the strongest. And it’s not about living the longest.
It’s about being capable, unshakable, and fully present in the second half of life.

That only happens when strength training stops being something you try—and becomes something you live into.

You already know the benefits of strength training. What’s the one thing you could do differently today to make it stick—and help you live stronger, longer in the second half of life?

Here with you for the second half—

Jeff

PS. Forward this to a friend who’s tried starting before. This time, they don’t have to start over.