When training changes to preparation
For years, I assumed consistency was mainly a discipline problem. If training slipped, the answer was to be stricter. If routines became patchy, the answer was to push harder. If my motivation dipped, the answer was to sharpen up and get on with it.
Reasonable, perhaps, but not especially accurate, or fun.
Because the periods when I am most consistent are not the periods when I suddenly become more virtuous than usual. They are the periods when something concrete is sitting ahead of me in the diary, waiting.
For me, that something is usually a mountain. This year, it is Mont Ventoux, France.
Each year I head out with friends to ride some of the most iconic climbs across France, Spain and Italy, and every time one of those trips approaches, something changes in the months beforehand. I stop thinking in terms of exercise and start thinking in terms of preparation. Training becomes clearer, decisions become easier, sessions stop feeling isolated and start feeling connected to something specific.
Being goal orientated, I find that shift is always enjoyable.
Consistency becomes easier when the work is tied to something real. Not a vague intention to get fitter. Something with enough weight to shape behaviour in advance. Something that will, eventually, ask a question of you.
A mountain does that very well.
It is worth asking whether you have anything similar in your own life. Not a general ambition, but something definite enough to change the meaning of today’s choices.
A standard outside your mood
Mont Ventoux does not care how good my intentions were in January. It does not care how busy work became in February or whether the weather was poor in March. It is unimpressed by plans, apps, ambitions and excuses alike. It simply waits, unchanged, and eventually you either arrive ready for it or you do not.
There is something steadying in that indifference.
It strips drama out of the process. The mountain does not need your attention every day, but it gives the training months a shape they would not otherwise have. A ride on the home trainer on a dark, cold, miserable February morning is no longer something I might do if the mood feels right. It becomes part of preparing for what is ahead. The session has context. It belongs somewhere.
That is why events in the diary can be such effective accountability tools. They create a standard outside your mood.
Most people know what it feels like when health and training remain too abstract. We tell ourselves we should get fitter, sleep better, feel sharper, build more resilience. All true, perhaps, but when nothing concrete is attached to those ambitions, the work becomes easy to move. It sits in the background as something important, but not yet pressing.
Life, of course, has very little interest in settling down. So, a more useful question may be this: where in your life are you still relying on good intentions to do a job that really requires something more fixed, more accountable?
Where Max fits into the process
In my case, I work with our in-app coach, Max, as my fully-fledged cycling coach, not in a loose or motivational sense, but in the practical sense that matters when you are preparing properly. He structures the training week, shapes the progression, interprets how I am responding, and keeps the programme aligned with the demands of the event ahead.
The aim is not simply to stack sessions and hope fitness appears. It is to build the right kind of fitness in the right sequence, with enough intent behind the work that it compounds over time. Some sessions are there to build capacity, others are there to sharpen the specific qualities climbing demands. Others matter because recovery is part of the programme, not a pause from it.
That changes the context of exercising completely.
You are no longer trying to be vaguely active or merely tick a box. You are following a programme with a clear objective, guided by someone who understands the demands of climbing, the value of consistency, and the balance between pushing adaptation and protecting freshness. Good coaching removes noise. It gives each session a purpose and places it inside a wider progression, so you spend less time second-guessing and more time executing.
Life becomes much simpler, yet even then, the coaching and the programme are only part of what makes the whole thing work.
What really sharpens adherence is the presence of the event itself. The why. The plan matters more because the mountain is there in the background giving the plan meaning. Every session points somewhere, and every decision has context. The work stops floating around as a general ambition and becomes preparation for something specific.
A good exercise programme is useful, but a meaningful target makes it harder to ignore.
Why good intentions drift
At Better Life, we spend a great deal of time thinking about why people struggle to follow through consistently, and the answer is rarely that they are lazy or incapable. More often, the issue is that the work has no immediate structure around it. It sits in the background as something they know they should do, which means it gets negotiated with, delayed, reshuffled or quietly dropped as life becomes busy.
You tell yourself you will train more regularly or decide you need to improve your aerobic fitness. You want to get leaner, stronger or more resilient. All of that may be true, and still not be enough to create momentum, because good intentions on their own are too easy to move.
Put a meaningful event in the diary, though, and the equation changes. The work starts to feel attached to something. You are no longer exercising in a general sense, but preparing. You are building towards something that will reveal whether your preparation was real or imagined.
I notice the same pattern every year. Four or five months out from a trip, the noise reduces. The training has a reason and the harder sessions now make sense. The rest make sense too, recovery becomes more relevant. Sleep matters more, while nutrition becomes easier to keep in view. Not because I suddenly become obsessed with perfection, but because the objective is visible enough to organise behaviour around it.
The upcoming 25 kilometre mountain climb gives the process coherence.
And when coherence is present, consistency often follows with far less friction. You stop waking up each day and deciding from scratch whether you feel like doing the work. The question has largely been settled already, by the mountain.
Which areas of your life still feel harder than they need to because you are deciding them too often?
Goals should be strong enough to hold you
This is why I think many people choose goals that are too soft to hold them properly. They choose aims that sound sensible but do not create enough consequence. “Get fitter” is fine as a thought, but it is too broad to organise behaviour well. “Be in shape to ride Ventoux this summer” is different. It has texture, with a date. It has a built-in standard.
The body understands that more clearly, and so does the mind.
Most people do not need more pressure, they need more purpose built into the structure they are already trying to follow. They need something that makes the work feel relevant now, not eventually. Something that connects today’s effort to a clear demand waiting further ahead.
That demand does not need to be a mountain, but it probably does need to be real, and to a greater or lesser extent, challenging.
It could be a cycling trip, a long hike, a charity event, a demanding weekend in the hills, a race, a skiing trip, a beach holiday, or simply a point in the calendar by which you want to feel capable, energised and physically reliable again. The format matters less than the function. The function is to remove ambiguity.
Once that happens, behaviour often settles, with training becoming less emotional. You spend less time deciding and more time following through. The goal starts shaping the week before the week has a chance to drift.
That is where accountability becomes useful, not as external pressure, but as external, and internal clarity.
A question worth asking
For me, mountains have become one of the cleanest forms of that clarity. They are honest, and they don’t care if my month got busy. They simply reflect back the quality of my preparation. In that sense, they are a far better accountability partner than motivation will ever be.
So perhaps the more useful question is not whether you need more discipline.
Perhaps it is whether you have given your efforts something real enough to organise themselves around.
What could you put in the diary that would make your preparation feel real?
What might change if your training stopped being something you hoped to fit in, and became preparation for something that genuinely mattered to you?
Better Life — Founder’s Journal
Clarity, structure, and less negotiating with yourself before breakfast.