The True Nature of Progress

Have you have experienced this with something in your life you’ve been working on:

You put in consistent effort and seem to make progress, then you suddenly seem to lose your momentum. You take a break to rest, then return only to be worse than when you left off.

It seems like you’ve totally regressed.

Here’s a story about a place this has happened to me recently, and some reminders about the true nature of progress.

My 40-Day Ski Erg Sprint

At the end of February, I went to see the doctor to address a knee that had been progressively swelling over a period of months. The doctor drained the knee and told me I had to keep it immobilized.

With a big leg brace restricting me from doing most of the cardio machines and many of my typical movement patterns, my only option for elevating my heart rate was the ski erg.

If you’re unfamiliar with a ski erg, it’s a machine that looks like a vertical rower: you pull the handles down from overhead to spin the flywheel.

The ski erg was my long-time nemesis. I generally struggled to pull at a pace of under 3:00/500M. Even a short ski sprint felt like a long slog.

But with no other options, I resolved to make friends with the ski erg and work on my technique.

Starting on March 1, I did the ski erg every day for 40 days. Even once I was allowed to start moving my knee again, the ski erg was a part of my daily programming.

Most days I did several short sprints of 250 meters. Some days I did 100M sprints, and once a week I did longer sprints.

After about a week of doing the ski erg, I noticed progress: I was able to consistently pull at a 2:30/500M pace. I regularly clocked a 250M sprint in the range of 1:15–1:18. I even managed to do a few 250M sprints in the 1:10–1:12 range.

By the last couple of days, my times slowed down. My body seemed to have reached its limit for how many days it could sustain the ski erg pace.

After 40 days, I went on vacation. In the hotel gym, there was no ski erg.

After 10 days away, I returned to the gym, eager to pick up with the ski erg again.

But my pace was off. Although I had moments where I saw the pace get down to 2:30/500M, my average pace hovered around 2:45/500M.

It felt like a big backwards slide — a total regression on the progress I had made.

The Truth About Progress

The most important thing to remember about progress is that it’s not linear; it’s cyclical.

What this means is that progress is not a straight line of increasing improvements. Rather, it’s a series of forward momentum, plateaus, sometimes backward motion, and then forward again.

But even when we slide backward, we rarely slide all the way to where we initially started.

Progress happens like a spiral: each time around we accumulate a little more, so that even with the slide backward we incrementally improve.

My post-vacation ski erg pace of 2:45/500M was not as fast as the 2:30–2:40/500M pace that I was sustaining on my slowest sprints in early April.

But compared to the 3:00/500M pace that I was pulling prior to March, it’s a big improvement. With a few more days of practice I’ll be able to get the pace back down to where it was at my peak.

This is how progress really happens.

Apply This to Your Progress

Of course, not every realm of progress has such clear metrics. Some areas where we feel we regress are more qualitative. But the same principle applies. It’s about perspective: you have to look at a bigger picture to see the trends.

Consider that place where you felt you were making progress and it regressed. Instead of comparing your current stats to your best stats, look back further and see where you started. You may discover that you have been making progress after all.