We need to find a way to make the small wins matter more than the big ones.
Because the big ones—the PRs, the platform lifts, the competition days—they’re already exciting. Athletes don’t need help getting up for those moments. That’s the easy part.
The harder part is everything in between.
If you’re training in a sport like weightlifting, you can go months without stepping on a platform. So what happens during that time?
Are you supposed to feel like nothing is working until you finally get a chance to prove something?
That’s where a lot of athletes get stuck. They tie their sense of progress to moments that only show up occasionally. And when those moments aren’t there, it feels like nothing is happening.
But that’s not the reality.
Most of your progress is happening in the sessions that don’t feel like anything special at all.
It’s the weeks where you get all your accessory work done.
It’s hitting your volume consistently.
It’s showing up for every session, even when you don’t feel great.
Those things don’t feel like wins at first, but they’re the reason the bigger moments ever happen.
And if we can start to treat those as the wins—not just something we “have to do” to get to the wins—everything starts to change.
I had a really good conversation with another coach about this, and we got into how we actually define what a successful session looks like.
Because most training days aren’t built around hitting a PR. They’re built around getting work done.
So why is success still defined by something that isn’t even the goal of the day?
One of the best things we started doing was just asking the question up front:
- What would make today a successful session?
Sometimes we write it down. Sometimes we just talk it through. But the point is we define it before the session starts.
Because if the goal is to get through the work with focus, consistency, and intent, then that’s what success should look like.
The other piece of this is understanding what we actually control.
You can do everything right—sleep well, eat right, follow the program—and still not hit a big lift on a given day.
That’s part of training.
But if that’s the only way you measure success, you’re putting all your value into something that isn’t fully in your control.
That’s where frustration comes from.
What you can control is showing up, getting the work done, staying focused, and executing the plan.
Those things don’t always stand out, but they’re what build everything over time.
From a coaching standpoint, this becomes even more important.
Because it’s hard to keep athletes bought in when progress feels slow.
And sometimes it is slow.
That doesn’t mean it’s not working.
It just means we need to help them see progress differently.
I had an athlete where we had to take a step back and look at a long-term goal that wasn’t going to happen quickly.
It was going to take time. It was going to take consistency.
So instead of focusing on the end result, we asked a different question:
- What does success actually look like over the next year?
And the answer had nothing to do with numbers.
It was about showing up. Making good decisions. Staying consistent with the process.
That’s not the exciting answer, but it’s the one that works.
It’s easy to get motivated for a big lift.
It’s a lot harder to stay committed to the days that don’t feel like they matter.
But those are the days that build everything.
If you can start to see those sessions as wins—if you can recognize that you’re already moving forward just by doing the work—then you stop waiting for something exciting to happen.
You’re already in it.
And when the big moment finally comes, it doesn’t feel random.
It feels earned.
That’s honestly one of the best parts of coaching.
Not just seeing the lift go up, but knowing everything that led to it.
All the quiet sessions. All the consistent weeks. All the habits that were built when nothing felt exciting.
That’s the real progress.
The PR is just the confirmation.