Here’s a secret:
The number of pounds or kilograms on the bar, the number of rounds you get, the number of reps you get, your time to finish… none of that matters.
Not really.
Your quadriceps have no concept of the difference between the number 100 and the number 105 or why 50 pounds would feel radically different from 50 kilograms. Your heart doesn’t understand the construct of a 24-hour day broken into 60-minute chunks of 60 seconds each. Your lungs don’t know what the word “round” means.
Muscles (including your heart) respond to things like time under tension and intensity of contraction. Tissues respond to stressors which elicit adaptations. That’s how you get fitter. And doing things like putting your muscles under tension, contracting them with intensity, and adding physiological stress to your body… and then doing those things for months, years, and decades, is one of the best ways to get and stay healthy for the longterm.
All the numbers – sets, reps, weights, rounds, times – all of that stuff is just an elaborate game we play to put handles on the science of fitness.
Don’t get me wrong – that game can be super useful. It can be fun to play, and it can (and often is) so fun that we want to keep playing it for years and years, which is, I think, the ultimate goal: to regularly exercise for as many years of your life as possible.
But just like any other game that you play thousands of times, you won’t always “win.” Numbers won’t always go the way you want them to. Mini goals that you set won’t always be achieved. Numbers that were once easy sometimes become hard again.
But when that happens, remember that all of this is just a game. And, just like the game of tag, the point of this game isn’t to win; it’s to keep playing the game for as long as possible.