Patience IS the Shortcut

Everyone wants the fastest route. Back to sport. Back to lifting. Down on the scale. But the reality is this: progress worth keeping is built on patience.

Rehab: Don’t Rush the Return

When you’re coming back from injury, the urge is to dive right back into your old training program. You remember what you used to do, and you want to get there yesterday. But your tissues aren't as ready as your mind is. After time away from training, your body is in a detrained state. That means tendons, ligaments, and muscles have lost some of their resiliency, or ability to handle the loads you once did. If you throw yourself back into the same program as before, you’re asking unprepared tissues to carry a load they aren’t ready for.

That’s how re-injury happens.

Instead, we should rebuild gradually. Load your tissues at the right dose, with progressions that line up with your current capacity, not your past PRs. It takes patience. But that patience is what gets you all the way back, stronger and more resilient than before.

Weight Loss: Sit in the Process

Patience is just as critical in fat loss.

One of my favorite reminders comes from natural bodybuilding coach Alberto Nuñez: “Fat loss is linear, weight loss is not.”

Your body fat can steadily decrease over weeks and months, while the number on the scale bounces up and down day to day.

Why? Because water retention, hormones, digestion, food bulk, sleep, and stress all play a role in your daily weight. None of these erase your fat loss progress, they just mask it.

If you panic every time the scale jumps, you’ll be tempted to slash calories harder, add more cardio, or quit altogether. But if you stay patient — if you “sit in it” long enough — the trend will show itself. The scale will eventually reflect the real change happening in your body composition.

The Bigger Picture: Patience is Progress

In both rehab and weight loss, the lesson is the same:

• Don’t rush the process.

• Respect your current capacity.

• Trust the long-term trend, not the day-to-day noise.

Patience isn’t passive. It’s active discipline. Showing up, doing the right work, and giving your body the time it needs to adapt.

That’s the real shortcut, because skip this and you're on the long and winding road to chronic re-injury.