WHY YOU’RE NOT PROGRESSING

By Fergus Crawley + Dr Phil Price 

Most people I speak to who are struggling to fit their training in aren’t actually short on time.

They’re short on focus.

And those are two very different problems with very different solutions.

I sat down with Dr. Phil from The Progress Theory recently to talk about this – and specifically how distractibility is quietly costing athletes more than they realise. Not just in missed training sessions, but in the cumulative drain it puts on everything else around them.

The leaks you’re not noticing

The phone next to the bed. The three minutes between sets that turns into ten. Checking things that don’t need checking. Watching a YouTube video over breakfast and calling it research.

These things don’t feel like much on their own. But they add up. And when they do, it doesn’t just cost you training time — it costs you the dog walk, the quiet coffee on a Sunday morning, the bit of headspace that makes the rest of the week feel manageable.

The average worker gets around four minutes of uninterrupted focus on any one task. Four minutes. We’ve built entire days around being interrupted and then wonder why everything feels harder than it should.

Environment over willpower

Here’s what Phil made clear – and what I’ve found to be true in my own training: you can’t willpower your way out of distraction. You have to engineer your environment so the distraction isn’t available in the first place.

The alarm clock outside the bedroom. The phone left in another room. The chair in the corner with no screens allowed near it. These aren’t dramatic life overhauls. They’re small, deliberate decisions that remove the path of least resistance.

Because the path of least resistance right now is doom scrolling. And it’s been designed that way.

What this has to do with your training

Everything, actually.

The less distracted you are, the more compliant you are with your training. The more compliant you are, the faster you progress. The faster you progress, the less time the whole thing takes. And the less time it takes, the more space you create for the things you’re sacrificing to pursue the goal in the first place.

It’s not a productivity lecture. It’s just maths.

Have a look at where you’re leaking time this week. It’ll be in more places than you think.

If you want help structuring your training – how to build a hybrid training week, how to periodise strength and endurance together, how to avoid the interference effect and balance your nutrition — you can apply to work with us here.

Or, if you’d like an introduction to hybrid training – you can download our free hybrid training guide here.