You think you’re getting stronger... but you're not.
In strength training, progress is often measured in numbers: pounds lifted, reps completed, sessions logged. These metrics are satisfying because they feel objective. They offer a clear sense of movement forward. Yet at times, this perception of progress obscures a subtle but significant deterioration beneath the surface.
Consider the bench press. You’ve been training consistently, gradually adding weight, and pushing through plateaus. Everything appears to be on track—until one day you catch your reflection mid-lift, or feel the mechanics of the motion shift unnaturally. You realize, perhaps for the first time in weeks, that the bar is no longer reaching your chest. Somewhere along the way, your form has degraded. Without noticing, you’ve traded quality for quantity.
The decision to perform a form reset—to reduce the weight, revisit fundamentals, and rebuild movement patterns—is commendable. But it is also diagnostic. It reveals that something in the system has failed: either the discipline to maintain form over time, or the clarity of the standard itself. In the world of Lean thinking, this would be recognized immediately as a breakdown in standard work. And just like in manufacturing or leadership, failure to follow or define clear standards leads to drift, which often requires painful correction.
Form Drift in the Workplace: Budgeting and Design Missteps
Drift is rarely intentional. In the gym, it occurs when fatigue sets in or when the drive to progress overshadows technique. In business, it manifests when teams operate without well-defined processes, or when ambiguous guidance leads to inconsistent execution. What links all these scenarios is the absence of regular, deliberate review—a failure to continually verify that the standard is not only understood but upheld.
A classic example involves corporate spending. In the absence of a clearly articulated and enforced spending policy, expenses begin to accumulate in a piecemeal fashion. A team member books a premium flight. A department leader approves a new software license. Another employee hosts an offsite meeting without budget scrutiny. None of these actions are individually egregious, and all can be rationalized in the moment. However, over time, they accumulate into a noticeable deviation from fiscal discipline. Eventually, leadership intervenes with a top-down directive to "clamp down" on spending. This intervention, while necessary, often sends unintended signals. Teams may interpret it as a sign of financial instability or loss of trust, even if the underlying issue was simply a lack of standardized expectations.
A second example comes from product development. When design requirements are not clearly defined at the outset, creative teams tend to fill the void. Engineers anticipate features users may want. Marketing proposes enhancements based on intuition rather than data. The design expands—ambitiously, and often admirably—but without alignment. Ultimately, the initiative reaches a point where the scope must be reined in. Features that consumed time and investment are eliminated, not because they lacked value, but because they were never part of the approved scope. The reset in this case is demoralizing. It signals wasted effort and missed opportunities, all stemming from a lack of clear initial standards.
These examples mirror the same pattern observed in the gym: an erosion of form due to absence of structure or vigilance. The bench press bar that no longer touches the chest is not simply a training error—it is a visible symptom of a failure to maintain standards consistently. When form degrades, the integrity of progress is compromised. What appears to be strength is, in fact, instability.
Why Standard Work Prevents the Need for Reset
This is why standard work, as practiced in lean, is so vital. It does not exist to constrain creativity or slow down innovation. Rather, it provides a foundation from which improvement can emerge. Without standard work, there is no reliable way to measure variation or detect problems early. Just as consistent form enables safe and effective training, documented and enforced standards create clarity in execution, accountability in teams, and resilience in systems.
A common misperception is that form resets—whether in fitness or in business—are simply part of the cycle. That we drift, we correct, and we move on. But this overlooks a crucial point: the need for a reset is evidence that our system lacks the capacity for real-time course correction. It suggests that either our standards were insufficiently defined or our adherence to them inadequately reinforced. Resets, therefore, are not strategies for success—they are indicators of failure.
To prevent the need for such resets, organizations and individuals alike must develop mechanisms for continuous alignment. In the gym, this means treating each repetition as an opportunity to assess form, not just effort. It may involve video analysis, coaching, or simply cultivating attentiveness. In business, it means embedding quality checks, clarifying expectations, and ensuring that standard work is not a dusty document but a living framework. At home, it might involve the simple but powerful act of checking in—realigning schedules, re-establishing routines, and ensuring that commitments reflect shared priorities.
Crucially, adherence to standards must be viewed not as rigidity but as discipline. True freedom and flexibility emerge not from improvisation, but from mastery of fundamentals. A jazz musician can improvise only after internalizing scales and structure. Similarly, a team can innovate only when their foundation is solid. The goal is not to eliminate change, but to make change deliberate and intentional as an improvement from standard.
Build Systems That Catch Drift Before It Costs You
When we find ourselves needing a form reset, we should pause and reflect—not just on the mechanics, but on the environment that allowed the drift to occur. Was the standard clearly defined? Was it visible and reinforced? Were there feedback loops in place to catch early deviations? Was there a culture that valued consistency as a form of respect—for the work, for the team, for the mission?
Rebuilding form—whether physical or procedural—is rarely pleasant. It requires humility, patience, and a willingness to confront the truth of where things stand. But it also offers an invaluable opportunity: to recommit to what matters, and to ensure that our path forward is grounded in integrity rather than illusion.
In lifting, as in leadership, the most important gains come not from pushing harder, but from moving better. And the most sustainable success emerges not from resets, but from the quiet, daily discipline of form.