Fitness Shortcuts

Here's the thing: while everyone's busy arguing about the perfect training split and whether you should eat 1.6g or 2.2g of protein per kilogram of body weight, you could have just started lifting heavy things and eating well. Sometimes the best approach isn't the most complex one it's the one you'll actually stick with.

Enter heuristics: those beautiful mental shortcuts that cut through the noise and get you moving in the right direction. Think of them as your "good enough" rules that work most of the time, for most people, without requiring a masters degree in exercise physiology.

There are many ways to become fitter. It doesn't have to be complicated, painful or even that time consuming.

What the Hell Are Heuristics Anyway?

A heuristic is basically a rule of thumb, a quick decision-making tool that gets you to a decent solution without having to analyze every possible variable. It's like GPS for your brain, but instead of calculating the mathematically optimal route considering traffic patterns, construction zones, and the current price of gas, it just says "take the highway and you'll probably get there just fine."

In fitness terms, instead of spending three hours researching whether Bulgarian split squats are 2.3% more effective than regular lunges for left-side glute activation in pre-menopausal women aged 25-35, you just do some form of single-leg work and call it a day. Revolutionary, right?

My Favorite Fitness Heuristics (That Actually Work)

After three decades of watching people tie themselves in knots over details that matter about as much as the color of your gym socks, here are some simple rules that'll get you 90% of the results with 10% of the stress:

Training Heuristics

• "If the weight challenges you by the end of the set you're in the right zone" Forget calculating your precise 1RM based on a formula from 1987. If you can complete your reps (most people benefit from a 5-20 rep range) with good form but the last couple feel challenging, you've found your sweet spot. It is all about effort.

• "Begin with big compound movements, focus on smaller exercises afterward" Initiate your workout with major multi-joint exercises like squats, deadlifts, rows, and presses while your energy is high. Save exercises like bicep curls and calf raises for later. Starting with smaller muscles can lead to their fatigue during big movements, reducing the effectiveness of tiring out the large prime movers.

• "Most sets should feel like work, not like a warm-up" If every rep feels easy and comfortable, congratulations you're officially maintaining your current fitness level. If you actually want to improve, the weight should challenge you enough that the last few reps require some actual effort. Go to the point of where you have maybe 1-2 reps in reserve...or even failure.

• "Ask yourself: 'Could I have done more?' If the answer is 'easily' yes, you probably should have" Most people leave 2-3 reps in the tank on every set "just to be safe." Sometimes being safe is just being lazy in disguise.

• "If you're sore the next day, you can rest assured you had a tough workout—but you don't need soreness to make progress" DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) is a pretty reliable sign that you challenged your muscles, especially if you did something novel or ramped up intensity. But don't chase soreness like it's the holy grail of gains. You can absolutely get stronger and build muscle without feeling soreness.

• "A 5 minute workout is infinitely better than no workout" Don't have an hour? Do 10 minutes. Don't have 10 minutes? Do 5. Microdose on exercise. Consistency beats perfection, and something is always better than the perfect workout you keep putting off until tomorrow.

Nutrition Heuristics

• "Eat food your great-grandmother would recognize" If your great-grandmother wouldn't know what the hell that food product is, maybe skip it. She didn't need to read a PhD thesis to figure out that an apple was better than apple-flavored sugar stick with 47 unpronounceable ingredients.

• "Fill half your plate with things that grew out of the ground" Vegetables and fruits. It's not rocket science. They have vitamins, fiber, and won't make you feel like garbage an hour later. Plus, they're pretty hard to overeat; when's the last time you binged on broccoli? Nobody has ever gotten fat eating too many vegetables. And bananas are not fattening either!

• "If you're not hungry DON'T eat. Revolutionary concept, I know. Your body has these amazing built-in hunger and fullness cues that work pretty well if you haven't completely destroyed them with years of extreme dieting or constantly eating while distracted. Eat because you are hungry not because you are bored, sad, happy, polite, angry, thirsty etc.

Recovery Heuristics

• "Sleep more than you think you need" Most people are walking around half-dead from sleep deprivation and wondering why their workouts suck and they can't lose weight. Seven to nine hours isn't a suggestion it's a requirement for optimal human function.

• "If everything hurts, take a day off" Your body isn't trying to sabotage your gains when it sends pain signals. It's trying to keep you functional for the long term. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is rest or better yet, go for a walk.

• "Stress is stress, whether it's from squats or your boss." Your body's nervous system doesn't differentiate between the stress from a heavy deadlift and the stress from a difficult day at work. Both trigger the same hormonal cascade, primarily releasing cortisol, to help you cope. If your life is already kicking your ass, adding a high-intensity workout on top might be the final push that leads to burnout, poor sleep, and even illness. The most productive thing you can do on those days is to dial back your training intensity or take a rest day. Your body needs a chance to recover from all forms of stress, not just the physical kind.

Why Heuristics Work (And Why Perfect Plans Don't)

The dirty secret about fitness is that consistency beats perfection every single time. The person who does "pretty good" workouts four times a week for a year will demolish the person who does "perfect" workouts twice a month because they keep getting paralyzed by analysis.

Heuristics work because they lower the barrier to action. Instead of needing to make 47 decisions every time you walk into the gym, you have a simple framework that gets you moving. Instead of meal planning like you're preparing for a NASA mission, you have basic guidelines that work in most situations.

Dr. Herbert Simon (who won a Nobel Prize for this stuff) called it "satisficing" choosing solutions that are good enough rather than optimal. In the real world, "good enough" executed consistently beats "perfect" executed sporadically.

The Bottom Line: KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid

Look, I'm not saying precision and nuance never matters. If you're a competitive athlete or you've been training consistently for years and need to squeeze out the last 2% of performance, then sure, sweat the small stuff. But for the other 98% of us just trying to be healthy, strong, and not completely fall apart as we age, these simple rules will get you there.

The fitness industry profits from complexity. They can't sell you a program that says "lift heavy things, eat real food, sleep enough, repeat." But that's basically what works. Everything else is just marketing disguised as science.

So the next time someone tries to sell you on their revolutionary 73 phase periodization scheme or their proprietary macro cycling protocol, take a step back. Ask yourself: "Is this actually better, or is it just more complicated?" Nine times out of ten, you'll find that the simple approach you've been avoiding isn't inferior it's just not sexy enough to sell.

Your body doesn't care if your program came from a peer-reviewed journal or a napkin at the gym. It cares if you're consistently challenging it, feeding it well, and letting it recover. Everything else is just noise.

Want more evidence-based fitness content without the BS? Follow along as we cut through the marketing and get back to what actually works.