The Discipline Between the Sessions. You Skipped a Workout. Now What?

It has been more than a year since I started following Brent Fikowski’s The Professor Project programming. I’ve grown to love it. I’ve grown to be loyal to it—and genuinely excited to attack it each day. With its double-session structure, there’s so much potential to develop across multiple domains—strength, skill, conditioning, recovery—if you just commit and follow through. But over time, I’ve noticed something: life happens. Work schedules shift, energy dips, and there are days when the motivation just doesn’t show up. Sometimes it’s just a single skipped piece… other times, I miss the entire session altogether. And lately, I’ve found myself asking: Does that make me less of an athlete? If I want to reach the level of those elite, competitive athletes I look up to—how can I get there when I’m occasionally falling short?

Here’s what I’ve come to realize: skipping a piece doesn’t disqualify you from greatness—it’s how you respond that shapes your trajectory. Missing training is normal. It’s human. And if you're in this journey for the long haul, you'll come to see that it’s not about being perfect, but about being consistent and intentional. When you skip something, there are usually three paths: you can catch up on it, adjust your week, or let it go and move forward. Each option is valid—it just depends on context. If it’s a critical strength progression or a high-priority skill piece, catching up makes sense—but smartly. Don’t stack heavy sessions back-to-back or overload yourself to compensate. Instead, slide it in later in the week or swap it with something lighter.

In other cases, it makes more sense to adjust your week—shift the missed session, drop something less important, and keep the structure intact. And then there are the times when the best call is to simply move on. No guilt. No cramming. Just a clean reset and recommitment to the plan you’ve got today. The more emotionally mature you get as an athlete, the more you learn to let go when needed and trust that one missed piece isn’t going to erase months of hard work.

But even when we do show up and hit every session, another challenge often creeps in—staying disciplined to the structure and resisting the temptation to go off-script. In my journey, I’ve noticed that there are so many areas in my job as a coach and trainer where I can easily fall into doing a fun workout that’s not actually written for me that day. Sometimes, I’ll see a movement I love—like Ring Muscle Ups—or a spicy piece I know I’d crush, and I find myself going off-plan to hit it either before or after my programmed work. It makes me wonder: Is that a good habit? Is me doing more than what’s prescribed making me better? Or is it just satisfying my ego in the moment? It’s something I’m learning to be more honest about. More volume doesn’t always mean more progress. And deviating from your own plan too often—especially just to chase what feels good—can chip away at the intent and integrity of your programming.

Discipline, I’ve realized, is more than just showing up—it’s about following through on what you said you’d do, even when there are distractions, temptations, or “bonus” workouts that look appealing. Sticking to the plan, even when it’s uncomfortable or unglamorous, is what builds the capacity to truly level up—not just physically, but mentally. That’s the hard part. But it’s also what separates the ones who train for mastery from the ones who just chase sweat.

As a coach and someone who's in the gym environment every day, I’m constantly surrounded by opportunities to hop into a class, test a fun metcon, or jump into a team workout that isn’t written in my program. Sometimes it’s for community, sometimes it’s for fun—but other times, if I’m being honest, it’s ego. It’s a feeling of, “I’ll do what’s written for me after, I just really want to hit this workout first because it’ll feel good to crush it.” The problem is, that logic adds up over time. When I keep making those off-plan decisions, I’m not truly following my path—I’m just cherry-picking based on emotion and short-term gratification. That doesn’t mean you can’t be flexible or have fun, but if the goal is long-term growth and high-level performance, you need to respect the plan as it’s written—not just the parts you enjoy most. Programming is a system. It’s built with intention, balance, and progression in mind. When we constantly swap, add, or skip based on preference, we lose that structure—and with it, we compromise results. That’s where discipline becomes a muscle you need to train: learning to stick to the boring foundational work, showing up for the accessory pieces that don’t give you a pump, or pacing yourself instead of going all-out just to “win” a workout that wasn’t even on your calendar.

In reality, staying true to your program is a form of self-respect. It’s saying, “I trust the process. I trust the intention behind this structure. I trust that my results will come from consistency, not chaos.” The more I lean into that mindset, the more I realize that my progress doesn’t come from doing more—it comes from doing what matters most, with intention. Every skipped session, every off-plan workout, every decision to chase the fun thing instead of the right thing—that’s a choice. And over time, those choices either reinforce my goals or pull me further away from them.

So when those moments of temptation hit—and they will—I remind myself: my plan has a purpose. If I want to be a Smart and technical athlete, if I want to grow as an effective coach and a better leader, then I have to model the kind of consistency and commitment I expect from others. That means being honest when I stray, realigning when I slip, and always coming back to the blueprint that’s been carefully designed to move me forward. Not sideways. Not in circles. Forward.

If you’re anything like me—driven, passionate, and inspired by the elite athletes you see on the competition floor—it’s easy to fall into the trap of comparison. But the truth is, those athletes didn’t rise to the top by never missing a session or always feeling motivated. They got there by doing the work, trusting the process, and choosing discipline over impulse. They understand that success in this sport isn't built on perfect streaks—it’s built on intentional reps, smart decisions, and the ability to bounce back when things don’t go perfectly.

Skipping a session doesn’t make you less of an athlete. Letting that missed piece define you—or constantly chasing “make-up” workouts just to prove something—might. So the next time you find yourself debating whether to catch up, move on, or go off-plan, ask yourself: what’s going to move me closer to who I want to become—not just today, but in the long run? You need to do what matters most—with purpose, with patience, and with pride. That’s the real work. And that’s where real progress lives.