When you first see the things Ido Portal can do with his body, and the incredible progress his students make in short periods of time (3 months, 6 months, 1 year) it seems almost magical. The evidence is right there in front of you, and yet it doesn't seem possible with traditional training methods.

Almost 10 years later, I can now tell you: It isn't.

The 'normal' way we are told to train; doing a few sets of a variety of different exercises, and then resting for 48-72 hours to allow your muscles to recover before training again, simply doesn't allow for these type of results. It's such a dramatic difference that the results Ido's method can get you in 3 months will often trump what you might accomplish in 3-4 years of traditional styles.

After years of training with Ido & taking various workshops with him all around the world, he explained to me this 'secret sauce' at an internship in Sydney in 2017.

In 2 words, this secret sauce is work capacity. Work capacity is the amount of work your body can do and recover from, and critically, it's not a static amount. Just like everything else about us, work capacity can adapt and increase. Basically, if you train every 3rd day, your body will learn to recover from training within 3 days- but if you train 3 times every day (within reason) your body will learn to recover from and adapt to training much more quickly.

Instead of thinking your body needs days to recover after a workout, imagine that each workout has a certain amount of benefit proportional to the amount of work you're doing. Hence, by increasing the frequency of training, and doing far more work in the same period of time (density), you can both make far more progress and reach levels well beyond what you would with traditional training methods. For instance, for me to get my one arm handstand, I wasn't doing 3 sets every other day. I wasn't doing 3 sets every day. I was doing 20-40 sets on each arm, every day, just on my handstand work. Above a certain level of skill or performance, this 3 sets every other day sorta thing just completely falls apart.

This method is not unique to Ido. Whether they know it or not, most elite coaches and athletes abide by similar rules. One of my BJJ instructors, 12x world champ Caio Terra, got his black belt in 3 years and was winning black belt world championships within 5 years. When asked how he got his black belt so quickly, he summarized his method nicely: "I trained more in my first year than most most people do in a decade".

Apply this ideology with purpose and caution, but if you want to make more progress in any area of your training or your life, remember this lesson of work capacity and volume (work). They are your best friends and biggest weapons for driving progress.