At around 3:00 pm, the strength room in the community center across the street from our high school feels warm and smells musky. There’s a lot of young muscle in the room. Some young women. Mostly young men. Some there to look prettier, pulling weight and strutting past the strength room mirror. (That would be the young men…) Some are there to work out for high school sports. As equipment creaks, afternoon sunlight presses hard through the windows to the black floor, adding an infusion of heated rubber to the mix and blinding anyone facing west.

By 5:30 or so, the students go home for dinner. The number of strength devotees falls and the average age in the room rises significantly. And a bit later, early- to mid-evening, the gym is pretty quiet; that’s my favorite time to go.

I started routine visits to the strength room two years ago. “Functional fitness” was my physical therapist’s recommendation. To start my journey, design my program, and ensure I showed up,  I hired a trainer. At the beginning of our first meeting, I said to him, “I’ve never liked going to the gym.” He smiled benignly and replied, “Well, we’ll see; you might.”

And I did. For many months after he launched me, I went to the strength room and followed the two routines he designed for me.

But, as I looked at others’ workouts, particularly the folks around my age who looked really fit, I thought, “That looks cool, should I be doing what they’re doing? Should I add that stretch or lift to my routine? ”

And I drifted. A little at a time, I swapped something in or swapped something out to the point that I really didn’t have my routines anymore and, I discovered, I wasn’t making much progress.

Apparently, this was not unusual.

I found an Instagram video (of course… where else would one turn for fitness advice?) that said as much: The idea of working on a program is that you set your goal, you work out your program, and you show up time after time to do that program. Your program. It’s OK to look around. It’s OK to pause periodically and ask the question, “Is there anything I need to change?” But you risk your goals and your progress if you change your program every time you see someone else do something that looks cool.

‘nuf said. Stick with the program.

Nick Miller is President of Clarity Advantage based in Concord, MA. He assists banks and credit unions to generate more and more profitable relationships, faster, with business clients, their owners, and their employees through better sales strategies and execution. Additional articles on Clarity’s web site.