As a beginning endurance athlete, you can expect to improve to some extent through virtually any training approach. Lifting weights three times a week for 12 weeks, for example, will enable you to complete a marathon faster, assuming you were previously doing no exercise whatsoever. Flawed training methods (and bench pressing your way to a marathon is most certainly flawed) will only get you so far, though. Once you’ve squeezed out what little benefit they offer, you need to shift to better methods to make additional progress.

This is what Mauricio Hernandez discovered in 2018. Having completed his first marathon in 4 hours and his first Ironman in just under 12 hours despite falling victim to the all-too-common moderate-intensity training rut, the now 41-year-old entrepreneur from Bogotá, Colombia, found himself spinning his wheels as he worked to get faster via the same method. “Unwilling to settle,” he recalls, “in early 2019 I searched for answers and discovered the 80/20 way.”

Mauricio has since lowered his marathon time to 3:03 and his Ironman time to 10:09. His advice for others who are just beginning their 80/20 journey is simple. “Trust the process,” he says, “and stick to the plan. You won’t see overnight results, so you have to invest the time and be patient.”