A large amount of fitness content is built around “doing hard things.”
Whether it be running or lifting or following a specific diet, the entire industry is largely founded upon doing hard stuff.
Yet that often leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to create results.
It’s not just about doing hard things.
It’s about doing necessary things that will lead to your goals… whether or not you enjoy them or feel like doing them.
Hard things aren’t valuable just because they’re hard.
They’re valuable because they often provide a stimulus that is necessary for us to achieve things we want to achieve.
Knocking down a wall in your house with nothing but a spoon would be difficult.
That doesn’t mean it’s worth doing.
Lifting weights on a regular basis because you want to be strong enough to run an ultramarathon in the mountains or play with your grandkids can also be difficult.
That probably is worth doing.
We sell this idea of “hard” because, very honestly, fitness is hard.
And if you want to achieve fitness goals, you’re probably going to have to do things you don’t particularly enjoy doing.
Whether that be lifting weights.
Or doing particular varieties of cardio.
Or eating salads.
Or fueling your training sessions.
Or stretching – man, I hate stretching.
All of these things can be hard.
And different people would probably categorize them as different levels of hard.
Like… I’m pretty okay lifting weights and doing unpleasant cardio almost every day.
I do not like stretching.
Yet a fairly large barrier for me in terms of progress is muscle tightness – specifically in my calves and hamstrings – so I have to figure out a way to make myself do it if I actually care about progress.
Whereas a yoga teacher might feel the complete opposite.
They might love stretching and find lifting to be a chore.
All of that’s fine, and we should pursue fitness goals that largely play to our strengths. That way, we actually get to spend most of our training time doing things that we actually enjoy doing.
Yet for most of us, there will be deficits.
There will be things that we just kinda have to do in order to make progress, even though they’re not our favorite things.
As soon as I finish writing this post, I’m going to take 3 minutes to stretch my calves before I start training clients for the day.
I’m not stoked about it, but I’m going to go do it.
Because it’s something I need to do in order to achieve my goals.
Hard things are fine.
They’re probably necessary.
Yet they’re not valuable solely because they’re hard.
They’re valuable because they support something you’re trying to achieve and they happen to be hard.