By Coach Shawn
Somewhere along the way folks who workout can pick up these silly ideas that:
If training or a workout is or looks hard, feels hard…
(Before) “I’ll just avoid, skip or won’t do that…”
(During) “I am doing something wrong, I am weak, I suck, I hate this, I want this to be over, I am not as good as everyone else…”
(After) “I should have done better,” “I was the last one how pathetic,” “Everyone else crushed it except me”
And this is a non-useful loop:
Before: avoid the hard thing.
During: judge yourself inside the hard thing.
After: use the hard thing as evidence against yourself.
That level of thinking kills momentum, progress and blocks building a relationship with resilience and perseverance.
…It’s supposed to be hard.
Not reckless or careless
Not painful or pushing through pain,
Not chaotic.
But…challenging? Yes.
Demanding…yes.
Uncomfortable at times…yes.
Out of your comfort zone?…hell yes.
Requiring something from you, only always.
What if the lever isn’t in the program…it’s your relationship to difficulty?
Most people are not limited by a fitness program.
They’re limited by how they respond to and when things get hard.
When the workout burns…or is more difficult than expected.
When the workout did not unfold how we thought it would for us.
When breathing gets heavy and I hear that voice say slow down as fatigue and tiredness are coming.
When the mind says “quit…”
That moment?
That is the work. And part of the work within fitness and training is the mental work.
This is the space to improve how we handle difficult things, situations and scenarios.
Not Avoid it, distract from it, negotiate with it.
Or run away from it.
Training is the ultimate sandbox and training grounds for this.
Not only for our bodies, for our thinking.
Adaptation requires resistance
This is not just philosophy. It’s biology.
Your body only changes when it has a reason to.
Strength, endurance, resilience, all of it comes from:
Stress → adaptation
Muscle tissue breaks down → rebuilds stronger
Cardiovascular system gets pushed → becomes more efficient
Nervous system gets challenged → becomes more capable
No resistance = no adaptation.
Anything “easy” including working out might feel good in the moment…
…but it doesn’t change you.
The psychological side: we are wired to avoid discomfort
Your brain’s job is not to make you better.
It’s to keep you safe. To Survive.
So when things get uncomfortable, it sends signals:
“Slow down”
“This is too much”
“You should stop”
“You’re tired”
Those signals feel real.
But they are often protective, not predictive.
Meaning:
They show up before you actually need to stop.
This is where training becomes mental.
And it is each of our jobs to internally coach ourselves in a healthy, supportive way through the resistance.
Not in a “grind yourself into the ground” way.
But in a:
“I can be here, inside this discomfort, and stay steady” kind of way.
Most people never build a relationship with discomfort
They bounce between two extremes:
Avoid it completely
Or smash into it with no control
Neither works long term.
What we’re after is different: Consistent Exposure. Familiarity. Self Trust.
Learning that:
Your lungs burning won’t hurt you…and you have more…
Your muscles fatiguing is part of the process…normal, and to be expected…
Slowing down doesn’t mean you suck, are losing it, or out of shape…it’s what happens to a body as it’s being challenged in different ways…
You can stay composed under stress…
You can develop a POWERFUL and EMPOWERING inner voice through discomfort…and
That is not only a skill to build- it’s a superpower in life.
And it transfers far beyond the gym.
Choose hard (instead of reacting to it)
There’s a big difference between:
“This is happening to me”
and
“I chose this”
When you walk into a workout knowing:
It will challenge you
It will get uncomfortable
It will require focus
…and you choose it anyway…
You take control of the experience.
That shift alone changes everything.
Effort is the adaptation
This is where growth lives
We don’t chase unnecessary suffering for the sake of it.
We train with intention.
But we also don’t pretend this should feel easy.
Because it shouldn’t.
This is practice for life.
Life will ask things of you:
Physically
Mentally
Emotionally
Training is where we build the capacity to meet those moments.
What if the discomfort in your training isn’t a problem but the doorway to the growth you need for whatever is coming next?
Loving you,
Coach Shawn