Comfort is the graveyard of results

Comfort is the graveyard of results.

Matching intent and execution is essential for making the most of every workout.

For example, warm-ups and movement work emphasize position, engagement, range of motion, feeling your body in space, and combining all of this to create new movement options and a mental model of how to use that movement to access them during a workout.

Endurance work requires efficient and consistent effort for sustained periods without tipping over the edge into performative efforts that salve your ego but limit your long-term progress.

Speed, power, and strength work require aggressive effort in a very focused direction, rep after rep, set after set, session after session.

The needs of the session dictate how you direct your energy. Sheer effort alone is not enough. You must channel it precisely to accumulate the specific stress necessary to create the fitness you're chasing.

You must also be willing to push yourself in a way you haven't previously.

Every workout must push you outside of your comfort zone and force your body to do something better than it did before. You can accomplish this with more volume, higher density, more intensity (more weight or the same weight but moving faster), a greater range of motion, or better execution.

Something has to be different. Repeating workouts without changing anything will, at best, maintain your fitness. But it won't improve it.

Both intent and pushing beyond your comfort zone require that you pay attention. If you're going through the motions, no matter how hard you work, you're not training; you're exercising.

The quality of your effort is as important as the quality of your program. The best workout in the world is useless if execution doesn't match the desired intent.

If you're feeling stuck, ask yourself what the limiting factor is: intent, an inability to push beyond your comfort zone, or the quality of your program. Because when all three are aligned, it's shocking how quickly you can progress.

This isn't fun

Training for SOF is not fun.

After their selection and qualification courses, we often ask our clients how their new jobs are going.

One of the most common themes is that they've realized why the training and selection process was so hard. It's because it reflects the job itself. Selection sucks because it's a necessary filter to find people who are capable of doing a job that sucks.

Many days as a special operator are as hard as days in selection. You'll be too hot, too cold, soaking wet, going inhuman lengths of time without sleep, with little food, and you have to pay attention to mundane details that mean the difference between you and your friends coming home alive.

The cool guy pictures of tricked-out gear and Hollywood-ready action are rare punctuation marks between long periods of working harder and longer than normal people are willing to. Most of it is not fun. Most of it does not look cool. Most of it, frankly, sucks. But a specific type of person is drawn to it. They find meaning in it. They excel at it. They see it as a path toward something that matters to them and are willing to pay the price.

SOF selection is the same. Soul-crushing doubt and relentless work are much more common than heroic efforts and cool-guy montages. Many people realize this during the course, say the infamous words "This just isn't for me," and walk away. They're right.

The training process for SOF mirrors this. Its purpose is not to be fun. It's to prepare professionals for their occupations. It's the first place where pros begin to separate themselves from tourists.

This training is unsuitable for "lifestyle enthusiasts" who want to "train like a special operator." That goal is usually based on an imaginary, glorified, and inaccurate version of what that means. There are programs that cater to that. They're not ours.

Resilience, adaptability, and being physically well-rounded are laudable aspirations, and they don't require cosplaying a SOF operator. Like many non-military people training with us, you can find meaningful goals that are personally salient, require some mix of these abilities, and aren't just another silly fitness entertainment trap.

How to build robust skills

Mental models are the backbone of expertise, guiding how we execute skills efficiently.

Experts know what to focus on, what to ignore, and when to act. This leads to better outcomes with less effort.

Why? Complex tasks overwhelm our limited short-term memory. Mental models automate chunks of thought and action, freeing up attention to adjust performance on the fly.

You don't build these models by reading or listening. You build them by doing. Practice turns knowledge into skill.

Good coaching accelerates this process by providing a solid starting model, reducing the variables you need to juggle, and helping you focus on what matters most. With practice and feedback, you refine your mental model faster.

But, automating a skill too early can trap you at a novice level, leaving potential growth untapped. Trainees often hit plateaus with "good enough" skills that can't take them further without being rebuilt.

For example, someone stuck in repetitive workouts—think grueling metcons, runs for time, and heavy squats—may plateau with joint pain and limited movement variety. They've overfocused on outcomes instead of building a variety of movement skills, and they lose resiliency and efficiency in the process. Their workouts feel draining, requiring high effort for modest results.

To move past this plateau, they must step back, rebuild neglected movement patterns, and focus on weaker areas. This means embracing short-term setbacks and feeling like a beginner again to lay the foundation for long-term gains.

To master any skill, adopt a growth mindset. Be process-oriented, accept temporary performance dips, and experiment with new variables. True mastery means repeating this cycle endlessly, constantly refining, always growing, and never thinking you're too good to revisit and refine the fundamentals and learn new strategies.

You will get hit

SOF selection will hurt.

You will struggle, stumble, and drag yourself through moments that feel like eternities, in which you can barely remember why you're doing this. You'll question yourself, and everyone and everything around you will question you, too.

You'll hit your body's breaking point and then have to find a way to keep going. All around you will be people who fail at this. They will go away. Some of them will be surprising. People who are more athletic, faster, stronger, or skilled will quit early and often.

The machine is relentless. It has been refined for decades to find everybody's limits. You can't out-exercise it. If you can do 100 pushups, they send you into the surf for a fresh coat of wet and sandy and tell you to do 105 more. Eventually, you can't. And you will pay. Because that's how it works. Everyone must pay. It's why you're there.

Everyone must take a hit. Everyone must suffer. The course will take something from you. The game is rigged in a way that's important to understand. You can't win - you don't graduate or get selected - by being flawless and unscathed. You win by paying the price and persevering. Pain lights your path to stay in the game.

Bruce Lee wrote, "A man strikes you, make him bleed. He makes you bleed, you break his bones. He breaks your bones, kill him. Being hit is inevitable, strike back twice as hard."

This is how selection works, too. You will get hit. You will hurt. But you can experience hurt without feeling harmed. You can be in pain without suffering, without feeling sorry for yourself. And you can trade that pain for progress. You will have to give more than you'd like, but at each stage, you must let it go to move forward. The only way through is to keep giving more until it's over and you're still standing, bloodied but unbowed.

Every time you embrace the pain without breaking is a victory over the course. That's how you win. Don't delude yourself into thinking you can make it through without getting hit. Accept that you'll get hit, hit back harder, and keep going. Accept that there is nothing the course can take from you that you are not already willing to give.