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You are here: Home / Fitness / 18 Months. Heads Down. Surprise Yourself.

18 Months. Heads Down. Surprise Yourself.

January 30, 2022 By Joel Runyon Leave a Comment

Most people don’t really quit. They just give up too soon.

Most people don't really fail.

They just give up too soon.

— Joel Runyon (@joelrunyon) January 29, 2022

Most of your BIG goal progress are stunted because you have no idea what it takes to get to your goal.

You can see results quickly on some things. Aesthetics for example – despite what common perception – is sometimes the easiest to change in 8-12-26 weeks.

But if you want to change who you are as a person, athlete, career-wise or something else fundamental about yourself. You need time.

The challenge: 18 months. Heads down. Surprise yourself.

I joined my gym 18 months ago. I’ll do a longer post on them sometimes (you can watch me post the workouts on IG), but it’s horrible in the best way possible.

They have real progressive overload programming interspersed with assessment challenges with names like “1 800 f*ck you” (they renamed this publicly, but the original name is much more representative of it’s intent).

It’s horrible.

I love it.

I realized a couple years ago – for me personally – even though I’ve programmed workouts for thousands of people, I basically only have enough bandwidth to do 1 of 2 things personally.

I have enough bandwidth to either:

1) Program the workouts myself

Or

2) Do them.

Since the doing is the important part, I decided to outsource my programming to someone else. I let them worry about that.

So, I have an informal deal with my gym:

  • They program workouts for me to do.
  • I show up and do them (with minimal b*tching allowed).

The coaches program out progressions weeks and months out ahead of time, but I don’t even look.

I don’t want to negotiate. How difficult the workout will be is not a variable in whether or not it will be done. The constant is “I will be at the gym 5 minutes before the workout starts.” Period.

I don’t get too smart. I don’t negotiate. I don’t try to procrastinate through interrogation.

Every day, I show up, do the work.

I’ve been frustrated, bored, tired, beat up, exhausted, too many times to count.

But I kept showing up. Tweaking things here and there. Showing up even when I didn’t really want to show up.

200+ workouts. Nearly 18 months.

Every workout is hard. But lately I noticed a shift.

There’s one type of hard – a feeling when you finish a workout and you feel like you got your ass handed to you.

Then, there’s a feeling you get where you finish a workout and you feel like you got your ass handed to you, but then you handed it right back.

Yeah, it’s hard. It’s supposed to be hard. But you were prepared and you handled it.

Lately, a bunch of the workouts have been feeling much closer to #2.

200+ workouts. 18 months. And I’m starting to feel a difference.

This might be an arbitrary number, but you need two things.

Consistency. Time.

If you want to change something fundamental about yourself – ask yourself: can you work hard on something for 18 months?

You’re going to have to change things. You’ll probably get looks at some points. You’ll have to get uncomfortable. You’ll need to change your routine. What if people talk? Let them.

If they think you’re weird?

Okay.

Be weird for 18 months.

Make that the challenge.

Change your morning alarm for 18 months.

Stop indulging every tastebud for 18 months.

Skip Friday nights out for 18 months.

Work on that business idea you’ve had for 18 months.

Lose some sleep for 18 months.

Do something different. Something big. Work hard at it. Show up every day and stick to it for 18 months.

Then, surprise yourself.

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About Joel Runyon

I started IMPOSSIBLE to push myself to try to live a life worth writing about by pushing my limits, living an adventure & telling a great story by doing the impossible. You can get free updates in your inbox via your new favorite newsletter, free fitness training tutorials, and see all my businesses at Impossible X and our philanthropic efforts at Impossible.org

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I created IMPOSSIBLE to help people push their limits by taking on impossible challenges and living a good story.

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