We are three weeks into our Goggins-Inspired Savage Summer. If you don't know David Goggins, read this blog post, or watch his latest youtube video. I'll warn you in advance, Goggins is hard-core, and his language is not for everyone: Youtube: This message is not for everyone.
Personally, last summer I ran 50 km and later set a personal best on the bench press at 225 lbs. Not bad for a 50 year old. This summer required a whole new set of challenges. Better yet, this summer I have a wing-man. Having recently completed his black-belt grading, Kurtis is more than up for the challenge.
After reading Goggins' book this spring, we devised a new set of objectives. If you know about Goggins, you know his belief in regularly doing something that sucks. He describes it as callousing the mind, and toughing yourself up.
For several weeks this summer, every week we are doing something ridiculously hard. Week 1: 100s Week., Week 2: 30 k, Week 3: Beach Swim, Week 4...
Starting with Week 1: 100s Week, we replaced the rep count of all of our workouts with 100. So, if the routine said: 3 sets of shoulder press at 15 reps, 12 reps, and 8 reps, instead we did 3 sets of 100 reps, 100 reps, and 100 reps. It sucked! A one hour workout turned into 3 hours, where it was hard to lift your arms by the end. In the second week, we ran 30 km. This wasn't bad for me, but the furthest Kurtis had ever run was 6 km, and he only did that earlier in the week. It was a crazy hot day, but he weathered it like a champ. It was a tough haul. This brings us to today: Week 3 challenge: Beach Swim. Today we swam the 4 km of Sauble Beach. Neither of us are swimmers. Our form was far from pretty, but we killed it.
I shake my head at all of the excuses people come up with for not challenging themselves. If you want to be in epic shape: train. Life is that simple. For all of my students reading this: stay hard this summer. Practice your kata. The Fall Karate session is approaching fast!
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