We’re 45 days into 75 Hard…
We have momentum, there have been stretches of challenging days, and every day my body and mind are yearning for the day it’s over.
I’ve never trained that many days straight weight lifting in the gym, I had done 7 days/week for 2 weeks before, but never this long…
Keep in mind, weights are only the first workout - many days the second workout has been 45 minutes walking in subzero temps, lowest was around -20 to -25 Fahrenheit.
My body can’t seem to fully recover, I’m napping more than usual. My wrist has been fighting off and on pain since Day 22.
Work and business have been very hectic with travel and the mental daily demands, and somehow we’re still getting our water in, even if we forgot to drink a bunch throughout the day, and we’re resorting to downing 4 bottles of water in 2 hours not too long before bed, which obviously affects the sleep.
Do I recommend this program? Yes and no.
Yes:
Do you need a kickstart mentally? Do you struggle with having daily discipline in your life and have never really established a routine or system around health for yourself?
100% recommend this program.
No:
Are you already a high performer? Already have systems in your life working well for you? I find this program is more of a hindrance to progress in something that’s already working than helping.
For me I’ve been in the gym 15 years straight minimum 3x/week, it’s 2nd nature for me to be in the gym and workout usually 25-28x in the gym/month but my body needs rest.
Well it’s Day 45, and despite all the protein snacks and shakes I hate from hitting my protein diet, I’m still making it happen, but every day gets harder and harder.
I had what seemed to be a good night’s sleep, I just cranked out an hour and a half of early deep work in the morning, and then…
WHAM
8am hits, and I haven’t felt this kind of burnout or fatigue since I had mono.
So what does my stubborn self do?
I get two Bang energy drinks for the day, take a 30 minute nap, and we manage to make it through Day 45.
Day 46, I can’t even wake up…
Forget the early morning routine, forget the 1.5hrs of deep work…
…once I slowly creek my eyes open, I lay in bed for an hour before barely making it to my 8am call.
I know I can’t keep doing this. I ask for a half day at work the next day so I can get to the other house and business projects I’ve been putting off.
Well, the half day comes, trying to wrap up the week, and with the tremendous amount of brain fog, I end up sitting in front of my desk for 3 hours…before I’m off for the weekend. I don’t even remember what I got done.
I go take a quick “nap” before getting to my half day afternoon, and well…
I wake up 3 hours later feeling like I need to hibernate for the next 4 days. Mind you I’ve barely drank water or had food at this point, barely have enough energy to even think about it. I’ve gotten NOTHING done “productive” Day 47.
We cram a whole day of 75hard into 6 hours and still somehow get it done.
Days like this are when mental toughness gets built, I can’t complain, I chose this, I knew it would challenge me mentally, but I did not expect to this point where it felt like everything I was doing was holding me back.
I couldn’t even lift a weight. I was so physically tired. As I moved my treadmill off the wall to get my 2nd workout in and do 45 minutes of cardio… I almost dropped the treadmill on myself.
I’m just going to take a day or two to not do much mentally and recover, I tell myself. Being so exhausted, I ended up getting pretty decent sleep going into Day 48.
On Day 48, I actually get to the gym feeling pretty well rested, as if the half day and rest from lifting for two days was enough recovery. I get my topset of deadlifts in and feel the strongest I have in about a year moving 465lbs pretty well for a few reps. Feeling great, I proceed to my lighter working sets.
And then it happens. On the last rep of my last lighter working set to finish off a great deadlift session…
POP
There goes a very stiff, oh sh** moment, in my back at the top of the last rep.
In 15 years of deadlifting, I had never severely injured my back. Of course I’ve had tweaks and times where I’ve gone a little harder that led me to be sore for days, but never a pop.
Now did I really injure it? Time will tell. I still finished my workout well and still touched weights and did what I could to work around my new back stiffness. But definitely loaded on ibuprofen and CBD cream to ease the tightness, it’s not a sharp pain, just a limited range of motion.
I’ve done all my athletic training tests to somewhat self diagnose what I did, and personal conclusion is some type of back muscle strain. So maybe take it easy a couple weeks, get into some tough yoga, and I’ll be back as new. This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with back tightness. I’ve rehabbed myself out of it twice before, once in high school track, the other after training D1 athletes demonstrating a power clean.
We’ll get through it, just like everything else. Yes, it hurts basically to do anything, but I still lifted weights around my injury, still did my 75hard days even when it hurts to sit or stand all day. It adds an element I wasn’t expecting, but it won’t stop us. Just like I won’t let the long days of running a coaching business, putting in a 10hour work day, and finding energy at night to work with my various coaches set me back when I start to feel the onset of burnout. Not to mention a close friend is going through one of the toughest times of their life right now and working on emotionally dealing with that.
A lot of this is a chosen challenge. I don’t have to do any of this, well aside from what this friend is going through and to be there for.
Why share all this? Because I believe that when you choose to make things hard for yourself, life becomes much easier on you. You go easy on yourself, life will always be hard on you.
Also wanted to share my review on what it’s like pushing through 75hard when the unexpected happens…how I have personally learned over time, through much trial and error, how to push through large setbacks. You don’t know what you’re truly capable of until you get punched in the face by life, an injury, work stress, a family emergency, etc. and force yourself to get back up.
There’s very few people I personally know who have consistently tested the limits one can accomplish mentally and physically SIMULTANEOUSLY in a week. I know many who crush it at the gym, many who crush it in business, but both at the same takes an extreme level of focus and attention. There’s no room for distractions or days that aren’t filled with definiteness of purpose and intention. When you test this extreme focus and capacity, burnout is inevitable.
I’ve hit this point of burnout about 10x in the last 3 years, ask my wife, it’s like clockwork. I have built systems in place to know when it’s coming, what to do once burnout hits, and how to quickly bounce back. To all the science gurus out there saying it takes weeks or even months to recover from true burnout, I don’t think it has to IF you have a plan.
I’ve probably researched and studied burnout more than most, not just from a research perspective but personally experiencing it.
My personal indicators of burnout (it’ll be different for everyone):
you’re fighting through an overuse injury, you feel if you push any harder, you might injure something OR you were doing something lighter than normal and did injure yourself…
Brain fog doesn’t hit you just once or twice, but up to 3-5x/day making it EXTREMELY hard to do normal daily tasks you’re used to doing
You’re sleep quality and quantity is high, yet throughout the day, you feel like not even tons of caffeine is helping you get through the entire day
Here’s what needs to be in place though, if you’re going to test if you’re truly dealing with performance burnout:
you’re sleep needs to be high quality, you need to be scoring in at least the high 70s to 80s MINIMUM if you use apps like fitbit or pillow
Your diet needs to be clean and on point
Your water needs to be on point (too many confuse dehydration with burnout)
You’re currently not drinking alcohol
If you feel you’ve hit that unforgiving wall of mental and physical burnout:
Take 1, 2, or 3 days off if you can - but not completely off
Find an activity you enjoy doing and get immersed in it, don’t have a time limit on yourself
Get extra sleep if you need, take some extra naps, but still follow a similar routine to what you’re used to if you want to bounce back quickly
Eat your favorite food or favorite snacks - if you’re on a specific diet, work any unhealthier foods around your workouts or times you’ll burn energy to lower the detriment of bad food converting into fat - careful not to binge eat though, just take 1 or 2 of your meals out of the couple days to enjoy it, otherwise stick to your diet (again, if you want to bounce back quickly)
Keep drinking plenty of water, again, stick to the basics
Take time to journal out all your feelings of frustration, when you feel the burnout started, what led to it, and how you plan to not let it happen again, or extend the time until you might hit it again
If you do well financially, in business, and in your career, my hats off and much respect to what you’ve accomplished. If you’re in that spot but feel stuck on how to have more energy in a day, get in phenomenal shape, and get more done in less time and not face the woes of burnout, shoot us a message, we’re happy to help.
Until then, go be great.
Fashion Fitness
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