Strength Training and Startups: The Same Game, Different Arena

If you’re working a full-time job, especially one that keeps you sitting on a chair, staring at a laptop for 8+ hours a day. Exercise isn’t optional. It’s not a “nice-to-have.”
It’s a requirement.

Our bodies weren’t designed for endless sitting, just like our minds weren’t designed for endless comfort. Ignore that for long enough, and you don’t escape suffering, you simply postpone it.

There Is No One-Size-Fits-All, and That’s the Point

Everyone is different.
What works for me might not work for you, and that’s perfectly fine. Some people love lifting heavy weights at the gym. Others prefer dance classes, tennis, basketball, CrossFit, yoga, or home workouts.
The form doesn’t matter nearly as much as the commitment. There is something for everyone. 

The Myth of Avoiding Suffering

Many people avoid physical exercise because they don’t want to “suffer.”

But here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Suffering is unavoidable.

If you avoid physical struggle today, you’ll likely suffer later from:

• Chronic back pain
  
• Weak muscles and joint issues
  
• Low energy
  
• Carrying excess body weight
  
• Reduced mobility as you age
  

So the real question isn’t whether you’ll suffer.

The million-dollar question is:

Do you want to suffer while being weak? Or suffer while building a Fit body?

A Tale of Two 80-Year-Olds

Think about this for a moment.

There are 80-year-old people in the countryside who wake up, go out to their fields, work their land, lift heavy things, walk for hours and somehow they do it effortlessly.

And then there are 80-year-old people in big cities who struggle to walk from the couch to the toilet without help.

Same age. Very different lives.

The difference wasn’t luck.
It was decades of daily choices.

So ask yourself honestly:

How do you want to live your later years?

Discipline Equals Freedom

This is where people like Jocko Willink and David Goggins hit a nerve, because they’re not talking about motivation. They’re talking about discipline.

“Discipline equals freedom.” — Jocko Willink

At first glance, it sounds counterintuitive. How can discipline, structure, routines, doing things you don’t feel like doing, lead to freedom?

Because discipline removes chaos.

When you train consistently:

• Your body becomes stronger
  
• Your energy increases
  
• Your confidence grows
  
• Your mind becomes calmer under pressure
  

You gain freedom from pain, weakness, and self-doubt.

Doing Hard Things Early, Trains Your Brain

There’s something powerful about doing a hard workout early in the morning. Before emails, before meetings, before excuses.

When you push through a tough workout, you send a clear message to your brain:

“I can do hard things.”

That proof stays with you for the rest of the day.

Suddenly:

• A difficult meeting doesn’t intimidate you
  
• A tough decision feels manageable
  
• A problem doesn’t feel overwhelming
  

You already won once today. As David Goggins often says, you start building calluses on your mind.

The Startup Parallel: Same Rules, Same Pain

Jocko Willink often makes a point that goes something like this:

Go to the gym once, nothing really changes.
Go twice, still nothing.
Go ten times, maybe you feel a bit better.
Go a hundred times, now you start to see real change.
Go five hundred times? You’re not just fitter… you’re a different person!

That’s how real progress works.
Not in dramatic breakthroughs, but in relentless repetition.

Now let’s talk about startups.

Building a startup follows the exact same rules as strength training:

• Progress is slow and often invisible at the beginning
  
• Results come from consistency, not intensity alone
  
• There are many days you won’t feel like showing up
  
• There are plateaus where nothing seems to work, no matter how hard you try
  

Skipping one workout doesn’t hurt immediately.
And skipping one hard conversation, one difficult decision, or one uncomfortable execution step in a startup doesn’t hurt immediately either.

But over time, the cost compounds.

Miss enough workouts, and your body weakens.
Avoid enough hard decisions, and your startup weakens.

A startup, just like a body, doesn’t reflect what you plan to do.
It reflects what you consistently do.

No Shortcuts, No Hacks

There are no shortcuts in the gym.
And there are no shortcuts in building a real company.

You can’t:

• “Hack” your way to strength
  
• “Motivate” your way to resilience
  
• Outsource discipline
  

You earn results through showing up, especially when it’s uncomfortable.

Train the Body, Build the Mindset

A daily workout does more than shape your body.

It trains:

• Patience
  
• Consistency
  
• Humility
  
• Resilience
  
• Long-term thinking
  

These are the exact same traits required to build a startup that survives reality.

If you can commit to training your body, even when progress feels slow, you’re already practicing the mindset needed to build something meaningful.

Final Thought

You don’t need to be extreme.
You don’t need to be perfect.

You just need to start and keep going.

Because whether it’s your body or your startup, the rules are the same:

Do the hard things. Do them consistently. And trust the process.

The suffering will come either way.The only choice you get to make is what kind of person you become on the other side.