Choose the hard path -

The Problem With Comfort

Sometimes doing hard things for the sake of becoming hardened is necessary. As a man who has traveled the world doing the hardest athletic challenges I could find, you’d be amazed how day-to-day living can make you so soft. An old friend and mentor of mine, Joe Desena, the founder of Spartan Race, built a career around taking regular people into incredible hard situations. The event that made him famous was called the Death Race.

I could never understand why people would sign up, pay money, take the beating of a lifetime, and then go beaten and battered back to their regular lives. I was 23 at the time I met him. It took me years to understand the beauty and simplicity of these undertakings. I will explain it to you so that you might be inspired to do the same. You can thank me later.

The Misogi Standard

Have you ever heard of the term called Misogi challenge? In basic terms, it is a massive physical undertaking that will challenge you and set the tone for the following year. I have been doing this for much of my life without much thought, but it became a ritual starting on my birthday when I turned thirty.

I invited my brother and two of my best friends to Maui, a place where most people kick back on the beach to sip cocktails as they listen to the waves crash, creating a tone of ultimate peace and serenity. I decided to do the exact opposite.

Instead, we rented bikes to climb to the top of a volcano nearly ten thousand feet higher than the beach we started at. It was a crippling experience that took twice as long as we originally had planned. To make matters worse, we finished at the end of the day in the pitch dark, in the pouring rain, with the bike shop closed and no way to get home.

Luckily, a nice guy gave us a ride, and we repaid him the next day by chainsawing trees down at his school, which eventually ended up getting our names put up in the local paper. It was one of the most painful and epic 24 hours of my life. Ever since then, it has been something I do most years for my birthday.

Rejecting the Easy Path

Around this same time, I started giving up on events like New Year's Eve being a conquest for one last bash to solidify an already amazing year soaked in beer, as if that would make it all better. Counting down to a new day had lost its luster.

I began the tradition of backpacking into the depths of nature to find the raw state of the world in its purest form. I would stack tens of thousands of steps until I found a patch of dirt to pass out in. Somehow, every time I came back fully rejuvenated and inspired.

Trading a kiss with a stranger at midnight for dirt was one of the best decisions I had ever made.

This was much like a bike ride. Give everything your body has to offer for a clearer view of what a day really has to offer. These challenges continued year after year and always paid dividends.

The Ride That Broke Us

This year for my birthday, we rounded up a team of rowdy riders in Malibu the morning of March 7th to ride across LA to Crestline, where I have a training cabin. This is 118 miles with 10,000 ft of climbing. On a good day, it would take around eight hours.

Luckily, this was one of the worst days of wind in the past years. Constant headwinds of 20 mph, with gusts hitting 50–60 mph. It made riding almost impossible at times. The wind was so strong that we often wouldn’t talk because nothing could be heard over the roar.

In the end, it took us 12 hours, and we didn’t even make it to the cabin. We had to stop five miles short because it was too dark to ride up the highway to the top. Over these hours, I chugged gallons of BLDR, coke, and coffee, so much coffee. I stuffed down gels from The Feed and countless bags of salt and vinegar chips.

I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt, and I often had tears in my eyes. The day was filled with so many highs and lows that near the end there wasn’t much emotion left. It was a true quest. No medals. No fans. Just hard miles for the sake of being a hard man during easy times.

Days like this make Hyrox seem like a fun run. It doesn’t even register on the same field of challenge. And that is exactly why I do it, and you must too.

The Standard Has Dropped

Let’s be real. The world has grown soft. The standard has been lowered to accommodate everyone so that participation medals can be awarded. The day after this, the LA Marathon gave out medals to 18-mile finishers. It’s a 26.2-mile race.

If you are like me, that isn’t acceptable. I want a real challenge. I want to feel half dead so that I can feel fully alive, so that I can remember why every day is an opportunity.

Create Your Own Dragons

There are no dragons left to fight, so you must make your own. Call upon your crew and go directly into the face of something that might break you.

Life is too short to watch other people do amazing things. Pick something unreasonable. Go all in. Make the miles the mission. Make the pain the measure.

This isn’t for likes. This is for you.

Eventually, it will show you something you’ve been avoiding. Face it. Handle it. Move forward.

Don’t delay your fears. Encounter them at full speed.

Comment below with what scares you the most, then go get it done. We are here waiting to hear the story.