At our box, Cardio Tuesday is a thing. It’s not officially declared anywhere, but the WODs speak for themselves. Put the barbell down and just prepare to sweat out a couple pounds of water.

Attendance seems to dwindle on Tuesdays. Attendance also seems to dwindle whenever a run longer than 400m is involved. Why? Because people don’t like running. This also happens when there are a lot of burpees involved. Nobody likes burpees.

As I said 6 months ago when rambling on and on about Double Unders, it’s human nature to dislike doing things that we’re no good at. Especially when your ripped coaches can do the same thing as you… except twice as fast and 3 times as heavy. Nobody wants to put in max effort only to have that feeling of inadequacy lingering after they’ve finished.

You’re not going to get better at a certain WOD component that you suck at if you find yourself skipping the WOD each time it appears on the whiteboard. It’s much easier to say you’re bad at something than to actually DO something about it. Enter the Discomfort Zone. Go there until it’s finally comfortable. Then push yourself a step past it.

If you find yourself thinking “I don’t want to run the mile because I know I’m going to finish last” just remember this – you aren’t going to get any faster if you skip each training opportunity to practice and get better. Yes, it’s uncomfortable. Yes, you may not like looking at your time or how many reps you scored when it’s written near the scores of some of the crazy good athletes we have at our gym. You’re not going to like it.

However, it’s going to make you better. If you want to run faster, run more. If you want to do pull-ups, keep pushing yourself to using a smaller band. One less ab mat under your head for HSPUs. More resistance, less assistance. It’s going to suck. You’ll probably fall short of your goal a few times. But in the long run, doing the things you don’t like will produce results that you DO like.

It’s up to you. Next time you see something that you know you’re absolutely terrible at in the next day’s WOD, think twice before calling it a Rest Day.