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The 40% Rule: A Navy SEAL’s Secret to Mental Toughness

77 points by jl87 11y ago

smileysteve 11y ago
One reason Navy Seals need to be good at this is that they are swimming 50m underwater in one breath. When swimming while holding your breath, your brain is telling you, stop, you're low on air, indeed, you can ignore than and swim the rest.
- spearo77 11y ago
  An interesting fact is that your brain has no idea how much oxygen you have left. What it can sense however, is a build up of CO2.
- armitron 11y ago
  The urge to breathe doesn't come because one is low on air, but due to CO2 buildup in the blood. Humans have no physiological detectors for blood oxygen levels, they can only detect CO2. Normally CO2 buildup response is calibrated to be "early" in terms of oxygen, but the calibration can change (e.g. through hyperventilation) which can lead to blackouts and drowning since blood oxygen levels can drop below ones needed to keep brain "on" before CO2 buildup response even registers. Ignoring the urge to breathe is definitely not a smart thing to do unsupervised unless one wants an early, watery grave. Your response is misleading in that it implies "mental toughness" (utter bollocks) or a skill that some people have more than others. If Navy Seals (or anyone else) do this for real, you can bet your ass they do it under strict supervision, when training/competing (e.g. BUDS).
  - jo6gwb 11y ago
    There have been Navy SEALS who have died because of this: http://www.13newsnow.com/story/news/military/2015/04/24/incident-involving-special-forces-unit-at-little-creek-fort-story/26322507/ http://www.13newsnow.com/story/news/military/2015/04/24/inci...
- jkot 11y ago
  When swimming underwater, brain should not be telling or ignoring anything, it should be totally empty. Idle brain consumes about 25% oxygen, even more when it is being used.
  - pc86 11y ago
    I would love to see a source for this that thinking about something uses more oxygen.
    - Phlarp 11y ago
      Just the act of thinking won't consume more oxygen, but thoughts can lead to physiological changes, like panic, that do consume more oxygen.
    - Phlarp 11y ago
      Just the act of thinking won't consume more oxygen, but thoughts can lead to physiological changes, like panic, that do consume more oxygen.
    - eric_h 11y ago
      a meditative state is definitely helpful in reducing the body's consumption of oxygen. I got my open water scuba certification many years ago from a former Navy SEAL. At the time, I was 4' 8" and weighed 85 pounds. The Navy SEAL was about 5' 10", 200 pounds. Every single dive we went on he used less than half the air that I used, and I used less air than the rest of the dive group (because I didn't need as much given my stature). He explained that he used a meditative style breathing pattern and simply remained very calm underwater. /anecdata
      - mapt 11y ago
        Your incorrect assumption is that you're supporting the same hardware with different software. Drastic changes occur with aerobic training and hypoxic stress in the red blood cell count & blood volume, blood pressure, heart stroke volume & lower resting heartrate. He has more muscles, more energy stored in glycogen in those muscles, and swims faster. The person you learned from was likely not physiologically capable of long dives when he first started, no matter his mentality. And nobody is capable of using a "meditative breathing pattern" while they're exerting themselves at the limit of their aerobic capabilities; He was farther from them than you were. There are likely other long-term adaptations we don't know about, specific to diving.
chadgeidel 11y ago
Maybe not quite the same thing - but I do something similar. When I'm trying a new thing that requires physical endurance I set a pace in which I could "do the thing for many many hours" even though I know it's probably going to be much less than that. For example - I recently went on a bike ride with friends where we climbed an unknown (to me) hill. I slowed down a bit to a pace I could maintain long term. I was one of the first to the top. :-)
- tonyarkles 11y ago
  When I have the heart-rate monitor with me, it's really easy to stick to that zone. I shoot for a target heart rate of about 150, and I can go a long time. Last time I tried it was 7 miles, and I stopped because I'd looped around and was close to home. I set it up with RunKeeper so that it gives me a heart-rate report every minute, and I just tweak my effort a little bit to keep in right around the target.
Afton 11y ago
These techniques are useful when you have a large pool of young extremely healthy men. Then when they blow out knees, shoulders, back, etc you can just select the ones who didn't break. Claiming that this is a useful and effective way to train is a terrible idea. The only reason this kind of article is useful at all is that virtually everyone who trains a sport fails to train hard enough. In other words, after you remove all the fancy language and rah-rah spirit, you are left with "You should probably try harder". And that's probably good advice. My two cents.
- dockd 11y ago
  Absolutely on the first point. I believe the #1 thing the Navy wants from SEALs is people who just won't quit. The Nave doesn't train them not to quit, it just creates tests that search for this quality. I'm unconvinced that the SEAL in question suddenly realized one day there was a "secret" to not quitting; it's just how he's hardwired.
- cpncrunch 11y ago
  The other problem is overtraining: http://www.outsideonline.com/1986361/running-empty http://www.outsideonline.com/1986361/running-empty Sometimes you get to the point where the harder you attempt to push through fatigue, the more likely you are to do long-term harm. Unfortunately it's difficult figuring out when you've reached that point.
- crikli 11y ago
  I regularly participate in events known as GORUCK Challenges. They're 12 hour+ endurance events led by current and former special forces operatives from all branches of the military. Yes, there are plenty of young extremely healthy men at these events, but they're the minority. The majority of participants are over 30 years old, in good but not great or extreme condition, and tend to be 10-30% female. These events are hard. Hours of PT, carrying of heavy objects for hours at a time, all while wearing a backpack that weighs at minimum 25#. Success rate is about 94%. Yes, there is some principle of self-selection at work whereupon if you're dumb enough to sign up for such a thing you're predisposed to survival, but the biggest reason that participants finish is because we are all capable of so much more than we think. That's the point of the article, IMO. Don't try harder, just don't fucking quit. Hell, try less if that's what it takes to not quit. Edit: accidentally hit enter too soon. I wanted to say something about "not training hard enough" not being the issue with most athletes I see, rather they're training too hard with poorly designed programming.
ErikAugust 11y ago
"Who is this guy? I’ve never seen anything like it. And during the race, I kept an eye on him and around mile 70 — he weighed probably 260 pounds, which is quite large for an ultra runner — he had broken all the small bones in both of his feet and had kidney damage and he finished the race." Running 100s at 260 pounds - and continuing through kidney damage and broken foot bones isn't tough - it's just stupid.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  It's also necessary in some circumstances. Kidney damage and broken foot bones probably won't kill you. Getting caught will.
  - ErikAugust 11y ago
    It's an ultramarathon - not a battle.
  - stephencanon 11y ago
    Kidney damage will absolutely kill you if left untreated.
    - thescriptkiddie 11y ago
      It can still kill you if treated, too. There's a reason you come from the factory with two of those - they're fragile.
      - pavel_lishin 11y ago
        Seems like all the more reason to avoid damaging them unnecessarily.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    Yes, but this isn't one of them. Inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality is a symptomatic of mental illness. I have been in a number of life-or-death situations and absolutely there are times you should just pursue your objective even if you get damaged in the process, or you won't survive. But if you are damaging yourself like that absent any actual danger, you have a different kind of problem.
yuvadam 11y ago
In the early 2000's a short TV series followed a class of SEALs as they go through basic training. It's a pretty interesting documentary on how they manage to select only those who have the necessary skills for the job. The first episode can be found here [1], the other 5 are also all on Youtube. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQFRePXMI9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQFRePXMI9M
vinceguidry 11y ago
It's entirely too hard to ascertain whether doing 2.5x more of whatever it is you're doing right now is really going to get you where you want to go. Sometimes, probably most of the time, the goal is learning, you want to immerse yourself into the space of possibility and figure out what's important. For a SEAL, someone regularly called on to do the impossible, the 40% rule makes perfect sense. For most of us, doing 100 pull ups instead of 40 is mostly missing the point. Spending 2 hours in the gym instead of 30 minutes for me is actually counter-productive. It's not how many pull ups you do on a given day, it's how many times in a given year you do pull ups.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  > Spending 2 hours in the gym instead of 30 minutes for me is actually counter-productive. 2 hours doing what in the gym? The balance of activities is the critical part, IME.
No1 11y ago
Tucked in at the end of the article is this gem: Before he founded Marquis Jets, the world’s biggest private jet company, Itzler was known as Jesse Jaymes, a white rapper with the hit single “Shake it Like a White Girl.”
- CPLX 11y ago
  I'm glad they put that in there, until I read that I figured he was your typical run of the mill billionaire instead of someone with actual originality and artistic talent.
beachstartup 11y ago
recently i hired a barbell / weight coach to train me (he really pushes me hard, harder than i ever thought i was capable of going), i find that i usually start wanting to mentally 'give up' at around the halfway mark during a training session. 40-60%. but since i'm generally healthy, the trick is to decide to go until i absolutely can not move anymore, whether it's 2 minutes or another hour. once you've made that decision in your head (your mental "escape route" having been established), the rest is easy. when you have a professional watching your form and supervising you, this is perfectly safe. if i can still move the weight, i keep going. if i can't move the weight, then it's a good time to stop. for me personally, it's much harder to wake up 3x a week at 0530 and go to the gym than to finish a physical task when you feel like giving up. that's where the 40% rule doesn't really help me much. once i'm there it's not that hard to finish. btw, for those of you thinking of hiring a trainer, don't just walk into a gym and ask for one on staff, find a reputable barbell coach in your area and work with them on a long term training plan that suits your budget and goals, then pay it all up front because otherwise you're not going to get your ass out of bed at 6am.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
  A technique I used was called "20-rep squats." It's been written about in a few places. Simply put, you choose a weight that you can do 20 squats with using good form. Next time you add weight to the bar and do 20 again, lather, rinse, repeat every week or whatever your interval is. It works well for working out alone because the goal is simple: do 20 reps with more weight than last time, even if it's just 1 lb more. You simply don't allow yourself to stop before failure. It's "20 or die." It was the most productive form of weightlifting I've ever done in terms of increasing strength and body mass. Make sure you have a good, stable squat rack :-)
  - pc86 11y ago
    20-rep movements are great for hypertrophy/building size, but are not going to do nearly as much for strength and the 3-8 rep range. And squatting once a week will do even less than that.
ianamartin 11y ago
What the fuck did I just read? This is (scientifically) proven because of a non sequitur about placebo effect? I'd kind of like to have 2 minutes of my life refunded to me. And the pint of blood I just lost from stabbing myself in the eyeballs when I realized that some people actually take this spam-subscription bait seriously.
reitanqild 11y ago
A more down-to-earth and realistic approach might be "You are your own gym". As for 40%, keep in mind different people are different: some people have been beaten into this since they were kids so when they say they are finished they are way past 40%
kondor6c 11y ago
I'm reminded of this comic http://i.imgur.com/PuUBaVU.jpg http://i.imgur.com/PuUBaVU.jpg There's a color version of it from "PVT Murphy's comics"
nostrademons 11y ago
I'm curious whether this would hold for creative, mentally taxing work like programming. I'd love to get 2.5x the coding time in, and I've found that I can often ignore my limits and keep coding long after my brain tells me that I'm exhausted...but then when I wake up in the morning, I find that I really should've stopped when I got tired, because it will take me 2.5x the time to unravel the mess I made the night before. Ignoring your brain doesn't work so well when you need your brain for what you're doing.
- kamaal 11y ago
  >>I'm curious whether this would hold for creative, mentally taxing work like programming. It works when it should. As a teenager from a poor family in India, I would generally go on 5 hour sleep- My waking live was spent going to college, studying for long hours in the library and doing late night studies at home. I used to sleep between 3 AM and 9 AM in the morning. I didn't even like I was doing anything great at all. It felt more like 'opportunity'. Because frankly my other friends from a similar background where having it way worse, most had quit studies and were doing small time jobs to support their families. I had these kind of episodes in my life quite a few times. Generally something good comes out of it. And it has always felt like 'opportunity'. Stressful, tiring, taxing and demanding of course, but I feel blessed to be even given the opportunity to undergo the struggle.
Brainix 11y ago
Enough with the clickbait. I had to scan the article 3 times before finally finding what the 40% rule is. And when I did find it, it's just like, your opinion, man. Seriously, citation needed (and some Navy SEAL's deeply moving personal anectote is not a citation).
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
This seems completely backwards to me. IMO, the way to go is focus on allowing yourself to do things, not forcing things through. Active willpower and use of "mental toughness" helps much less than you think it does. Trying as hard as you can at, say, riding a bike quickly isn't that much more effective, and burns up much more long-term resources. Like, how I'd reframe the advice is to pull the "replace trying with awareness" trick from The Inner Game of Tennis. Take stock of what it feels like to do the "last" pull-up that you can, and then feel what it's like to do another afterwards.

77 points by jl87 11y ago

One reason Navy Seals need to be good at this is that they are swimming 50m underwater in one breath. When swimming while holding your breath, your brain is telling you, stop, you're low on air, indeed, you can ignore than and swim the rest.

spearo77 11y ago
An interesting fact is that your brain has no idea how much oxygen you have left. What it can sense however, is a build up of CO2.
armitron 11y ago
The urge to breathe doesn't come because one is low on air, but due to CO2 buildup in the blood. Humans have no physiological detectors for blood oxygen levels, they can only detect CO2. Normally CO2 buildup response is calibrated to be "early" in terms of oxygen, but the calibration can change (e.g. through hyperventilation) which can lead to blackouts and drowning since blood oxygen levels can drop below ones needed to keep brain "on" before CO2 buildup response even registers. Ignoring the urge to breathe is definitely not a smart thing to do unsupervised unless one wants an early, watery grave. Your response is misleading in that it implies "mental toughness" (utter bollocks) or a skill that some people have more than others. If Navy Seals (or anyone else) do this for real, you can bet your ass they do it under strict supervision, when training/competing (e.g. BUDS).
- jo6gwb 11y ago
  There have been Navy SEALS who have died because of this: http://www.13newsnow.com/story/news/military/2015/04/24/incident-involving-special-forces-unit-at-little-creek-fort-story/26322507/ http://www.13newsnow.com/story/news/military/2015/04/24/inci...
jkot 11y ago
When swimming underwater, brain should not be telling or ignoring anything, it should be totally empty. Idle brain consumes about 25% oxygen, even more when it is being used.
- pc86 11y ago
  I would love to see a source for this that thinking about something uses more oxygen.
  - Phlarp 11y ago
    Just the act of thinking won't consume more oxygen, but thoughts can lead to physiological changes, like panic, that do consume more oxygen.
  - Phlarp 11y ago
    Just the act of thinking won't consume more oxygen, but thoughts can lead to physiological changes, like panic, that do consume more oxygen.
  - eric_h 11y ago
    a meditative state is definitely helpful in reducing the body's consumption of oxygen. I got my open water scuba certification many years ago from a former Navy SEAL. At the time, I was 4' 8" and weighed 85 pounds. The Navy SEAL was about 5' 10", 200 pounds. Every single dive we went on he used less than half the air that I used, and I used less air than the rest of the dive group (because I didn't need as much given my stature). He explained that he used a meditative style breathing pattern and simply remained very calm underwater. /anecdata
    - mapt 11y ago
      Your incorrect assumption is that you're supporting the same hardware with different software. Drastic changes occur with aerobic training and hypoxic stress in the red blood cell count & blood volume, blood pressure, heart stroke volume & lower resting heartrate. He has more muscles, more energy stored in glycogen in those muscles, and swims faster. The person you learned from was likely not physiologically capable of long dives when he first started, no matter his mentality. And nobody is capable of using a "meditative breathing pattern" while they're exerting themselves at the limit of their aerobic capabilities; He was farther from them than you were. There are likely other long-term adaptations we don't know about, specific to diving.

chadgeidel 11y ago

Maybe not quite the same thing - but I do something similar. When I'm trying a new thing that requires physical endurance I set a pace in which I could "do the thing for many many hours" even though I know it's probably going to be much less than that. For example - I recently went on a bike ride with friends where we climbed an unknown (to me) hill. I slowed down a bit to a pace I could maintain long term. I was one of the first to the top. :-)

tonyarkles 11y ago
When I have the heart-rate monitor with me, it's really easy to stick to that zone. I shoot for a target heart rate of about 150, and I can go a long time. Last time I tried it was 7 miles, and I stopped because I'd looped around and was close to home. I set it up with RunKeeper so that it gives me a heart-rate report every minute, and I just tweak my effort a little bit to keep in right around the target.

Afton 11y ago

These techniques are useful when you have a large pool of young extremely healthy men. Then when they blow out knees, shoulders, back, etc you can just select the ones who didn't break. Claiming that this is a useful and effective way to train is a terrible idea. The only reason this kind of article is useful at all is that virtually everyone who trains a sport fails to train hard enough. In other words, after you remove all the fancy language and rah-rah spirit, you are left with "You should probably try harder". And that's probably good advice. My two cents.

dockd 11y ago
Absolutely on the first point. I believe the #1 thing the Navy wants from SEALs is people who just won't quit. The Nave doesn't train them not to quit, it just creates tests that search for this quality. I'm unconvinced that the SEAL in question suddenly realized one day there was a "secret" to not quitting; it's just how he's hardwired.
cpncrunch 11y ago
The other problem is overtraining: http://www.outsideonline.com/1986361/running-empty http://www.outsideonline.com/1986361/running-empty Sometimes you get to the point where the harder you attempt to push through fatigue, the more likely you are to do long-term harm. Unfortunately it's difficult figuring out when you've reached that point.
crikli 11y ago
I regularly participate in events known as GORUCK Challenges. They're 12 hour+ endurance events led by current and former special forces operatives from all branches of the military. Yes, there are plenty of young extremely healthy men at these events, but they're the minority. The majority of participants are over 30 years old, in good but not great or extreme condition, and tend to be 10-30% female. These events are hard. Hours of PT, carrying of heavy objects for hours at a time, all while wearing a backpack that weighs at minimum 25#. Success rate is about 94%. Yes, there is some principle of self-selection at work whereupon if you're dumb enough to sign up for such a thing you're predisposed to survival, but the biggest reason that participants finish is because we are all capable of so much more than we think. That's the point of the article, IMO. Don't try harder, just don't fucking quit. Hell, try less if that's what it takes to not quit. Edit: accidentally hit enter too soon. I wanted to say something about "not training hard enough" not being the issue with most athletes I see, rather they're training too hard with poorly designed programming.

ErikAugust 11y ago

"Who is this guy? I’ve never seen anything like it. And during the race, I kept an eye on him and around mile 70 — he weighed probably 260 pounds, which is quite large for an ultra runner — he had broken all the small bones in both of his feet and had kidney damage and he finished the race." Running 100s at 260 pounds - and continuing through kidney damage and broken foot bones isn't tough - it's just stupid.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
It's also necessary in some circumstances. Kidney damage and broken foot bones probably won't kill you. Getting caught will.
- ErikAugust 11y ago
  It's an ultramarathon - not a battle.
- stephencanon 11y ago
  Kidney damage will absolutely kill you if left untreated.
  - thescriptkiddie 11y ago
    It can still kill you if treated, too. There's a reason you come from the factory with two of those - they're fragile.
    - pavel_lishin 11y ago
      Seems like all the more reason to avoid damaging them unnecessarily.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Yes, but this isn't one of them. Inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality is a symptomatic of mental illness. I have been in a number of life-or-death situations and absolutely there are times you should just pursue your objective even if you get damaged in the process, or you won't survive. But if you are damaging yourself like that absent any actual danger, you have a different kind of problem.

yuvadam 11y ago

In the early 2000's a short TV series followed a class of SEALs as they go through basic training. It's a pretty interesting documentary on how they manage to select only those who have the necessary skills for the job. The first episode can be found here [1], the other 5 are also all on Youtube. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQFRePXMI9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQFRePXMI9M

vinceguidry 11y ago

It's entirely too hard to ascertain whether doing 2.5x more of whatever it is you're doing right now is really going to get you where you want to go. Sometimes, probably most of the time, the goal is learning, you want to immerse yourself into the space of possibility and figure out what's important. For a SEAL, someone regularly called on to do the impossible, the 40% rule makes perfect sense. For most of us, doing 100 pull ups instead of 40 is mostly missing the point. Spending 2 hours in the gym instead of 30 minutes for me is actually counter-productive. It's not how many pull ups you do on a given day, it's how many times in a given year you do pull ups.

Jtsummers 11y ago
> Spending 2 hours in the gym instead of 30 minutes for me is actually counter-productive. 2 hours doing what in the gym? The balance of activities is the critical part, IME.

No1 11y ago

Tucked in at the end of the article is this gem: Before he founded Marquis Jets, the world’s biggest private jet company, Itzler was known as Jesse Jaymes, a white rapper with the hit single “Shake it Like a White Girl.”

CPLX 11y ago
I'm glad they put that in there, until I read that I figured he was your typical run of the mill billionaire instead of someone with actual originality and artistic talent.

beachstartup 11y ago

recently i hired a barbell / weight coach to train me (he really pushes me hard, harder than i ever thought i was capable of going), i find that i usually start wanting to mentally 'give up' at around the halfway mark during a training session. 40-60%. but since i'm generally healthy, the trick is to decide to go until i absolutely can not move anymore, whether it's 2 minutes or another hour. once you've made that decision in your head (your mental "escape route" having been established), the rest is easy. when you have a professional watching your form and supervising you, this is perfectly safe. if i can still move the weight, i keep going. if i can't move the weight, then it's a good time to stop. for me personally, it's much harder to wake up 3x a week at 0530 and go to the gym than to finish a physical task when you feel like giving up. that's where the 40% rule doesn't really help me much. once i'm there it's not that hard to finish. btw, for those of you thinking of hiring a trainer, don't just walk into a gym and ask for one on staff, find a reputable barbell coach in your area and work with them on a long term training plan that suits your budget and goals, then pay it all up front because otherwise you're not going to get your ass out of bed at 6am.

HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
A technique I used was called "20-rep squats." It's been written about in a few places. Simply put, you choose a weight that you can do 20 squats with using good form. Next time you add weight to the bar and do 20 again, lather, rinse, repeat every week or whatever your interval is. It works well for working out alone because the goal is simple: do 20 reps with more weight than last time, even if it's just 1 lb more. You simply don't allow yourself to stop before failure. It's "20 or die." It was the most productive form of weightlifting I've ever done in terms of increasing strength and body mass. Make sure you have a good, stable squat rack :-)
- pc86 11y ago
  20-rep movements are great for hypertrophy/building size, but are not going to do nearly as much for strength and the 3-8 rep range. And squatting once a week will do even less than that.

ianamartin 11y ago

What the fuck did I just read? This is (scientifically) proven because of a non sequitur about placebo effect? I'd kind of like to have 2 minutes of my life refunded to me. And the pint of blood I just lost from stabbing myself in the eyeballs when I realized that some people actually take this spam-subscription bait seriously.

reitanqild 11y ago

A more down-to-earth and realistic approach might be "You are your own gym". As for 40%, keep in mind different people are different: some people have been beaten into this since they were kids so when they say they are finished they are way past 40%

kondor6c 11y ago

I'm reminded of this comic http://i.imgur.com/PuUBaVU.jpg http://i.imgur.com/PuUBaVU.jpg There's a color version of it from "PVT Murphy's comics"

nostrademons 11y ago

I'm curious whether this would hold for creative, mentally taxing work like programming. I'd love to get 2.5x the coding time in, and I've found that I can often ignore my limits and keep coding long after my brain tells me that I'm exhausted...but then when I wake up in the morning, I find that I really should've stopped when I got tired, because it will take me 2.5x the time to unravel the mess I made the night before. Ignoring your brain doesn't work so well when you need your brain for what you're doing.

kamaal 11y ago
>>I'm curious whether this would hold for creative, mentally taxing work like programming. It works when it should. As a teenager from a poor family in India, I would generally go on 5 hour sleep- My waking live was spent going to college, studying for long hours in the library and doing late night studies at home. I used to sleep between 3 AM and 9 AM in the morning. I didn't even like I was doing anything great at all. It felt more like 'opportunity'. Because frankly my other friends from a similar background where having it way worse, most had quit studies and were doing small time jobs to support their families. I had these kind of episodes in my life quite a few times. Generally something good comes out of it. And it has always felt like 'opportunity'. Stressful, tiring, taxing and demanding of course, but I feel blessed to be even given the opportunity to undergo the struggle.

Brainix 11y ago

Enough with the clickbait. I had to scan the article 3 times before finally finding what the 40% rule is. And when I did find it, it's just like, your opinion, man. Seriously, citation needed (and some Navy SEAL's deeply moving personal anectote is not a citation).

ThrustVectoring 11y ago

This seems completely backwards to me. IMO, the way to go is focus on allowing yourself to do things, not forcing things through. Active willpower and use of "mental toughness" helps much less than you think it does. Trying as hard as you can at, say, riding a bike quickly isn't that much more effective, and burns up much more long-term resources. Like, how I'd reframe the advice is to pull the "replace trying with awareness" trick from The Inner Game of Tennis. Take stock of what it feels like to do the "last" pull-up that you can, and then feel what it's like to do another afterwards.