Practice what you preach

The most important muscle to build is discipline.

I spend a lot of time asking students to practise, persevere and trust what consistent effort can do. Eventually I asked myself a simple question: am I following my own advice?

The Discipline Counter
123,300 strength and conditioning exercises completed — 411 blocks of 300.
Mission 300K

300,000 exercises by 50.

Target: 18 January 2028

—days to go
176,700exercises remaining
—needed per day
Running medals

Showing up adds up.

The medals aren't the point. They're evidence of all the days that came before them.

What counts?

Not one exercise. A lot of different work.

The total is built from strength, bodyweight and conditioning exercises. Running is part of the wider challenge too, with targets from 5 km and 10 km through to half-marathon and marathon distances, but the Discipline Counter itself records exercise repetitions.

Pull

Pull-ups · Chin-ups · Muscle-ups · Dead hangs

Push

Press-ups · One-arm press-ups · Extension press-ups · Chest press

Strength

Deadlifts · Kettlebell squats · Shoulder press · Banded crossovers

Conditioning

Burpees · Monkey bars · Running alongside the repetition targets

411 blocks × 300 exercises = 123,300
Why I started

Consistency.
Discipline.
Hard work.

As a teacher, it is easy to tell somebody else that improvement comes from practice. Keep turning up. Do the difficult thing again. Accept that progress is usually accumulated rather than sudden.

At some point I thought: am I actually following my own advice?

So I started keeping score — not of appearance, but of work. Seeing one of my students consistently turn up and put the effort in further inspired me to keep doing the same myself. The number above is simply the accumulation of those ordinary decisions — one block of 300 at a time.

The waypoints

A journey with something to aim for.

The progression system I built in Excel turned consistency into a series of tangible targets.

111 × 300Bronze · 33,300
222 × 300Silver · 66,600
333 × 300Gold · 99,900
432 × 300Irish Green · 129,600
585 × 300Cabin Pressure Yellow · 175,500
751 × 300Everton Blue · 225,300
966 × 300Polish Red · 289,800
1,234 × 300Beatles White · 370,200
1,441 × 300ZZR Black · 432,300
1,701 × 300Enterprise-D · 510,300
1,968 × 300Apollo 8 · 590,400
2,403 × 300Apollo 11 · 720,900