The Grind That Grows

The reps that change you aren’t the glamorous ones. They aren’t the PR attempts, the launch keynotes, or the LinkedIn flexes. The reps that build real strength, in the gym and in the product, are the ones nobody sees: the early morning warmups, the late-night bug fixes, the process of showing up, adjusting, refining, and repeating. This is the grind, and it’s where the gains are made.

In the Gym: Warmups, Not Max Outs

You can spot the novices in any weight room, because they go straight for the heaviest lift they can manage. They max out on deadlifts, post it on Instagram, and then disappear for weeks. The ones who stick around warm up, move methodically, hit moderate numbers with perfect form, log their progress, and show up again tomorrow.

Warming up is not a sign of weakness, it is the mark of a seasoned lifter. It is protection, preparation, and part of the process. As Chad Wesley Smith and countless other coaches remind us, progress is built on consistency, not bravado.

In Product: Quiet Wins That Matter

Product teams fall into the same trap. We celebrate the big splashy features, but the real loyalty comes from the quiet wins: the “minor” UX update that shaves 10 clicks off a daily workflow, the improved loading time, the default that finally makes sense.

We saw this first-hand at Endgame. Yes, we differentiated on high-end protections like in-memory attack prevention, but the reason our champions stayed engaged wasn’t just the cool stuff, it was the continuous improvement in how they used the product. With each release we delivered smoother experiences and more intuitive workflows, and it added up.

The same held true at Elastic Security, where we spent over a year deeply focused on the alert triage experience. We met with analysts, we compiled hundreds of hours of feedback, and we made sure everything they needed, the context, the next steps, and a way to act on it, was right at their fingertips. That was not a flashy launch, it was grinding, and it paid off.

Not every enhancement gets a press release. But the users notice, and often celebrate, the small, thoughtful changes more than the big ones.

What the Grind Teaches

The grind teaches humility, discipline, and attention to detail. It teaches you to care about the user who files enhancement tickets, not just the buyer who signs the deal, and it teaches you to find progress in what looks minor. In product that means tackling the long list of enhancement requests. In lifting it means refining your bar path or your ankle mobility. Both require you to step out of the spotlight and into the discipline of reps.

The Myth of Motivation

The myth is that motivation carries you. Motivation gets you started, but it won’t carry you through the hard sets, the long roadmap, or the friction. What will is mission, ritual, feedback, and community.

The best product managers and lifters don’t chase the end state, they chase the process, and somewhere along the way they fall in love with it. That is where mastery begins.

Look Back to See the Gains

Progress is sneaky. When you’re in it every day it’s hard to see, which is why lifters take progress pictures, not for vanity but for truth. I’ve had stretches where I felt completely stuck, only to look at side-by-side photos and realize I had been growing all along.

Product has the same blind spot. One of the best presentations I gave at Endgame was a demo showing the same workflow over multiple years. Each version looked like a small step on its own, but side-by-side it was night and day: better design, better defaults, better detection. That is the power of consistent improvement, and you only see it when you look back.