Toward training the six inches no one ever taught you to train.
For women who over-prepare, deliver, and still don't think it was enough.
The first rep lands in your inbox today
The 21 daily emails are the training. One short rep a day. Unsubscribe anytime.
Six inches. Ear to ear. That's the average width of the human head, and it's not just space. It's where everything is won.
Inside your head sits the amygdala. It fires first, every time, before you've thought a single word. It doesn't know the difference between a real threat and a room full of people watching you perform. It just knows danger, and it reacts.
Next to it sits the prefrontal cortex. This is the part that can override the panic. Stay in the room instead of shrinking. Speak instead of freezing. Stand your ground instead of folding.
One part panics. One part decides. Whichever one is trained wins.
Here's what it looks like when the wrong one runs the show. The noise gets too loud. You opt out. You don't put your name forward. You don't try, so you never have to call it failure.
Nobody sees the moment it happens. They just see the result. The promotion that went to someone else. The opportunity that closed. The pay rise that never came.
That's the cost of leaving the space between your ears untrained. Not one big failure. A hundred small opt-outs, adding up over time.
This isn't about how much weight is on the bar. It's the process. I show you how I build physical strength. Then I teach you how to build mental strength the same way.
“The same discipline that builds a body to move load, builds a mind to handle pressure.”
Understand what's costing you energy. And know what to do about it.
Stop arriving at hard moments already depleted. Build the capacity to regulate before the pressure hits.
Build a 60-second routine. Use it before a hard meeting, conversation, or assessment.
Do reps under load. And know how to keep training your mental fitness after Day 21.
One rep, every day, for 21 days. That's the training block.
People who can vouch for how I coach, mentor, and operate under pressure.
You have been the best instructor during this year. You were always encouraging and could see the reality, and told me to work hard. One thing I learned from you was flexibility.
— Officer Cadet Z., Afghanistan National Army Officer Academy, Kabul (translated from Dari)
Quote pending: someone I mentored one-on-one, at home or on deployment.
Quote pending: a peer who watched me coach and lead others, side by side, under pressure.
Quote pending: someone senior who can vouch for my credibility as an instructor and mentor.
I gave the army all of my twenties, and most of my thirties. My whole life was on base. There was no me outside of it.
Twenty-two years. I'm forty now.
Out of everything I did in that time, two jobs stand out. Both were about getting people ready for what was coming.
The first was training people to become army officers. A twelve-month course. Physically and mentally demanding, most people arrive ready for one and not the other.
I watched people pushed to their limit, breaking down, doubting whether they wanted to be there at all. Forty percent of the ones I instructed chose not to continue. Not removed. Self-selected out.
They all had the smarts. The grades to get there in the first place. What a lot of them didn't have was the physical capacity, or the mental strength to match what was being asked of them.
The second was coaching and mentoring women at the Afghanistan National Army Officer Academy in Kabul, Afghanistan.
What a fucking privilege! Nine months, side by side with them, every day. How lucky was I.
What I didn't see in them was the weight of not being fast enough, not smart enough, not getting the grade or the promotion. Weight we put on ourselves over things we already have the freedom to go after. That didn't exist for them in the same way.
They wanted to work. They were told to stay home.
They wanted to study past a certain age. They were told no.
They wanted to walk outside without a man beside them. They were told no.
Pressure is a privilege. That's what Afghanistan taught me. Some of those women had the chance to feel it, for a while. Then it was taken from them, almost overnight, by circumstances entirely outside their control.
What they taught me is simple: you carry what's yours, and you put down what isn't. And that's what I coach today.
For you, maybe it's watching someone else get picked. The hierarchy. The politics. Someone else's opinion of you. Still real energy, still costing you. Energy that could go into the one thing you can actually train. You.
Afghanistan lit a fire in me. I couldn't change what was happening to those women. That was never mine to control. What I can do is help the women who do have that chance actually take it, instead of letting it pass them by.
That has nothing to do with what you're capable of. What's missing is the training, and that's what this programme builds.
So now I help the women who do have that chance. Women with real careers, and real progress on the table. My job is making sure you put your name forward next time. That you go for it, try, fail if you have to, and try again anyway, instead of quietly opting out.
I've got you.
21 days. One rep at a time. The training starts the moment you sign up.