When the lights hit, the music spikes, and your heart rate is already sitting 15 beats above baseline before the clock even starts—grit is what keeps you together. Not talent. Not hype. Grit. The willingness to stay present, keep pushing with intent, and solve problems when your lungs, legs, and ego are screaming to bail.

This isn’t motivational fluff. Grit is a skill set: a cluster of behaviors and mindsets you train, rehearse, and execute under pressure. Here’s how to build it and call on it when it matters most.

Older athletes face lowered anabolic hormones, slower collagen repair, and higher baseline stress. They therefore need an even sharper focus on sleep hygiene, protein timing, mobility maintenance, and parasympathetic activation through practices such as breathwork or meditation. Proper recovery converts training from joint-grinding punishment into forward momentum and longevity.

In the sport of CrossFit, you may have heard the phrase “that athlete has an engine”. What that really means is the athlete is very aerobically fit. This athlete who is known to have an engine will look like they can just keep going for hours on end, without ever needing to stop. An athlete's aerobic capacity is the base of their performance. Aerobic capacity is the maximum amount of oxygen an athlete can utilize for a period of time.

Burnout is no joke; you begin to see a dip in performance, increased anxiety around training, and just generally feel like you don’t want to “grind” anymore. Some people would say that you’re not burnt out, but rather you're just under-recovered… Personally, I think that’s bullshit.

When considering all the ways that someone could maximize performance, one thing that is typically mentioned but maybe under-appreciated is recovery. That’s not to say that good behaviors around recovery do not exist, it’s that it seems to get an uneven amount of attention as compared to the actual training program.

There is a saying that goes like this, “There is no such thing as overtraining, only under-recovering.” Now, I am not sure I fully agree with that, because I feel that if I wanted to, I could put anybody in a training hole. However, recovery in itself is an artform.