The key ideas

The Daily Warrior

Heidi Leatherby, 2020

Motivation comes and goes, but the training has to happen every day. Coach Heidi Leatherby spent years copying workouts off her gym's whiteboard and reworked them for home: no barbell, but no going easy either. Her book gives you a workout and a quote for every day of the year and teaches you to train out of discipline, not because you are in the mood.

Who it is for

For anyone who wants to train at home but quits after a week, every time. And for anyone who needs a simple system: the exercise trains your body, and one line a day trains your head.

Instead of asking yourself, “How long will it take?” ask yourself this: How far can I go?

A whiteboard in Bozeman

Since the fall of 2013, Heidi Leatherby has written down by hand every workout she has done. The gym sessions took place at Altitude Athletics in Bozeman, Montana. Each day the workout was written on an old whiteboard, the whole group did it, and Heidi copied it into a notebook. Over the years the notebooks piled up until they made this book.

The gym had barbells, kettlebells, rings and ropes. You have none of that at home, so under every gym workout the author added a home version: squats, push-ups, lunges, running around the block. That did not make the workouts any easier, she honestly warns.

Each of the 365 days has a workout and a quote about strength. Leatherby suggests you carry the quote in your head during the workout and all day long. That is what meditation means to her. Without this half, in her view, physical training will not last.

Ahead: why the boredom is built in on purpose, how to fit any workout to yourself, how a deck of cards stands in for a coach, and how to start without wrecking yourself in the very first week.

Boring? Good, that's the point

Leatherby knows in advance what people will complain about: the workouts repeat. Her answer is one word: good. That is the whole point. At the gym in Bozeman they did the same work for months and years, with nothing new and nothing fun, and that, she says, is how all the great athletes trained. The book holds just one year of that work, and it is only the beginning.

The author does not accept boredom as a reason to stop. You are not a child with a 15-minute attention span, she writes. An adult is in control of their own mind and will find a way to finish the job. Just work, and come back tomorrow and work some more.

Hence the book's main rule. Plan your rest days ahead, but never skip a workout just because you don't feel like it. A workout that looks too hard or too easy is no reason to skip it either.

Think of brushing your teeth. Nobody waits for inspiration to do it, and nobody gives it up because it is the same every morning. That comparison is Livria's, but this is exactly how Leatherby asks you to treat movement.

And one more request: don't ask when you will see results. In the author's view, that question sinks you before you even start. Ask yourself something else: how far can I go?

Read in Livria

About the author

Heidi Leatherby lives in Montana. She is a certified StrongFirst Kettlebell Instructor (SFG1) and a CrossFit Level 1 Trainer. For about twenty years she has studied different approaches to health and fitness and tested them on herself.

All books by this author: Heidi Leatherby

Terms from the book

  • meditation
  • Bozeman: A city in the state of Montana in the northwestern United States. It is home to the gym where the author trained from 2013.
  • Altitude Athletics: The gym in Bozeman where the author trained for many years under two coaches. She dedicated the book to them.
  • burpee: A full-body exercise with no equipment: a squat, a push-up position, a squat again and a jump with a clap overhead. To make it gentler, you step your feet back instead of jumping them.
  • scaling: A gym word for fitting a workout to yourself: fewer reps, a lighter weight or a simpler version of the movement.
  • mountain climbers: An exercise in the push-up position: you pull your knees to your chest one after the other, fast, as if running in place.
  • Thunderstruck: A 1990 song by the Australian rock band AC/DC. The word from the title is sung in it many times.
  • EMOM: Short for every minute on the minute. At the start of each minute you do a set number of reps and rest for what is left of the minute.
  • AMRAP: Short for as many rounds as possible. You count how many rounds you managed in the time given.
  • chipper: A workout type from the book: you finish every rep of one movement and only then move on to the next.
  • Gable: Dan Gable, an American freestyle wrestler, Olympic champion in 1972 and later a famous coach.
  • Willink: Jocko Willink, an American writer and former U.S. Navy SEAL officer, author of books on discipline and leadership.
  • Achilles tendon: The largest tendon in the human body. It connects the calf muscle to the heel bone.

All terms

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