I still remember my first CrossFit workout.

It was January 2010. I was 29 years old and I had just completed a marathon race two weeks before.

But here I was on the floor of No Excuses CrossFit with my heart pounding and gasping for air.

I had so many questions running through my mind. Why did my lungs hurt? Why did I have this metallic taste in my mouth? Why was it so hard to do pull ups and push ups?

I thought I was in shape. But here I was just a couple of weeks after running the Disney Marathon in 4:07 (which is a respectable Average Joe time) and I was hurting from a 10-minute workout.

The coach was Kyle Maynard, the founder and former owner of No Excuses CrossFit. He told me I was going to do a 10-minute Cindy, which meant I was to try and do as many rounds of 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 air squats in 10 minutes.

I did the first round fine, including five pullups in a row. But in the second round I started to struggle. He gave me a rubber band to assist me with the pull ups. Then the next round he gave me another rubber band. And in the fourth round as I continued to struggle, another rubber band. At this point, I was barely doing pull ups and just bouncing up and down on the rubber band to get my chin over the bar.

The push ups got ugly, too. What started out as 10 in a row, turned to sets of 5, then 3, then barely doing 1 at a time. I finished four rounds in 10 minutes. Not very impressive.

I was reminded of this day recently. This same workout came up at No Excuses CrossFit. Except this time there was no struggle with the pull ups. Instead I was doing 5 strict pull ups, which meant no kipping swing. I finished with 7 rounds and 4 pull ups.

More than 11 years later, at the age of 40 with a wife and three kids, I nearly doubled my score from the first time. I also did a tougher version of the workout. So what’s the secret to getting older and getting stronger? Consistency.

Working out 3-5 times a week for more than a decade builds success. Consistency builds habits. Habits define our lifestyle. It’s always great to see our longtime members that are stronger now in their life than they were 10, 15, 20 years ago. It’s all attributed to their longevity in fitness.

If you’re ready to start your fitness journey, take the first step by scheduling a free No Sweat Intro.