On Friday, Miles had the pleasure of spending time with Anthony “Staz” Stazicker — former UK Special Boat Service operator, holder of the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, and co-founder of elite outdoor brand ThruDark. He’s also part of the team that set the fastest known time for summiting Everest from London door-to-door: under seven days, there and back.
It was a brilliant conversation. But the takeaway wasn’t really about mountains or medals. It was about one word: STANDARDS .
Here’s what stuck with me — and why it applies just as much to your training as it does to running a business or leading a team.
You don’t get what you want. You get what you tolerate.
Staz’s whole message circled back to this. Not motivation, not talent, not luck — standards. The daily, boring, repeatable stuff you hold yourself to when nobody’s watching and nothing exciting is happening.
He talked about failing as a footballer after injury, going through Special Forces selection, surviving a parachute malfunction at 18,000 feet, and getting caught in an avalanche on Everest. Different situations, same lesson every time: when things go wrong, you don’t rise to the occasion — you fall back on whatever standard you’ve already built. There’s no time to suddenly become disciplined in the moment. You either already are, or you’re not.
For me, that lands hard. Whether it’s a member chasing their first pull-up or someone training for a strength competition, results aren’t built in the big dramatic sessions — they’re built in the sessions you almost skipped.
Discipline isn’t a cage. It’s freedom.
One line that really landed: discipline doesn’t take options away from you — it gives you more of them. The person who’s consistent with training, sleep, and nutrition has way more freedom to chase a goal, change direction, or handle a setback than someone starting from zero.
It’s the same with running 6FIT. The boring stuff — showing up, maintaining standards in the gym, doing the unglamorous admin — is what gives you the freedom later to grow, open new sites, or take a risk on something exciting.
Comfort is where standards quietly slip
Staz made the point that the moment you get comfortable is the moment your standards start eroding — and you often don’t notice until something breaks. Small deviations stack up. A skipped session here, a lowered expectation there, and eventually it shows up as a bigger failure that looks sudden but never really was.
This is exactly why we push members to track progress and stay accountable rather than coast once things feel “good enough.” Comfortable is the warning sign, not the reward.
Debrief like you mean it
In the Special Forces, after every operation there’s a brutal, honest debrief — what worked, what didn’t, what gets fixed before next time. No ego, no excuses. Staz’s point: without that habit, there’s no improvement, just repetition of the same mistakes.
It’s a great reminder for training too. Don’t just finish a session and move on — ask what worked, what didn’t, and what needs to change. It’s also exactly why we run our regular member surveys: if we’re not debriefing as a gym, we’re not improving as a gym.
The takeaway
Whatever you’re chasing — a fitness goal, a stronger business, or your next personal best — it rarely comes down to one big moment. It comes down to the standard you hold on the days nobody’s clapping for you.
Big thanks to Staz Stazicker for the reminder. I’ll be carrying it into everything we do at 6FIT.