2026-08-17 · Note
Coaching fighters, shipping product
What teaching kickboxing keeps reminding me about product work: fidelity of feedback, unglamorous reps, and pacing.
I teach kickboxing and boxing on the side. It's been years. And every so often I notice that what makes a fighter get better is exactly what makes a product function get better — even though nothing about the two looks alike from the outside.
Three things keep coming up.
Fidelity of feedback matters more than volume.
You can throw a thousand punches on a pad and get nowhere. Or you can throw fifty and get corrected on every one and level up in an hour. Fighters don't need more reps; they need reps someone is actually watching. Same in product. A team that ships weekly with no honest post-mortem isn't learning. A team that ships monthly with sharp, specific feedback is. Rep count is the vanity metric.
The technique that doesn't matter this week is the one that wins in year two.
Beginners want to spar. They want the fun bit. Coaches make them stand there and throw the same jab, over and over, for weeks, because in month twelve that jab is going to buy them a knockout. Product has the same shape. Reconciling data, writing sharp specs, cleaning the funnel — the unglamorous stuff is what compounds. The exciting stuff is what people remember, but rarely what wins.
Pacing is a competitive advantage.
Fighters who blow their gas tank in round one lose to fighters who train to still be effective in round three. Marathoners who hit the wall at 30k lose to the ones who run the last 12k unchanged. And PMs who sprint every quarter and burn out lose to the ones who ship at 80% every week for a decade. Consistency is a design choice, not a soft skill.
None of this is deep. It's just what I keep noticing. The domains change; the operating model doesn't.