While I may be old-fashioned and oddly proud of it, I don’t want anything you read here to be old hat. Or needlessly lengthy.

So in my attempt to light the fire of health and fitness under you (or help keep it ablaze), I will stifle the urge to cite 39 words that always fire me up but were said by a guy who won a silver medal in the Olympics 101 years ago. Instead, I’ll borrow merely three I heard recently from a retired Navy SEAL who’s better known for tweets about his 4:30 a.m. workouts than the book he wrote or the podcast he hosts.

“Discipline equals freedom.”

Now many people, particularly the young, associate discipline with a punishment imposed upon you by an outside source - and that’s not wrong. That’s the shape it often takes.

When it does, we usually don’t like it and understandably so.

But there’s a discipline that’s good and pure and does indeed lead to freedom. But it rarely springs from an outside source. It usually originates from a drive inside you.

That was certainly the case for Trent Klasna and led to something great.

But if a documentary were made about the best United States cyclists, Klasna would not bear mention. In fact, CyclingRanking.com puts 90 from his era ahead of him.

A decision I remember him making during a season when he raced as a pro but without a team, though, not only attests to his inner drive but also imparts the essence of Willink’s discipline-is-freedom quotation.

Klasna wasn’t getting the sorts of results that would get him what he really wanted, a pro contract, so he went home. Stopped racing altogether.

Did something that even makes a discipline freak and exercise addict like me say, “No how. No way.”

Without a coach or companions to push him, he rode as hard as he could for seven straight days. And no matter how hilly the course or how fatigued he felt - somehow, some way - each day’s ride would not end until he saw triple digits on his computer.

When Klasna returned to racing, he shocked the pro circuit and won a very prestigious race. One of the few multi-day stage races in North America.

A shock intensified by the fact he did so without the support of a single teammate.

But he did have an assistance of sort, his steely inner discipline, and it lead to the freedom he sought. Klasna’s against-all-odds victory created a bidding war amongst a handful of domestic racing teams suddenly seeking his services.

While it’s possible only cycling aficionados and over-the-top exercisers will find this story inspirational, inciting inspiration is not why this story is told. It’s simply to support today’s title: Discipline is not a dirty word.

Discipline can, however, be the key to obtaining or maintaining physical and emotional fitness.

And based on the life advice he offers in a video produced by Motivation Madness, Joe Rogan believes that as well. A true Renaissance Man who does both MMA fighting and standup comedy while hosting the most popular podcast in the land and remaining a devoted family man, Rogan suggests using exercise to create your own “struggle” because it builds up “your ability to endure.”

“That ability to endure things . . . It’s important for your head, it’s important for your relationships, it’s important for your life,” he says, because it “minimizes” the other struggles in life.

Rogan also mentions Jocko Willinks’ fondness of 4:30 a.m. workouts and emphasizes how by doing them - come hell or high water - Willinks “earns his sunsets,” a nice turn of a phrase for the serenity we all feel after successfully meeting all the day’s demands, including the self-imposed ones like exercise.

Now back to why I reference Rogan. To help answer the question that crops up in your mind, I fear, from time to time when you exercise.

“What’s the point in really pushing the pace - and myself? After all, don’t the experts who speak for Uncle Sam say 30 minutes of something like a moderate walk five times a week is enough?”

Yes they do, and yes it is - if your goal is average physical health.

But don’t you want more for yourself? Don’t you want to “earn your sunsets” and engender physical and emotional excellence?

Discipline can provide that by creating what that aforementioned Olympic silver medalist from 101 years ago called “one of those strange ironies of this strange life.”

“That those who work the hardest, who subject themselves to the strictest discipline, who give up pleasurable things in order to achieve a goal, are the happiest men.”

By breaking my word and using that quote in part, I’m now fully fired up. So let’s both get out there, grunt and groan, really get after it, and get happy as a result.