Elbow grease
"Hard physical effort, especially manual scrubbing or polishing."
One of the oldest idioms in the repository. The phrase appears in print as early as 1672, in John Ray's collection of English proverbs, in the form "Elbow grease is the best cure for the rust." The joke is straightforward: the only "grease" that will properly clean or polish something is the effort of your own arm, not any actual lubricant. The image has stayed almost entirely unchanged in meaning for over 350 years.
Sources: John Ray, A Collection of English Proverbs (1672); cited in the Oxford English Dictionary's entry for 'elbow grease.'
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