The front shocks on my 02 Disco where a little harder than the rear. The difficulty stemmed from one of the 13mm nuts stripped that fastens the shock tower to the frame. Make sure you use a six pt socket only and douse them with penetrating oil. It's also very tedious removing the 13mm nuts tabs from the bottom. The onl way to do it is with a 13mm open ended wrench. Dont strip those bolts otherwise you are going to have a real problem.

Someone else on this forum said to remove the vacume cannister from the driver's side. Guess what? I didnt remove the 12mm nut holding it to the bracket and tried to take the shock turret out with it in there. I broke the vacume nipple off the back of the cannister!!! I used Quick Setting JB Weld to attach a vacume nipple where the old nipple broke off.

The driver's side is more challenging but doable. You have to remove the air intake from the throttle body, unplug the jack on the ABS module and remove the vacume cannister or else you are going to waste a half hour trying to fix it. You have to wiggle the shock turret in there and you are precariously close to a lot of stuff you dont want to break,