The Man Cave

Your argument and hypocrisy are showing faults. You took time to respond to something you didn't read. Only a moron would do that... or someone with the specific intention of following my posts with the goal of harassment, or both. Sad to say BTPost, a mod on these forums, started the trolling off in true Chelloveck fashion and then with the door open you rolled in right on queue. Yeah I'm going to let myself out too.

Unfortunately I can't put BTPost on the ignore list.

 

The Importance of Having a Physical Identity

In the United States, over sixty percent of people live a sedentary lifestyle. A quarter of the population gets no physical activity at all.

Maybe you’re one of these sedentary folks. Physical activity is just not something you do. It’s not part of your life.

Why is this? Why are so many adults physically inactive?

It likely goes back to their childhood, and the fact that they never developed a physical identity.

The Athlete/Non-Athlete Tracks of Childhood and How Kids Lose Their Physical Identity
Dr. Daniel O’Neill, author of Survival of the Fit, defines “physical identity” as the innate human drive we’re all born with to move our bodies through space. Take a look at toddlers. They love to move. They roll, crawl, climb, and run around like maniacs. They’ll pick up stuff and throw it for no reason at all. They take a playful approach to life.

But according to Dr. O’Neill, kids lose their physical identity if that playful, active approach to the world isn’t fostered and encouraged as they move beyond the toddler years.

The loss of a physical identity often happens because of the two tracks which tend to form during modern childhood.

Children on the first track show an innate athleticism and/or interest in sports from a young age. Their parents sign them up for sports — T-ball, basketball, soccer, football, tennis — and the kids take a liking to these sports and stick with them. They go out for the team when they get into high school. They go to camps to improve their skills and do strength and conditioning courses during the off-season.

These kids not only develop a physical identity but also what O’Neill calls an “athlete identity.” You generally don’t have to worry about them when it comes to being and staying physically active. Though they sometimes pass through a sedentary season of life after high school, in which they have to learn to be physically active outside the realm of organized sports, they tend to eventually rediscover physical activity as a personal pursuit and remain active through adulthood.

Kids on the second track, and these may constitute up to two-thirds of children, don’t demonstrate innate athleticism or interest in sports when they’re young. Their parents decide that sports aren’t for them. Or their parents do sign them up for sports, but they don’t take to it and don’t end up wanting to continue.

Because so much of physical activity in modern childhood centers around sports, kids who opt out of them often don’t get much physical activity of any kind. In another time, children who didn’t do organized sports might still get in some activity by riding bikes, building forts, and playing impromptu games of wallball and manhunt with neighborhood friends. But the rise of smaller families (making for less kid-population-dense neighborhoods) and the advent of screens have made this kind of free play less common. In another time too, kids who didn’t do organized sports would still get experience with physical exercise through participation in their school’s P.E. program. But P.E. programs have been dialed back in schools across the country and are often non-existent in high school.


Thus, for kids who don’t do sports, physical activity can practically drop out of their lives altogether. Instead of participating in athletics, kids on this second track may default to doing more screen time and playing video games. Or they may get into more constructive interests like music, art, and theater.

Because children on this second track don’t develop an “athlete identity,” they don’t develop a physical identity, either. In fact, because they associate having a physical identity with sports, and they’re not into sports, they may partly come to define themselves in opposition to that physical identity; “I’m not like the dumb jocks.”

Kids on the second track may have healthy interests, but their physical health isn’t as optimal as it could be, and the consequences of that catch up with them when they transition from being sedentary children to joining the two-thirds of the world’s population who live as sedentary adults.

Because of the way an overemphasis on organized sports during childhood leads to an all-or-nothing conflation between sports and physical activity, Dr. O’Neill argues that sports ironically represent one of the biggest obstacles to the widespread formation of a physical identity in children. A false dichotomy is created where if you’re not into sports, you’re not into physical activity, period. But just because you’re not an “athlete,” doesn’t mean you aren’t a physical being.

What You Miss Out On When You Don’t Have a Physical Identity
In Survival of the Fit, Dr. O’Neill spends a lot of time detailing the health issues that come with not having a physical identity. When you lack a physical identity, you tend to be physically inactive. Because you move less, you increase your risk of all the physical and mental health issues a sedentary lifestyle creates: obesity, cardiovascular disease, muscle atrophy, insulin resistance, depression, and anxiety.

But O’Neill also points out that when you lack a physical identity, you increase the chance of missing out on many of the world’s joys and pleasures.

If you don’t foster the physical side of yourself as a kid because you associate physicality with sports and you aren’t into sports, you consequently don’t develop the physical awareness and aptitude — the physical comfort and confidence — to participate in the vast array of active, non-sport pursuits that can be kindled in youth and become enduring pastimes in adulthood. Hiking, climbing, dancing, hunting, skating, swimming, cycling, kayaking, and skiing are all physical activities that can greatly enrich your life and which you can do without ever having to think of yourself as an athlete.

When you don’t have a physical identity, you can miss out on the joys of exploring a beautiful waterfall with your family, running through the woods with friends, feeling the cold wind rush against your face as you snowboard down a mountain.

We are embodied beings. When you cut yourself off from physical activity, you cut yourself off from many of the most animating layers of human existence.


How to Nurture Your Kids’ Physical Identity
If you want to ensure your kids have a physical identity as adults, and a good shot at lifelong health and joy, you need to nurture their physical identity while they’re young. The goal is to help your kids keep and grow the physical identity they were born with.

O’Neill believes that one of the best ways to help our kids do this is to expand and reinvigorate P.E in our children’s schools and make it the absolute core of their entire education. He rightly argues that physical activity is the solution to almost all the problems that face our youth specifically and our population broadly, and that a foundation of physical health facilitates all other forms of learning. A sound mind in a sound body!

O’Neill thinks P.E. should be mandatory from kindergarten through twelfth grade, and its emphasis should be on varied forms of vigorous physical activity — instead of just sports. He’s not against sports, mind you. He just doesn’t want sports to be done to the exclusion of all other kinds of exercise.

O’Neill exhorts people to advocate for better P.E programs in their children’s schools, and this is a cause that parents should look into; what’s the quality of the physical education your children are receiving? Can anything be done to improve it?

While making change in this area is of course difficult, there are fortunately other things parents can do at home to foster a physical identity in their kids:

Be physically active yourself. Kids model what they see. What pattern are you setting in your home? If your kids see that you and your wife are physically active, they’re more likely to be physically active themselves. Exemplify what a physical identity looks like to your children.

Make physical activity a regular, normal part of your family’s life together. Incorporate physical activity into your family’s culture. Roughhouse with your kids. Take family walks and bike rides. Go on hikes. Play pick-up basketball in the driveway. Skank to Five Iron Frenzy. Go canoeing. Have cartwheel competitions. Play tag. Go skiing. Climb mountains.

Introduce your kids to as many physical pastimes as possible; you never know which activities will become lifelong loves for them.

Still consider sports. Sports are inadequate for addressing our society-wide lack of physical activity as they represent a net that will ultimately only encompass a minority of kids. But we’d still argue that sports remain one of the best entryways for developing a physical identity, a lifelong interest in physical activity, and other aspects of good character too. Instead of dismissing sports, we should look for ways to get more kids involved in them.

For one thing, don’t write off kids as being non-athletic too soon. While plenty of aspects of a child’s personality manifest themselves right from the time they exit the womb, sometimes it can be hard to tell whether a kid will take to sports or not, and you don’t want to turn a premature assessment into a self-fulfilling prophecy: you don’t think they’re made for sports, so you don’t put them in sports, and they thus don’t develop any athletic ability, which confirms that sports weren’t for them. We’ve seen cases where little kids were seemingly pretty nerdy and physically awkward, but nonetheless got involved with sports, took surprisingly well to them, and activated a side of themselves that otherwise would have gone undeveloped.


Little kids are up for trying whatever, so give them experience with different sports and see what happens. Maybe they won’t like it and will want to opt out. But maybe they’ll find something they really dig.

And when you enroll kids in sports, start them off with lower-key, less competitive leagues. Sometimes a kid thinks he doesn’t like sports, but what he actually doesn’t like is the too-pressurized atmosphere in which he first tried them. Sports for kids should be fun, a positive experience that makes them want to keep with it — if not with that specific sport, then with physical activity in general.

The key with sports is that they should be a supplement to developing a child’s overall physical identity, and not the sole component. That way, should the kid decide that sports aren’t for him, he’s still got other outlets in his life that’ll keep him in contact with a current of physicality.

How to Nurture Your Own Physical Identity
Maybe you’re reading this and recognize yourself as someone who came of age on the second track of childhood. You don’t regret the other interests you pursued in lieu of sports, but do lament the fact you didn’t develop a physical identity too. Well, it’s not too late for you to nurture one. Remember: you were born with a physical identity — it may just be dormant from lack of use.

Disassociate physical activity from sports. The first key for adults who want to develop a physical identity is to disassociate physical activity from sports. There are still middle-aged folks out there who don’t feel like physical activity is for them because they weren’t athletes in high school and still kind of define themselves as not being like the stereotypical jocks they knew back in the day.

Throw out the old binaries you may still carry around from your teen years. You can be bookish, musical, and/or artistic and physically active.

Hiking, frisbee, parkour, dancing, yoga, skiing, swimming, geocaching. There’s a world of physical activity out there beyond sports.

Pick something you enjoy. One of the biggest takeaways from all the podcast interviews we’ve done over the years comes from behavioral scientist Michelle Segar. Her research has shown that you’re more likely to stick to regular physical activity if you enjoy it. Duh!

But many adults approach physical activity the way kids approach taking Robitussin: by stifling a gag and pinching their noses.

Don’t approach physical activity like you’re taking a spoonful of medicine. Don’t do the physical activity you think you should do. Do the kind of physical activity you actually enjoy.

If that’s walking, great! Do that. If it’s MovNat, go for it! Like to lift weights? Get under the bar. Experiment. Sign up for tennis lessons. Spend a week swimming at a community pool. Find the thing that joyfully lights up your physical identity and makes you look forward to getting in touch with your embodied self each day.

 

So are you saying its a one way door? They can say nasty things to us but we just have to sit here and take it?

 

How to Suture a Wound

With our archives now 3,500+ articles deep, we’ve decided to republish a classic piece each Sunday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems from the past. This article was originally published in February 2018.

You’re staying in a cabin with some friends and family in the remote wilderness far from civilization. It’s quiet. Pristine. Life is good.

One morning while your buddy is splitting wood, his maul glances off the log and cuts into his leg, leaving a large gash. While the wound is large and deep, the maul didn’t hit an artery or large vein, so there isn’t a risk of him bleeding out. You get him back to the cabin to take a closer look and clean it out.

While the bleeding has stopped, there’s still a giant, gaping wound in your friend’s leg. It needs to be closed up to reduce the chance of infection and so the wound can start healing properly. You try a butterfly bandage, but it’s not keeping the wound together. It’s clear your buddy needs stitches, but the nearest doctor is a day’s trip away. Luckily, you have a suturing kit in your first aid supplies, and you know how to sew him up yourself.

What Is Suturing?
Suturing is a fancy way of saying stitches. It’s when you use a sterilized needle and thread to sew together a severe wound so that tissue can start healing properly as well as to reduce the chances of infection.

Sutures are used when a wound is deep and gaping. For example, if you can see fat in your wound, you should get stitches. If you just tried to close the wound with a bandage, it would only bring the top part of the tissue together, leaving the tissue beneath still separated. That little gap can become a breeding ground for infection. Suturing ensures that you bring all the layers of tissue together so the damaged wound can start healing.

Another example of when you might need to suture: A buddy of mine has a cousin who was involved in an accident that left a finger detached from his hand. They were in a remote area and couldn’t get to an emergency room right away. So the dad (who was a vet) used a suturing kit to sew it back on. It wasn’t perfect, but it kept the detached finger tissue from dying and they were able to get him to the emergency room to have it properly sutured. My friend’s cousin still has that finger.

DIY Suturing Should Only Be Done in Real Emergencies
Suturing is a skill that takes a considerable amount of practice. If you do it incorrectly, at worst you can cause a life-threatening infection or the wound to heal improperly; at best, you’ll leave a terrible looking scar on the person. When doctors perform suturing, they typically inject a numbing agent into the area they’ll be sewing up so the patient can’t feel a needle going in and out of his flesh. You probably won’t have that on you, so suturing will likely be very painful. Another reason it should be a last resort.


For those reasons, suturing should only be used in emergency situations when you won’t be able to get to a doctor within 12-24 hours. In most cases, if you’ve got a gaping wound, do what you can to stop the bleeding and use butterfly bandages and gauze to close it up as much as possible. Then call 911 or get yourself to an emergency room ASAP.

If for some reason you find yourself in a situation that prevents you from getting to a doctor, here’s how to do it yourself.

Suturing Supplies
In an extreme pinch, you could probably use a regular old needle and thread (ideally sterilized with boiling water or otherwise) to suture a wound. But that would 1) be hard, and 2) increase the chance of infection.

To properly and effectively suture a wound, you’ll want to get a hold of a suturing kit. Here’s what you’ll need at a minimum:

• Needle driver. This is what you’ll use to hold the needle when you’re putting it through the tissue.
• Tissue forceps. You’ll use these to manipulate the tissue around the wound while you apply the suture.
• Scissors. To cut excess thread.
• Sterilized needle and thread. When you apply sutures to someone, you’re putting in and leaving foreign objects in their body. You want to make sure they’re sterilized. You can purchase sterilized suture threads at most online first aid and survival stores. The needle on a medical suture is typically curved to make sewing a bit easier.

Be sure everything is sterilized before using on human flesh. Kits sometimes come with sterilizing alcohol wipes; if yours doesn’t, be sure to add some.

How to Practice Suturing
You don’t want your first time suturing to be when you’re confronted with an actual gaping, bleeding wound. You’ll want to practice. But how do you practice suturing a wound without a wound?

There are a few ways:

Pig belly. I learned how to suture on a flap of pig belly. While the pig belly had all the tissue that you’d see on a human, including skin, fat, and a bit of muscle, pigskin is much thicker than human skin. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up bending your suture needle trying to get it through the pig’s armor-like dermis.

To create your practice wounds on the pig belly, just cut it with a knife or scalpel.

Chicken with skin. I’ve heard that a chicken breast with the skin on makes for good suturing practice since the skin is a bit more like human skin.

Banana. Bananas have a nice fleshy texture that makes for good suturing practice.

Suture pad. If you don’t want to practice suturing on your food, you can buy a suturing practice pad. They’re made from latex and have precut wounds on them. One of the benefits of suture pads is that you can use them multiple times, unlike the pig belly or chicken that would need to be thrown out after you’ve practiced on (and then perhaps eaten) them. Suture pads are affordable; you can buy one on Amazon for $10. I’m using a suture pad in the example below.


How to Suture a Wound
There are different suturing techniques with varying degrees of difficulty. More complex suture techniques are used to reduce scarring.

For this article, we’ll demonstrate how to perform the most straightforward suturing technique: interrupted (or intermittent) sutures.

An interrupted suture is called that because each stitch isn’t connected. You make one, tie it off, and then make another.

Interrupted sutures are simple to place and secure. They also allow you to make changes much more easily than a continuous suture. Just cut one of the stitches, adjust the wound, and then suture again.

Here’s how to do interrupted sutures:

1. Wash hands and prepare the wound. Wash your grubby hands like a doctor to reduce the chances of infecting the wound. Prepare the wound for suturing by cleaning out any debris with water. Clean out as much blood as possible. Put on latex gloves.



2. Use your needle driver to grab the needle. Make sure the needle clamp locks in place. Pull all the thread out of the suture kit.

3. Use the tissue forceps to expose the side of the wound you’ll begin the suture on. This lets you see what you’re working with and how deep the wound goes. Line up the edges of the wound as much as you can.



4. Push the needle through the skin at a 90-degree angle about a centimeter to the right of the wound. Don’t go below the fat. Just right above it.



5. When you’ve gone deep enough, twist your hand clockwise so that the needle starts coming up on the other side of the wound. You want the needle to come out straight across from the first needle hole.

6. When the needle has come out on the other side of the wound, unlock the needle driver, reattach it near the tip of the needle (you don’t need to lock it), and pull until you have about 1-2 inches of thread left on the right side of the wound. Release the needle.



7. Using your left hand, hold the thread on the left side of the needle and wrap twice around the tip of the needle holder.



8. Slightly open the needle holder and grab that 1-2″ of thread on the right side of the wound.





9. Using your left hand, pull the long part of the thread. The part of the thread wrapped around the needle holder will slide off. You’ll have created a simple overhand knot with two loops. This is called the “first throw.”



10. Tighten things so that the tissue is just touching and make sure the knot is lying flat.





11. Time for the “second throw.” Using your left hand, hold the long end of the thread and wrap it once around the needle driver clockwise. Slightly open the needle driver and grab the short end of the thread. Using your left hand, pull the long part of the thread. You’ll finish off your surgeon’s knot with another overhand knot.


12. Repeat step 11 one more time for a “third throw” to really create a secure knot. Instead of wrapping the thread clockwise around the needle driver, wrap it counter-clockwise. This will prevent the knot from slipping.



13. Cut the excess thread.



14. Move a quarter-inch down the wound and repeat the process.



15. Make sure all the knots are lined up on the same side. Mine are on the left side of the wound.

16. Wrap your sutured wound with a sterilized bandage. Get professional medical attention as soon as possible.

 

Why Every Man Should Be Strong

When I first started the Art of Manliness, I didn’t put too much stock in physical strength as an important component of manhood. Strength of character, sure, but physical strength was more of a secondary pursuit. Maybe it was because I started AoM partly to get away from the overdone fetishization of getting ripped that was (and is) promoted by other men’s magazines. Maybe it was because I wasn’t in shape myself at the time. (We often construct our definition of manhood in accordance with that which describes ourselves best, and I’m certainly not immune to this temptation!) I had played football in high school, but after going to college, my workouts became halfhearted and sporadic. This was especially true in law school — between trying to keep up my grades and running a fledgling blog, exercise just wasn’t a top priority.

Over the last couple years, however, working out, and lifting weights in particular, has become a fundamental part of my life. It started with my 90-day testosterone experiment; I started exercising regularly to see what effect it would have on my T levels. When the official experiment ended, the habit stuck. I went from being fairly indifferent to exercise, to looking forward to my workouts as my favorite part of the day. And I found that building my body changed the way I felt and carried myself as a man.

At the same time, my research into the core of masculinity gave me a theoretical understanding of the role of strength in the ancient, universal code of manhood. This research convinced me that strength forms the nucleus of manliness, as it truly makes all the other manly virtues possible.

Over time then, the importance of strength-building to a man’s virility sunk into both my mind and my bones. Strength may not seem very necessary in today’s world where most men sit behind desks at work all day. But being strong is never a disadvantage, and it is frequently quite beneficial on a variety of fronts. Most importantly, strength forms the backbone of the code of manhood. Today I’d like to talk about why.

Why Every Man Should Be Strong


Physical strength constitutes one of the few and most significant differences between men and women.
If the Protector role represents the core of masculinity, then physical strength forms its very nucleus. It’s the fundamental factor as to whether a man can hold his own in a fight – whether he can push back when pushed. It’s thus central to how humans viscerally judge a man’s manliness. You can call it stupid or silly or archaic, but it all goes back to the way we evaluate men — could they keep the perimeter in a crisis? Though we now live in a comfortable time of peace, that hasn’t changed the fact that men and women alike (even the most progressive of them) find men who appear physically strong and fit more respectable, authoritative, attractive — and manly — than men who aren’t. Additionally, lifting boosts your testosterone, which is the lifeblood of masculinity. Thus, if you want to feel more like a man (and be treated like one), you should seek to build your body.


Building strength boosts your physical and mental health.
Obesity kills. Exercising and raising your T (which lifting weights does) keeps your body healthy and combats depression. Need I say more?

Physical strength is practical and prepares you for any exigency.


Even in our safe, suburban society, strength still comes in handy. I want to know that I’m strong enough to carry someone out of a burning home to safety (as well as being able to save my own life in an emergency); I want the strength to lift heavy bags of mulch when I’m working around my house; I want to be able to put a would-be attacker on the ground.

In a way, strength can be classified as an antifragility-increasing redundancy: most of the time we can rely on our tech and tools to get the job done for us, but you never know when you’re going to need to get down in the dirt, and when you do, you’ll be glad to be able to call upon your bodily strength. When everything else gets stripped away, what you’ve got left is the most basic of struggles — muscle versus nature and muscle versus muscle.

Physical strength fosters well-rounded excellence and a life of full flourishing.
Too often we think of strength-building as something for shallow cads and dumb bros. We set up a false dichotomy between virtue and strength, brains and brawn.

Yet many great men in history, including philosophers, statesman, and writers, rejected this phony divide, and emphasized the importance of developing body, mind, and soul. They understood that without a strong body, a man will never be able to develop his other virtues to their highest potential.



You may be familiar with Theodore Roosevelt’s conviction of this truth — how he transformed a weak, sickly boyhood into a strong and virile manhood after his father declared to him: “Theodore, you have the mind, but you have not the body, and without the help of the body, the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body.” TR answered, “I will make my body!” and spent the rest of his life doing so, vigorously boxing, wrestling, hiking, swimming, and hunting until his death.
His biographer, William Manchester, details his transformation:

Sickly, an uncoordinated weakling with the pale fragile hands of a girl, speaking with a lisp and a slight stutter, he had been at the mercy of bullies. They beat him, ridiculed him, and pelted him with cricket balls. Trembling and humiliated, he hid in a nearby woods. This was hardly the stuff of which gladiators are made. His only weapons were an unconquerable will and an incipient sense of immortality . . .

Beginning at the age of seven, Churchill deliberately set out to change his nature, to prove that biology need not be destiny. Anthony Storr, the English psychiatrist and author of Human Aggression, concludes that he ‘was, to a marked extent, forcing himself to go against his own inner nature.’ As a Victorian, Churchill believed he could be master of his fate, and that faith sustained him, but everything we have learned about human motivation since then underscores the immensity of his undertaking. W. H. Sheldon has delineated three dominant physiques, each with its concomitant personality traits. Of the three—ectomorphic (slight), mesomorphic (muscular), and endomorphic (fat)—Churchill clearly fell in the third category. His head was ponderous, his limbs small, his belly tumescent, his chest puny. His skin was so sensitive that he broke into a rash unless he slept naked at night between silk sheets. By day he could wear only silk underwear against his skin. Endomorphs are characteristically lazy, calculating, easygoing, and predictable. Churchill was none of these. He altered his emotional constitution to that of an athlete, projecting the image of a valiant, indomitable bulldog.




At times along the way he despaired. In 1893 he wrote, ‘I am cursed with so feeble a body, that I can hardly support the fatigues of the day.’ Yet he was determined to prove just as hardy as any mesomorph. In his teens he nearly killed himself while leaping from a bridge during a game of tag; he pitched down almost thirty feet and lay unconscious for three days. He fell again steeplechasing at Aldershot, and yet again when disembarking at Bombay, where he permanently injured a shoulder; for the rest of his active life he played polo, off and on, with his arm bound to his side. As a child he caught pneumonia. He suffered from chest ailments the rest of his life. He was allergic to anesthetics and periodically erupted in boils. Nevertheless, he refused to yield to human frailty. In his inner world there was no room for concessions to weakness. He never complained of fatigue. In his seventieth year he flew to councils of war overseas sprawled across a tick mattress on the floor of an unheated World War II bomber . . . He will be remembered as freedom’s champion in its darkest hour, but he will be cherished as a man.

Churchill and TR understood that if they wanted to develop their minds to their peak excellence, and do something significant on the world stage, they could not spend their lives curled up in bed reading stacks of books. Instead, they would need the energy to travel the world and expand not only their mental horizons, but their physical ones too — to test their moral convictions and cognitive powers in the real life crucible of leadership. A strong body would take them where they needed to be, and help them perform nobly in the field. Without physical strength, they could never have achieved, or become, all that they did.

Thus, if you’re interested in developing to your highest potential, you would do well to follow in these great men’s footsteps, and seek what the ancients extolled as mens sana in corpore sano: a sound mind in a sound body.

Building physical strength teaches life lessons.


In addition to offering us literal energy to tackle our pursuits, strength-building also imparts many metaphorical lessons as well. The pain and dedication required to work out regularly teaches you about discipline, resilience, and humility, among other things. In his must-read essay, “The Iron,” musician and artist Henry Rollins sums up the power that lifting weights can have in forging a man’s character:

It took me years to fully appreciate the value of the lessons I have learned from the Iron. I used to think that it was my adversary, that I was trying to lift that which does not want to be lifted. I was wrong. When the Iron doesn’t want to come off the mat, it’s the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn’t teach you anything. That’s the way the Iron talks to you. It tells you that the material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against will always work against you.


It wasn’t until my late twenties that I learned that by working out I had given myself a great gift. I learned that nothing good comes without work and a certain amount of pain. When I finish a set that leaves me shaking, I know more about myself. When something gets bad, I know it can’t be as bad as that workout.

I used to fight the pain, but recently this became clear to me: pain is not my enemy; it is my call to greatness. But when dealing with the Iron, one must be careful to interpret the pain correctly. Most injuries involving the Iron come from ego. I once spent a few weeks lifting weight that my body wasn’t ready for and spent a few months not picking up anything heavier than a fork. Try to lift what you’re not prepared to and the Iron will teach you a little lesson in restraint and self-control.

I have never met a truly strong person who didn’t have self-respect. I think a lot of inwardly and outwardly directed contempt passes itself off as self-respect: the idea of raising yourself by stepping on someone’s shoulders instead of doing it yourself. When I see guys working out for cosmetic reasons, I see vanity exposing them in the worst way, as cartoon characters, billboards for imbalance and insecurity. Strength reveals itself through character.

Strength acts as the backbone to our virtue.
Not only does strength-building develop one’s character and virtue, it provides the necessary backbone – the proper framework – on which to build our moral values. The cloak of virtue hangs very awkwardly on a man without fire and fight; it droops and sags when draped across a structure that lacks strength and firmness. We all know amiable men who are sickly thin or grossly overweight, who look like they’d burst into tears if a bully broke their walking stick and would get winded mounting a flight of stairs. These mealy men profess to be nice guys, perfect gentlemen, but we don’t respect them as men, or gentlemen either. They’re good men, but not good at being men.

Strength secures our virtue onto us.
The reason we may like a nice but feeble man, but not think of him as manly, is because his claim to virtue is weak if he doesn’t have the virile fortitude and strength to back it up when challenged. What good are intellectual achievements and moral principles, if those who hold and cultivate them are subdued by those who care nothing for these higher values? It’s important to have principles, but are you prepared to fight for your principles? Likewise, can you truly say you’re a “good family man” if you could easily be outmuscled by a bad guy trying to get at your wife and kids?

As TR put it:

I like to have the man who as a citizen feels, when a wrong is done to the community by any one, when there is an exhibition of corruption or betrayal of trust, or demagogy or violence, or brutality, not that he is shocked and horrified and would like to go home; but I want to have him feel the determination to put the wrong-doer down, to make the man who does wrong aware that the decent man is not only his superior in decency, but his superior in strength.


Strength-building honors your ancestors.


Before modernity, a man had to be physically strong in order to survive and reproduce. Whether battling the elements or other men, our ancestors had to rely only on their cunning and physical strength to come off the conqueror. The men who tried to prove themselves in battles or hunts, dared to do great things, and had the physical strength to surmount any obstacle were the ones who were able to father children and pass on their genes. The ones who did not take the gamble, or did not have the strength and prowess of their peers, died childless, and their hapless genes died with them.

What this means is that we are all descended from the strongest, fastest, smartest, bravest men of the past — the world’s alpha males. It is no stretch to conclude (as Dr. Roy Baumeister does in Is There Anything Good About Men?) that the blood of greatness runs through our veins.

So, what are you doing with that genetic inheritance?

Playing video games?

Sitting all day while stuffing your face with taquitos?

In “Train for Honor,” an essay included in the book Sky Without Eagles, writer Jack Donovan argues that we shame our manly forebearers by squandering the legacy of physical strength they’ve left in our genes. “Imagine the disgust and contempt our ancestors would have for us all if they lined up modern men on the street,” writes Donovan.

When we train to be physically strong, we show reverence and honor for the men who came before us that had to be physically strong so that we might exist and enjoy the comforts we have today. Performing a deadlift is like lighting a votive candle for our manly ancestors.

Strength-building simply feels awesome, and manly . . . and awesomely manly.
Finally, besides the practical and character-building benefits that accrue to the physically strong, it just feels awesome knowing you can hoist a lot of weight off the ground. The first time I deadlifted 450 lbs and saw the bar bending in the mirror, I felt like a beast. I let out a primal shout of achievement and carried that feeling with me the rest of the week.

Doing what your body is meant for, what it evolved for, is an incredible feeling. And to go your whole life without experiencing this feeling, at its peak, is a great shame. This is a truth that even Socrates preached way back in ancient Greece. When the philosopher saw a young man in poor physical condition, he admonished him by saying: “It is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit.”

What Does It Mean to Be Strong?


Not every man has the physiological make-up to get huge and ripped. But every man can become stronger than he is now. Whatever your other interests, no matter your build, if you want to feel your most virile, you need to get acquainted with the iron.


Now the ideal of strength is something greatly debated, and has changed over time. Without deliberate workouts and a steady source of protein, primitive tribesmen were pretty slender. Spartan warriors were ripped. Great-grandpa often had the sinewy build that comes from manual labor. These days, some men concentrate on size and seek a bodybuilding physique, while others don’t care as much about getting big and focus instead on “functional strength.”

Personally, I don’t think it matters much exactly what your goals are, as long as you’re doing something. The important thing is finding a workout path that you love, that inspires you to get moving and build muscle, and that you’re going to stick with. Even if your main passion is something like running, if you want to be in it for the long haul you would be well-served to make strength-building exercises an essential part of your routine.

I will say that I don’t think you should get so huge that your mobility and cardiovascular system is crap, and that you can’t run a mile at a good clip. Nor should you neglect the strength part of functional strength by doing so many reps, so fast, that you don’t increase your muscle mass. If you ever do need to say, lift a log off you, it’s going to be heavy, and it’s going to be something you only do once.

But between those extremes, there are tons of options. Experiment and find the activities and modalities that work for you.

Conclusion
Strength is a defining attribute of masculinity. It’s the literal power that has allowed generations of men to protect and provide for their families. It’s the force that built our skyscrapers, roads, and bridges. While our current environment doesn’t require us to be strong, developing our physical strength is still a worthwhile pursuit, for it lays a foundation for developing the Complete Man.

Strive today to become stronger than you were yesterday. I promise as you do so, you’ll see a transformation not only in your body, but also your mind and spirit.

Vires et honestas. Strength and honor.

 

CM senses a disturbance in the force, and goes back to digesting Taleb's antfragility tract. I'm always amused when folk who have poked their eyes out so as not to be perturbed by the writings of others, do so with a sense of self satisfaction at their courageous act of self censorship.

Real men would not need to activate the ignore function, but by acts of self will, exercise their personal agency and choose whether or not to read and react to the posts and threads of those they deplore.

 

I think it has more to do with wasting their time, something that you have said yourself that you dislike about the content of my posts... and yet here you are. Irony abounds.