Great advice! Whatever the regime insists you do, doing the opposite should be your default. They want you weak? Make yourself strong. I'm doing a little but need to do much more, much more consistently! Thanks for the motivation!
Feb 13, 2023·edited Feb 13, 2023Liked by John Carter
I started weightlifting just before the New Year. We've got a home gym in the basement and I've spent most of our time living at this location feeling like a piece of shit for *not* using it--"Look at it, you fat asshole. It's just sitting there, promising to make you better, and every single day you make the decision to decline that offer. Stupid idiot."
I don't know what exactly finally changed and helped me move past the point of being afraid of the work, afraid of the commitment--something along the lines of a dawning comprehension that I'm not a kid anymore, that I'm about to enter one of the last decades of life where you can really meaningfully change the *kind* of person you are. So what do I want to be? A soft whinging ball of dough in a state of constant disappointment with herself? Or someone who says, "I want to do it--therefore it's going to be done" ?
Up front, I'm sure I'll never be truly cut. My very endocrine system might not allow for it, even if I didn't have about seven other ongoing projects that prevent lifting from being my highest-priority pastime. My workouts are also short and relatively easy--my priority, here at the beginning, is to build the habit of working out at all, and that's a lot easier with a 10-minute commitment instead of a 40-minute one. But every day that I go downstairs to do my girly horizontal bench press and rowers, I remember that I'm already pulling more than twice the reps I could manage in late December. When I feel the burn the morning after squats, I comprehend that the discomfort makes me strut. Shit, I feel good--I'm just proud of myself. It's healthy, it's natural, to gain fulfillment from overcoming a physical obstacle.
When the day comes, I might not be able to wrestle a stag into submission on a hunt; but I hope to be in good enough shape to help get it back to the village after.
The online right’s bodybuilder aesthetic has been so successful because you cannot effectively argue against it.
Saying “post physique” has unironically become the perfect retort.
The ability to simply post a picture of a leftist or “conservative”, without comment, and for it to immediately discredit them is one of our most powerful tools.
Forgive me for boomer-posting, but Arnold has a good and relevant quotation:
"A well-built physique is a status symbol. It reflects you worked hard for it; no money can buy it. You cannot borrow it, you cannot inherit it, you cannot steal it. You cannot hold onto it without constant work. It shows discipline, it shows self-respect, it shows patience, work ethic, and passion. That is why I do what I do."
This idea had me chortle: thinking with your belly-rolls; your brain is merely there to rationalize what your abdominal padding has already decided upon.
I'm more into hunting, fishing, firewood making, planting trees that provide food, habitat enhancements, and such muscle building activities. In the old days lifting weights was probably not needed.
I also changed my diet which resulted in weight loss. the fascists have most coming and going, make profits producing poison food then make profits on the caused sicknesses.
I haven't done a pushup since high school 44 years ago. I just now dropped and did ten, could have went longer but I'm going ice fishing shortly and didn't want to pull a muscle to find out how tough I am. Hahaha!
" Socrates fought in the Peloponnesian War, and no historical accounts suggest that his build was especially muscular."
This is fucking psychopathic. War at that time meant intense hand-to-hand combat, and the Greeks were famed for it. You don't roll up on the Thracians with stick-arms and cottage-cheese ass, unless you're planning on a slow death.
I think you're right, too, that it's a mistake to approach the idea of exercise with too much intellect. It's a way to train the will, to fully inhabit one's biological being, and to ground in material reality.
Also, I've learned to get skeptical when people start talking about narcissism and individualism. Yes, consumerism thrives on individualism, but it's a low-grade trash vision of the individual, in which you try desperately to affirm your self-identity through prosthetics.
Engaging in actual self-improvement seems to mostly a threat to those who buy their lives through Amazon and Netflix.
“and all the rest of the influences that have depressed the serum testosterone of the average zoomer down to what would have been normal for a sexagenarian a generation ago.”
What’s the normal for a sexagenarian these days?
We septuagenarians are not ALL soft. (Maybe most)
Body fat 11%, muscle rate 84%.
6’ tall, 170#
Intermittent fasting, high fat and protein, low carb, lots of eggs, cruciferous greens and branch water.
Extensive sunshine exposure, 100% coverage.
Homemade weights and doing as well as an old man can.
What you miss in all of this is that you are not a brain in a jar.
This is the key point. Physical training isn't about posting selfies so that you can get laid on spring break. It's about being a strong and useful human being who embraces *the totality* of his humanity. Attempting to ignore either the physical or spiritual sides of human nature always ends in disaster. Completing a set of heavy squats that you weren't sure you could do teaches you things about yourself that you cannot learn any other way.
Excellent piece, and that's coming from a soft-spoken fag marathoner/mid-level manager who traveled a different road to arrive at the very same destination.
Interesting also that the best humorous memes seem to blow in from the Right Pole. The effete may presume they would “theoretically” rule funny by presuming they are somehow “smarter” but...wrong again! Yogi Berra, the “jock,” came up with quips like, “In Theory, there is no difference between Theory and Practice. In Practice, there is.”
Very inspirational! I need to get back in the weight training game. Been too focused in punishing Mark Z for rigging elections to get out of my chair and lift.
With that written, I am going to write some quibbles which can be extremely useful to some of you and annoying to others. (Biological individuality is a thang.)
Your description of training resembles that of the High Intensity Point of Failure school. Training in this fashion works for some people, else the school would have faded long ago.
For me, that style of training fails utterly. No gains, and days of brain fog. And I don't think I'm alone.
For me, a Farmer Strength style of workout is far more effective. A farmer intent on moving a large amount of weight through space purposefully AVOIDS going to the point of failure. Instead, a farmer "saves some for the next set" and does a shit-ton of sets. Also, a farmer handles irregular weights. There is no Perfect Form.
A farmer strength style workout would be way more sets while avoiding going to failure. It would also include intentional imperfect form or even imbalanced barbells in order to actively recruit stabilizer muscles. (But this imperfect form would be with low enough total weight to avoid injury.)
I'm a hard gainer. Even with regular weight training I could not do a single pull up in high school. Then I spent a week with relatives loading sheets of tobacco onto conveyor belts. Incredible strength gains in just one week. Could do pull ups afterwards.
A farmer strength style workout may not produce the same beauty muscles of a point of failure style workout. But keep in mind that if you let you muscles to too big for your heart and lungs to support, you are functionally weaker. Mr. Olympian Scott Abel has written how when he asked friends to help him move furniture, his bodybuilder friends gave out faster than his skinny friends.
Anyway, a workout consisting of short circuits below the point of failure can create incredible endorphin surges without willpower. (But they can also send your heart rate through the roof! Be careful! People die from shoveling snow, which has similar effects.) And such workouts can produce
some serious soreness for the out of shape. But they don't produce the same brain fog as Point of Failure workouts -- at least not for me.
Feb 14, 2023·edited Feb 14, 2023Liked by John Carter
So much to chew on here. My favorite line, "but you are not a brain in a jar."
My kids love Pixar movies, you know, before Pixar destroyed themselves. But Wall-E is a constant favorite. I always kinda considered it a pre-Woke didactic story, but when I rewatched it recently, it made me cry. The people floating in chairs because everything was handed to them so they didn't even have to walk. Finding the drive to get back to the Earth so they could grow stuff and remake themselves and throw off their technological shackles that had made them soft and subservient. Ugh. I hate it when I cry at cartoons.
I discovered weights about four years ago. There's something about the early-morning hours, alone in my basement, willing myself to lift something heavy. (Or congratulating myself for not skipping leg day. Which I really, really want to do quite often.) It's therapy in a way that I've never bothered to sort through. It's ridiculous that pursuing strength is considered dangerous by the loons in charge.
Life is too safe? Your doctor is trying to kill you. There is poison in your shampoo and toothpaste. It's very difficult to access food and water that isn't poison. There are people sitting around in rooms trying to figure out how to kill everyone of us. The DOD has attacked America with poison shots through their manipulation of Big Pharma, and attacks on the food supply continue to increase. There is an ongoing ecological disaster in East Palestine, OH, probably caused by the sabotage of federal agents. We don't know the extent of the poisoning that has taken place from this single incident, but the attack seems to target the area between NYC and Pittsburg with very deadly poisonous and acidic gas. War is not safe.
I wanted to also express my appreciation for the time and effort that it took to produce this worthwhile and artful piece of writing, as well as sponsoring a lively and inclusive debate. It's very talented writing coming from an ethically based place. A little long winded maybe.
This is the article on physical culture I wanted to write, but never got around to doing it. Now I'm beyond glad you have done it, and so much more eloquently than I could.
It is a moral, political, cultural and physical IMPERATIVE that we train. Train not for vanity or even for sport -- but for life itself. A man can do little better in his free time than to work on becoming Stronger, Faster, and Harder To Kill.
Great advice! Whatever the regime insists you do, doing the opposite should be your default. They want you weak? Make yourself strong. I'm doing a little but need to do much more, much more consistently! Thanks for the motivation!
I started weightlifting just before the New Year. We've got a home gym in the basement and I've spent most of our time living at this location feeling like a piece of shit for *not* using it--"Look at it, you fat asshole. It's just sitting there, promising to make you better, and every single day you make the decision to decline that offer. Stupid idiot."
I don't know what exactly finally changed and helped me move past the point of being afraid of the work, afraid of the commitment--something along the lines of a dawning comprehension that I'm not a kid anymore, that I'm about to enter one of the last decades of life where you can really meaningfully change the *kind* of person you are. So what do I want to be? A soft whinging ball of dough in a state of constant disappointment with herself? Or someone who says, "I want to do it--therefore it's going to be done" ?
Up front, I'm sure I'll never be truly cut. My very endocrine system might not allow for it, even if I didn't have about seven other ongoing projects that prevent lifting from being my highest-priority pastime. My workouts are also short and relatively easy--my priority, here at the beginning, is to build the habit of working out at all, and that's a lot easier with a 10-minute commitment instead of a 40-minute one. But every day that I go downstairs to do my girly horizontal bench press and rowers, I remember that I'm already pulling more than twice the reps I could manage in late December. When I feel the burn the morning after squats, I comprehend that the discomfort makes me strut. Shit, I feel good--I'm just proud of myself. It's healthy, it's natural, to gain fulfillment from overcoming a physical obstacle.
When the day comes, I might not be able to wrestle a stag into submission on a hunt; but I hope to be in good enough shape to help get it back to the village after.
The online right’s bodybuilder aesthetic has been so successful because you cannot effectively argue against it.
Saying “post physique” has unironically become the perfect retort.
The ability to simply post a picture of a leftist or “conservative”, without comment, and for it to immediately discredit them is one of our most powerful tools.
Amen (post fizeek).
Forgive me for boomer-posting, but Arnold has a good and relevant quotation:
"A well-built physique is a status symbol. It reflects you worked hard for it; no money can buy it. You cannot borrow it, you cannot inherit it, you cannot steal it. You cannot hold onto it without constant work. It shows discipline, it shows self-respect, it shows patience, work ethic, and passion. That is why I do what I do."
This idea had me chortle: thinking with your belly-rolls; your brain is merely there to rationalize what your abdominal padding has already decided upon.
I'm more into hunting, fishing, firewood making, planting trees that provide food, habitat enhancements, and such muscle building activities. In the old days lifting weights was probably not needed.
I also changed my diet which resulted in weight loss. the fascists have most coming and going, make profits producing poison food then make profits on the caused sicknesses.
I haven't done a pushup since high school 44 years ago. I just now dropped and did ten, could have went longer but I'm going ice fishing shortly and didn't want to pull a muscle to find out how tough I am. Hahaha!
" Socrates fought in the Peloponnesian War, and no historical accounts suggest that his build was especially muscular."
This is fucking psychopathic. War at that time meant intense hand-to-hand combat, and the Greeks were famed for it. You don't roll up on the Thracians with stick-arms and cottage-cheese ass, unless you're planning on a slow death.
I think you're right, too, that it's a mistake to approach the idea of exercise with too much intellect. It's a way to train the will, to fully inhabit one's biological being, and to ground in material reality.
Also, I've learned to get skeptical when people start talking about narcissism and individualism. Yes, consumerism thrives on individualism, but it's a low-grade trash vision of the individual, in which you try desperately to affirm your self-identity through prosthetics.
Engaging in actual self-improvement seems to mostly a threat to those who buy their lives through Amazon and Netflix.
“and all the rest of the influences that have depressed the serum testosterone of the average zoomer down to what would have been normal for a sexagenarian a generation ago.”
What’s the normal for a sexagenarian these days?
We septuagenarians are not ALL soft. (Maybe most)
Body fat 11%, muscle rate 84%.
6’ tall, 170#
Intermittent fasting, high fat and protein, low carb, lots of eggs, cruciferous greens and branch water.
Extensive sunshine exposure, 100% coverage.
Homemade weights and doing as well as an old man can.
Oh, and testosterone levels?
How does one test them?
Without her objection,
At least once a day
And twice on Sunday.
You may fear I’m bragging,
But that’s with no fapping.
What you miss in all of this is that you are not a brain in a jar.
This is the key point. Physical training isn't about posting selfies so that you can get laid on spring break. It's about being a strong and useful human being who embraces *the totality* of his humanity. Attempting to ignore either the physical or spiritual sides of human nature always ends in disaster. Completing a set of heavy squats that you weren't sure you could do teaches you things about yourself that you cannot learn any other way.
Excellent piece, and that's coming from a soft-spoken fag marathoner/mid-level manager who traveled a different road to arrive at the very same destination.
Interesting also that the best humorous memes seem to blow in from the Right Pole. The effete may presume they would “theoretically” rule funny by presuming they are somehow “smarter” but...wrong again! Yogi Berra, the “jock,” came up with quips like, “In Theory, there is no difference between Theory and Practice. In Practice, there is.”
Fantastic writing as always.
Very inspirational! I need to get back in the weight training game. Been too focused in punishing Mark Z for rigging elections to get out of my chair and lift.
With that written, I am going to write some quibbles which can be extremely useful to some of you and annoying to others. (Biological individuality is a thang.)
Your description of training resembles that of the High Intensity Point of Failure school. Training in this fashion works for some people, else the school would have faded long ago.
For me, that style of training fails utterly. No gains, and days of brain fog. And I don't think I'm alone.
For me, a Farmer Strength style of workout is far more effective. A farmer intent on moving a large amount of weight through space purposefully AVOIDS going to the point of failure. Instead, a farmer "saves some for the next set" and does a shit-ton of sets. Also, a farmer handles irregular weights. There is no Perfect Form.
A farmer strength style workout would be way more sets while avoiding going to failure. It would also include intentional imperfect form or even imbalanced barbells in order to actively recruit stabilizer muscles. (But this imperfect form would be with low enough total weight to avoid injury.)
I'm a hard gainer. Even with regular weight training I could not do a single pull up in high school. Then I spent a week with relatives loading sheets of tobacco onto conveyor belts. Incredible strength gains in just one week. Could do pull ups afterwards.
A farmer strength style workout may not produce the same beauty muscles of a point of failure style workout. But keep in mind that if you let you muscles to too big for your heart and lungs to support, you are functionally weaker. Mr. Olympian Scott Abel has written how when he asked friends to help him move furniture, his bodybuilder friends gave out faster than his skinny friends.
Anyway, a workout consisting of short circuits below the point of failure can create incredible endorphin surges without willpower. (But they can also send your heart rate through the roof! Be careful! People die from shoveling snow, which has similar effects.) And such workouts can produce
some serious soreness for the out of shape. But they don't produce the same brain fog as Point of Failure workouts -- at least not for me.
So much to chew on here. My favorite line, "but you are not a brain in a jar."
My kids love Pixar movies, you know, before Pixar destroyed themselves. But Wall-E is a constant favorite. I always kinda considered it a pre-Woke didactic story, but when I rewatched it recently, it made me cry. The people floating in chairs because everything was handed to them so they didn't even have to walk. Finding the drive to get back to the Earth so they could grow stuff and remake themselves and throw off their technological shackles that had made them soft and subservient. Ugh. I hate it when I cry at cartoons.
I discovered weights about four years ago. There's something about the early-morning hours, alone in my basement, willing myself to lift something heavy. (Or congratulating myself for not skipping leg day. Which I really, really want to do quite often.) It's therapy in a way that I've never bothered to sort through. It's ridiculous that pursuing strength is considered dangerous by the loons in charge.
Life is too safe? Your doctor is trying to kill you. There is poison in your shampoo and toothpaste. It's very difficult to access food and water that isn't poison. There are people sitting around in rooms trying to figure out how to kill everyone of us. The DOD has attacked America with poison shots through their manipulation of Big Pharma, and attacks on the food supply continue to increase. There is an ongoing ecological disaster in East Palestine, OH, probably caused by the sabotage of federal agents. We don't know the extent of the poisoning that has taken place from this single incident, but the attack seems to target the area between NYC and Pittsburg with very deadly poisonous and acidic gas. War is not safe.
I wanted to also express my appreciation for the time and effort that it took to produce this worthwhile and artful piece of writing, as well as sponsoring a lively and inclusive debate. It's very talented writing coming from an ethically based place. A little long winded maybe.
I think it was Mishima who said it best: “I cannot think strong thoughts in a weak body”.
Great essay, as always.
Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
This is the article on physical culture I wanted to write, but never got around to doing it. Now I'm beyond glad you have done it, and so much more eloquently than I could.
It is a moral, political, cultural and physical IMPERATIVE that we train. Train not for vanity or even for sport -- but for life itself. A man can do little better in his free time than to work on becoming Stronger, Faster, and Harder To Kill.
Bravo, John Carter!