You’re too skinny. You’re “glommy” fat – to use Rip’s colorful term. You feel weak. You couldn’t lift your own furniture so you had to spend money you don’t have last time you moved. You get out of breath climbing stairs.
You know something is wrong. So you try doing something about it. You try eating healthier. But the Oreos, Snickers, Twix, Coke, and all the other prepackaged, ultra-processed food-like substances sold in supermarkets continue to catch your eye. You try running, but it’s just not very fucking rewarding. You get hot and sweaty, but it’s not fun, and you have no measurable progress. You say, “I’ll run tomorrow,” and let Netflix play the next episode of your favorite show. No clear schedule of progressive progress keeps you to a regimen, even if you download one of those “couch to 5k” apps. What the fuck do they know anyway?
Not long ago, I was listening to the Weights and Plates Podcast with SSCs Robert Santana and Trent Jones. Trent mentioned an important distinction between motivation and determination. We’re trained to think that we can do anything with enough determination. “Grit” is the favored popular term, especially since the publication of the book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth. You just need passion and perseverance and you can overcome any obstacle. You can change yourself with enough determination – enough grit.
The word even sounds good: Grit. Dirty, tough. Full of rocks and sand. Hard. The coolest people out there are gritty.
But Trent made a point whose simplicity cut through so much psychobabble bullshit we hear nowadays. Determination and grit are important. Nothing of value can be achieved without long and Sisyphean periods of hard, boring work. Nothing. But without true motivation, no amount of determination will succeed. You can’t white-knuckle your way through life. You need an organizing ideal, something with a gravitational pull that wraps other aspects of your life around it.
People change – truly
change, go through “phase changes,” not just marginal
improvements, much like scientific paradigms change. A twentieth
century philosopher named Thomas Kuhn wrote a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he posited a
distinction between “paradigm change” and “normal science.”
We’re used to thinking about science as a Popperian never-ending
cycle of conjectures and refutations. We look at scientists as heroes
of critical thinking, always trying to disprove the accepted theory,
explanation, or paradigm. Scientists suggest ideas and others
ruthlessly attack the idea, until the best conjecture manages to
withstand extended criticism.
At least that’s what
we’re taught. The last few years have helped undermine that
assumption, but Kuhn noticed this well beforehand. Kuhn pointed out
that science doesn’t actually work that way. Scientists work within
a framework of accepted explanations, observations, and theories –
what he called a “paradigm” that organizes all aspects of
scientific inquiry. Statements made outside of an accepted paradigm
are essentially nonsense to those who believe in the paradigm.
An example of this is
the phlogiston theory of combustion – that combustibles have a
compound called “phlogiston” that they release when burned, which
is the cause of the combustion. That is simply pure nonsense when
looked at within a modern framework. The words mean nothing because
our “world,” shaped by current scientific assumptions, doesn’t
include anything that could reasonably be interpreted as a
phlogiston, and no sort of observation of a phlogiston could be made.
“Normal science” is
not, in fact, a Popperian enterprise of attempts to refute the
accepted paradigm but rather a sort of “building out” of an
accepted paradigm. Scientists do not attempt to examine the edges of
current theories to disprove them, but rather to corroborate and
expand upon the accepted theory, adding detail and adjusting the
accepted theory to fit facts. Scientists attempt to get published,
and that involves remaining within the limits of the paradigm.
Kuhn draws upon the
appearance of Copernicus’s theory of the motion of celestial
objects (that we revolve around the sun). This theory was not
significantly better at explaining those objects’ movements than the
contemporary geocentric theory. But the geocentric theory had already
resembled a Frankenstein’s monster of a theory, with all sorts of
patches and questionable explanations, and the time was ripe for a
new paradigm.
For the sake of further
illustration consider the accepted LDL paradigm of heart disease.
Countless studies from all sorts of angles have called this paradigm
into question (details of the research on the subject can be found in
Malcolm Kendrick’s writings, primarily his two books: The Great Cholesterol Con and The Clot Thickens), and yet many
researchers still assume its truth. They simply adjust their theory
to fit the facts and massage studies to prove their point.
This is “normal
science” – science gone bad, to an extent, but still the normal,
day-to-day work of scientists. Researchers are not particularly
creative individuals, and they are generally unable to reject an
accepted paradigm in the absence of any reasonable alternative.
Scientists do not just say, “Well, this must be wrong, and we have
no idea what is actually right.” Instead, they continue to work
within the accepted paradigm.
Kuhn, therefore,
posited that scientific revolutions occur when 1) the prevailing
paradigm has been weakened to the point of seeming almost laughable,
and 2) a viable alternative is suggested. So, too, true changes to
our lifestyles usually occur when these two elements line up: 1) we
feel deeply that something is wrong and needs to change, and 2)
something that can truly serve as a better organizing principle
appears. I say “usually” because, occasionally, we stumble into
those life-changing organizing principles by chance, but I’m not
talking about things that happen by chance here – I’m talking
about actually taking control and making a change.
We change – truly
improve – when we find a new motivation. When we get married, have
a kid, someone dies. When big things happen, and the ground is ripe
for change. This may sound bombastic, and maybe it is, but barbell
training, Starting Strength, can be that motivation.
I used to be a very
skinny “skinny-fat” 6’2” male weighing 150 pounds. After some
fooling around with random bodyweight stuff, some dumbbells and crap,
I found Starting Strength, and all of a sudden I had a new
motivation: to succeed at adding 5 pounds to my squat next workout.
My schedule changed; my nutrition changed. I wanted something that
made me change. I had to eat more. I had to make sure I slept
properly.
Not because I simply
understood the problem. Obviously, there was a problem. But because I
had a clear, measurable goal to achieve: 5 pounds added to the
workout. Because something with a strong gravitational pull
necessitated those changes. Barbell training forced me to make
changes I hadn’t had a practical, tangible reason to change.
It’s easy to say “I’m
too fat” or “I’m too skinny” “so I’m going to eat
differently.” “I’m always tired so I’ll sleep more,” but
nothing in your life has changed to really get you off your ass and
actually make the changes necessary to improve. When you have a new
motivation, it drags the rest of your life along with it.
But the changes that go
along with barbell training are much deeper than anyone who has not
undergone them would understand. You don’t just eat more and
better. Deeper things change. You learn things you didn’t know you
would learn, about yourself and your limits, about your way of
looking at life and approaching challenges. Your values change. You
begin to appreciate new things. By adding a new gravitational force
to your life, other satellites in orbit begin to subtly shift.
I began lifting with
Starting Strength in early 2020. I was already relatively skeptical
of government, having read Hayek, Friedman, de Tocqueville, and the
rest of the classical liberal gamut. But I was not skeptical enough.
I believed the propaganda about a vaccine and thought – at first –
that I needed to wear a mask in public. I failed the test Rip talked
about.
But change takes time.
By the time the vaccine came out, I was already skeptical – but not
skeptical enough as the totalitarian regime in Israel, where I
reside, forced the entire population to get vaccinated as a sort of
giant experiment in return for discounts and preferential
distribution of the Pfizer mRna treatment. If they hadn’t forced
me, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the shot. I had gotten that
far, but I hadn’t gotten far enough to tell them to go get fucked.
I wish I had, as I promptly got Covid twice and needlessly exposed
myself to risks they said didn’t exist.
I already somewhat
believed in self-sufficiency, in skepticism of government, in
independent thought, but I still trusted the “market” and large
companies. I figured the invisible hand would force them to take into
account my interests or something. This is one small example of a way
of looking at the world that has changed thanks to finding Starting
Strength.
Lifting itself didn’t
change this. But lifting is not simply picking the barbell up and
putting it back down. Lifting is learning something about yourself.
Will I try the 5th rep even if rep number 4 was grindy as hell? Will
I do the program I have written down today even though my girlfriend
just dumped me and I feel like shit? Will I dig deep to see what I
can do, thereby changing mentally – thereby adopting new ways of
doing things?
Beyond the questions
actually asked during lifting, I begin to dig deeper. I want to
succeed at lifting – will I continue wasting my cash on Snickers,
cakes, and soda? Or will I man up, buy some meat, and learn how to
cook it myself? Lifting has now made me learn how to cook.
And then I say, well, I
can probably hold my own in a fight now – will I do something to
make sure I can defend my family if an intruder breaks in at night
instead of relying on the government? Lifting has engendered more
self-sufficiency, more questioning of authority and the accepted
social structures in which we all live.
Will I be responsible
enough to sleep at night instead of staying up watching porn or
YouTube all night? Lifting has made me realize what is of value and
what is simply a time-sink. And then, as I disconnect from relying on
others, from the large corporations forcing their ideology down my
throat, as I turn off CNN, YouTube, and whatever other crap I’m
imbibing, I begin to breathe fresher air mentally. I turn off the
sewage pipe spewing crap into my living room for years and clean up
my mind and my life.
Things deeper than just
eating cleaner and sleeping more change. Subtly, slowly, over the
course of a year, two, five – you change. Your opinions change.
Your attitude toward yourself changes, thereby changing your attitude
toward life. By adding a new element to the stable orbit of your
life, lifting disrupts things. It makes you think about things.
Taking it seriously forces you to reevaluate things you had never
even considered as problematic or in need of change. It also creates
a new motivation that can fuel the determination to make these
changes. Because some of them aren’t easy. In our shithole
culture/media/government/world, they demand constant attention, and
you’re not sure that you can keep it up.
But you learned under
the bar that not being sure you can do something is no reason not to
at least ride it down to the bottom and try to bring it back up. And
if you fail today, you deload, reevaluate your program, your recovery
– whatever might be the problem, even something you hadn’t
considered before – and get it done next time.
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