Philosophy of Fitness

It’s easy to become lost in the endless ocean of fitness advice. From tech bros that will have you eating 60 pills a day, to the surgeon that will carve you up like a prized pig to get you a few inches taller, everyone wants to become something which they are not. People will go to the ends of the earth for the sake of health yet neglect the simplicity of things.

If we are to change our health and fitness for the better, what are we able to change? What are the constituent parts that make up the whole path to better health? It’s of no use trying to change essential things. Rather, guide your nature toward its telos in virtue instead of raging against it.

Movement

An object at rest tends to stay at rest, an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

Movement is an investment into health and well-being. It both protects and allows substantial impact in the world. Without proper movement, the physical world becomes an obstacle, and the separation between the mental and physical spaces breeds mental illness. Humans are physical creatures and require a place in the world surrounding us.

Likewise, poor movement can be just as harmful as inactivity. A reckless approach to any movement can be devastating to long-term health, as the body remembers injuries the mind has long forgotten. Having humility about our current abilities will allow us to grow stronger without injuring our progress.

Move Well and Move Often.

Nutrition

Nutrition is your fortress against the world. Nearly everything that is sold as food is meant to get you addicted as quickly as possible so that you will return time and time again to refill your trough. As people increasingly lose trust in the society that they live in, who makes your food? You wouldn’t accept a meal made by someone who was known to poison people, yet that’s what’s being pushed to acceptance in our daily lives.

People were objectively healthier merely 50 years ago. With all our advancements in medical technology, sanitation, and food processing, this begs the question. To what are we advancing? Are we really going anywhere that helps us? The average American has chronic and acute illnesses that no other population in history has ever had to deal with. In our quest for better health have we have become the hypochondriac that wounds himself despite his own efforts.

Rewind the clock and know where your food comes from. Everything else is downstream from these principles. There is not enough time in the world to “weigh the scientific evidence” of every novelty that the modern world throws at us. Eat like your ancestors and return to traditional foods.

Spirit

If you don’t look cool doing it, it’s probably wrong.

Everything that you do in the world has a spirit that accompanies it. Work with the spirit of things instead of crushing, dissecting, or reinventing them. Just like the material word will answer your violations with consequences, the spiritual will do the same.

If I want to make a piece of furniture that is meant to be beautiful, I use the best quality wood and fashion it with care. If instead I want to make the most money possible from creating and selling furniture, I will open a factory, cut down a forest, and sell the minimum amount of product for the most amount of money. Guide your efforts to the highest purpose and things will naturally fall into place.

Not everything can be understood through dissection. This is the swiftest route to kill something. The modern world has taught us to “understand” things by analyzing every little piece. This is the opposite to how you should live your life by default. Interact with things as they are and learn from them.

Community

Community is dead. It has been completely annihilated in the lock-down era and needs to be rebuilt piece by piece. Make every excuse to use your daily activities to connect with other people. Hypocritically, I am just as guilty of building a home gym, exercising on my own, and generally neglecting the company of others when I work out.

While the hyper-optimized time-saving home workouts are helpful for those with time constraints. There really isn’t a much better way of connecting with other people (outside of religious activities) than doing physical activities with others. Even if we’re able to do heroic physical feats, they tend to be largely irrelevant or detrimental unless we use them to connect with others. No one cares that you benched 315 lbs. by yourself and never told anyone.

Conclusion

Finishing up a good lift in the early morning hours, I turned to walk out of the gym with my friend and fellow lifting bro:

“That was a good lift today are you down for that run tomorrow?

“Yea, but I may be a bit hungover. It’s my cousin’s birthday and he’s only in town tonight…”

“For sure dude, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I couldn’t hear the Alpha/Sigma male’s thoughts as we passed him by while exiting the gym, but I could all but feel them telepathically through his hyper-optimal, ketogenic, gluten-free brain waves as he made intense eye contact while lunging on a Bosu ball:

“Sub-optimal…completely Sub-optimal. Alcohol and a run after your leg day is asking for a cascade of cortisol and estrogenic compounds. You may never live to be 150 years old like myself. “

But the Bros didn’t care, a good lift with good company is what kept them going.