Peace Through Strength: Virtuous & Ordered Fitness in a Disordered Culture
“Take care of your body as if you’ll live forever; take care of your soul as if you’ll die tomorrow.” – St. Augustine
“Bodily exercise, when it is well ordered, is also prayer, by means of which you can please God, our Lord.” – St. Ignatius of Loyola
“Spirit ain’t worth spit without a little exercise.” – Clint Eastwood, Pale Rider
We live in a disordered culture.
Our culture alternately hates discipline and beauty, seeking to destroy it, or elevates it in a distorted manner. Many of those trying to distance themselves from that aspect of culture, or even just the average busy person who prides themselves on being a responsible adult have given up that ground.
And then there’s the age old error of denigrating the physical because it’s seen as less than or antithetical to the spiritual, intellectual, or even just not a priority when compared to taking care of everyday responsibilities. It might be nice to get around to, but it’s not seen as all that urgent.
But, in taking care of yourself you’ll be able to participate in the stuff of life for decades longer than is typically expected, and be able take care of others as well. The pursuit of physical fitness, of engaging in challenging tasks, of temperance, and delayed gratification are gateway practices to additional virtues. Plus, it is not the cartoonish endeavor that is generally presented. It is about looking at your goals, the givens of your life (age, health, schedule, etc.) and managing compromises in that pursuit.
Your brain wants for you to survive whether or not you like how things are going
There’s also the mental hardware. Your brain wants you to survive, whether or not what you’re currently doing is actually lined up with what you actually want. There’s a part of your brain that acts as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), it looks at the proposed actions (effort/output), available resources (time/energy) and gives you the go ahead or not.
If you believe that getting fit requires working out hard for hours per day, doing exercises that damage your joints, while being constantly hungry because you’re living on rabbit food, then that part of your brain is going to say a resounding no.
The brain also wants to save energy and stick with actions that have a familiar and predictable outcome because it wants you to survive even if you don’t like how things are going right now.
So, I encourage you to question those initial thoughts and feelings about getting and staying fit. Also, know that everything can be broken down into more sustainable and manageable steps that fit within your current set of circumstances.
Even years into training, I still have mental barriers, around achieving certain outcomes whether that’s physique, strength, or certain lifts. Unlearning those limits, depending on how you go after your goals, can take time. If you do more focused work then it’s a faster process. If you change things up constantly or fall into inconsistency, then it’s going to take a lot longer.
Before defending a position, I think it’s important to make sure that I’m not making an argument in favor of someone’s negative or false ideas about the subject.
What I’m not talking about is
- Working out like a Rocky training montage while living on rabbit food.
- Trying to have the absolute perfect routine like so-and-so the movie star who gets up at 4AM every day, starts with a cold plunge, and then works out for 90 minutes.
- Overly complicated movements that require micromanagement levels of coaching.
- Giving up activities you love in order to make “the perfect” program succeed. There will be compromises, but it’s not all-or-nothing.
- Absolutes – you don’t have to join a gym, you don’t have to spend an hour a day training, you don’t have to use only one training tool (barbell, kettlebell, machines, etc.), you don’t have to use a “scientifically proven” single method of sets and reps.
What I am talking about is:
- Looking at the whole picture. You can’t solve a lifestyle problem (sleep, nutrition, etc.) just through exercise.
- Managing compromise – looking at your goals, your givens (how much time you have, current fitness level, whether or not you exercise at home or the gym) and setting a clear, doable path.
- Doing what you can consistently, working appropriately hard, as well as training (and living) in a way that’s congruent with your goals, priorities, and circumstances.
- Natural movement – learning how to move your body and to lift weights with skill is very accessible to most people and, believe it or not, feels good.
- Addressing multiple qualities – holding onto or regaining muscle, the ability to move skillfully, quickness, and endurance, mobility, etc. and leaning into the areas that need improvement rather than ignoring them.
Unlearn the Math of Despair
I’d like to look at the misconceptions and what many people think is necessary to get fit and how those present insurmountable roadblocks. I call this the Math of Despair. In the Math of Despair you have to exercise for hours per day, all calories are evil, body fat can only be shed through a one to one relationship of calories burned through effort (never mind your resting metabolic rate), you have to do precisely planned strength workouts, but not too much or you’ll bulk up overnight, or if you want to build muscle then every set has to go be an epic battle (“It’s all you, bro!”) and all your efforts have to be random so that your body doesn’t adapt and you stop seeing improvements.
It’s no wonder that being out of shape is often seen as the red badge of courage to prove that we’re responsible adults because we assume the Math of Despair is required to get and stay fit. This is anything but a defense of the Math of Despair nor is it a capitulation with a nice title like “The Wisdom of Aging” or whatever nonsense label that gets slapped onto settling for half-hearted measures because you have a real job, a family, etc.
Math of Hope
If you eat less and move more, you lose weight. (Both muscle and fat) Not ideal. This is tends to be most yo-yo dieting.
If you eat less, move more, and eat enough protein (which makes eating less much easier), then most of the weight you lose is fat. This is better.
If you eat less, while eating enough protein, and strength train as your primary way of moving more (higher ROI than cardio, but note: NOT using light weights as cardio), then you’re losing fat and building muscle. This is your best bet.
Play the long game
If you want to be strong, fit, confident, and capable as you age, then you must maintain the qualities that make all of those things possible. That means strength training. (I’ll get into conditioning and holding onto coordination, quickness, etc. in follow up posts.)
Muscle is the organ of longevity. It makes everything easier to do. When you train hard, your muscles release compounds that improve mood and cognition. The loss of muscle as we age starts a negative cascade of declining health that only picks up speed over time, so taking this seriously is not just vanity.
It’s a common mistake to conflate the signs of unchecked atrophy and deconditioning with wisdom or even “the natural order of things”.
If you think being strong is dangerous, try being weak. That’s dangerous.
A little of my back story – it’s never too late to start
Even though I lifted weights as a competitive swimmer, I didn’t take strength training seriously until I was 40 because I was more concerned about not getting fat, so I placed my primary emphasis on cardio. (Math of Despair). Going from 150 pounds and getting up to 175 (From lifting, not from 12 ounce curls and Skyline) and getting stronger in the process completely changed how I carry myself.
I also got my blood sugar in check (hypoglycemia) which had been a problem since my early 20s. Despite exercising hard on a regular basis and being thin, I had a number of ticking time bombs in terms of health. I dealt with this partly from improving diet and sleep, but also by putting on muscle so that I had more capacity to store glucose.
In my fifties, I’m still able to put in a day of yard work, help move furniture, or just get out and be active and not feel wrecked for days on end afterwards. And I’m on zero medications.
Most of the time I train three times per week for about an hour and then stay reasonably active outside of that. If I had to I could get those workouts down to 30 minutes.
It’s not the years or the mileage. It’s the maintenance.
You can get more benefit from less work that you think
It doesn’t take an hour a day, five days per week. You can make tremendous progress even if you have as little as half an hour three times per week. The analogy I use is that of a painting project. If you have a lot of surface to cover in a limited time, then using paint rollers is your best bet. Push, pull, squat, lunge, picking weights up from the floor, etc. are your rollers. Single muscle movements are the detail brushes. Use rollers to cover a lot of ground quickly.
Coordination
You don’t have to lose grace of movement as you get older. Proper strength training can dramatically improve coordination. I tested for my second degree black belt with less practice than my first, it went much better, and the main difference was my work in the weight room. Getting stronger and using natural movements – press, pull, squat, lunge, etc. did more for my coordination than all the Pilates classes in New York.
Where?
You don’t have to join a gym if you don’t want to. Gravity is a constant. You can use it anywhere. If you need to make exercises easier, then adjusting leverages – elevating your hands on a countertop or furniture makes push-ups easier, emphasizing single leg work makes lower body training harder – can let you train where ever you go. You can start a home gym with a $60 pair of adjustable dumbbells that go from 5 to 20 pounds per hand. If you prefer to go to a YMCA or commercial gym, then check out a few within a short commute to see which one you like.
This is for everyone
This isn’t just for movie stars with fully equipped home gyms and a chef to prepare their every meal. There are lots of examples of regular people who take training seriously, but they don’t make the gym the center of their lives, and they look, feel, and are physically capable like they’re many years younger than they actually are. This is for everyone.
Strength training isn’t just for men. Avoiding strength training out of fear of becoming instantly bulky is like choosing not to never drive at all because you’re afraid that you’ll wake up to find that you’re suddenly a world class Formula One driver and now you have to fly out to Monaco to drive for Red Bull Racing. It’s just not going to happen.
I’ll continue unpacking more and get into the practical how-to side of things in upcoming posts.
