Contentment Vs Idealism: You Need Both to Fuck Shit Up in the Gym

“Health is the noblest good for mortal man; the next is beauty; the third riches acquired without guile; the fourth enjoyment of social pleasures with your friends” -Greek poet Simonides

If the feats of their athletes and trireme rowers weren’t testament enough, or their invention of dumbbells, or the physiques of mythological heroes in their art, the above quote definitely illustrates how seriously ancient Greeks took being jacked and tan. Unlike modern Westerners, whose poetry in no way lauds physical beauty or interpersonal relationships, focusing instead on shallow bullshit like drugs and material wealth, Greek social life centered around various forms of badassery, and they held aloft physical, intellectual, and social perfection as ideals that could and should be striven towards on a daily basis.

The Greeks seem to have been wholly unconcerned with the modern trainees’ preoccupation bordering on the pathological with “unrealistic expectations,” which those trainees and their coaches claim leads to discouragement, disillusionment, and eventual abandonment of training. Putting aside the fact that I find people of that ilk to be fucking disgusting, it bears discussion that this mentality, though at odds with that of the lifters of antiquity, is the prevailing sentiment of the young lifters of today. They pose philosophical questions like, “is good enough really good enough?” Well, what in the heavenly pornhub the fuck does “good enough” mean, anyway? The bar seems to drop lower and lower every day, fueled by “exercise scientists” and their fans who thrive on discarding the elite as genetic outliers, drug cheats, or outright liars, so at this point good enough might just mean you mustered up the courage to waddle your dumpy ass into the gym and foam roll for a half hour while shittalking real lifters on the internet.

Granted, there is much to be said for being content with one’s self. Idealism does indeed breed discontentment, but the two outlooks needn’t be mutually exclusive. Just like a burn victim who has mastered The Game‘s pick up artist nonsense to the point that he’s regularly getting ugly chicks off with the use of his tongue and scabrous stumps where his immolated hands once were, you’ve absolutely got to appreciate the strides you make in the gym. But just like that dude’s goal to land a supermodel girlfriend, not every goal you have will be entirely likely. Nevertheless, maintaining that goal and making steady progress in its direction can only improve your life, unless you’re a weepy bitch who constantly laments what they don’t have rather than appreciating what they do.

To wit:

“A failure promoted by optimistic ideas is the source of much unhappiness. In moments free from pain, our restless wishes represent, as it wedre a mirror, the image of happiness that has no counterpart in reality, seducing us to follow it; in doing so we bring pain upon ourselves, and that is something that is undeniably real. After wards, we come to look with regret upon that lost state of painlessness; it is a paradise from which we have gambled away; it is no longer with us, and we long in vain to undo what has been done.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer wasn’t done with his bitch-made prescient ramblings- he continued his paean to justify the weakness of future pussies living out their twenties in their parents’ basements in kiddie pools filled with their own tears with shit like:

“Suppose that, with the exception of some sore or painful spot, we are in a physically sound and healthy condition; the sore of this one spot will completely absorb our attention, causing us to lose the sense of well being and destroying all comfort in life.”

If that doesn’t sound like a far more eloquent and erudite version of the typical troglodyte’s reasoning for not setting his or her bar for personal success higher, I don’t know what does. The problem, however, with that type of reasoning remains the same:

It’s all bullshit.

The belief that only the genetically gifted, literal freaks of nature, can achieve peak physical condition is an artificial construction that favors a tiny elite at everyone else’s expense. This construct leaves two options: ape that elite’s methods in the hopes of achieving similar results, or the abandonment of any effort to match or exceed what they have accomplished. What people fail to realize, however, is that the people setting those elite marks are people who placed no artificial limits on themselves in the first place. They saw something greater than the norm for themselves. Instead of erecting barriers to forward progress, they created opportunities to smash shit and stomp through the rubble. Instead of “genetic limits,” they looked to the stories of the great humans of the past and saw in themselves the same greatness.

Perhaps the issue at hand isn’t the difference between achieving and ideal and being content with being slightly above average- perhaps it is the unwillingness to recognize the difference between possibility and probability. It seems almost instinctive, as chaos magician Gordon White posits, to believe that the most desirable possibility is most probable, and the “logical” denizens of the internet then turn that natural inclination on its head, believing the most probable outcome is the most desirable. The most desirable outcome, then, is the one that requires little to no effort, no conscious thought, and is by far the easiest to achieve.

Yeah, there is a relatively low probability that a 500lb bench is in most people’s futures, but it’s not due to genetics- it’s due to effort, dedication, and outside events and influences. Most people are unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices of time and effort to even make a serious attempt at benching 405, which means that rather than being an unlikely future occurrence it is an impossibility because one cannot arrive at a destination without actually making the trip. Moreover, there is about seventy years of psychological research backing the idea that a positive mental attitude in the face of setback and obstacles is directly linked to eventual success… in stark contrast to the prevailing belief on Reddit, which states that a goal is only achievable if you set the bar so fucking low you cannot help but trip over the thing.

The solution, then, is very simple- adaptation. Pursuing a big goal in large, single attempts like year long programs churned out en mass by strangers, especially when there is no accommodation for intervening complexities (i.e. illness, stress, bad sleep, you grandma dying, or whatever other bullshit people use as excuses when they post vids that should have been deleted on the Gram), cannot be successful. Success is multi-factorial, and there are simply too many variables in the equation for a single methodology to work optimally for more than one person, because most or all of the following (incomplete) list must be accounted for:

• sleep (both quality and quantity)
• food (amount, macros optimized for the individual, nutrient timing optimized for the individual)
• exercise selection
• pre-existing conditions like injuries, weaknesses, muscular imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, drug interactions
• developing injuries, weaknesses, muscular imbalances, and illnesses
• stress
• sex hormone levels
• time allotted for training
• energy allotted for training
• vacations
• training interruptions
• energy/interest/aptitude for lifting, because let’s face it, there are plenty of motherfuckers in the game just because they want to be part of something “cool,” not because they enjoy it

As such, people who approach training like they’re some implacable foe of life devoted only to the gym are idiots. Personally, I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve been consistent to the point of near insanity in both training and diet, and progress has even at those times been somewhat illusory. Goals change, life throws you curveballs, and no matter how hard you fucking try, no one can consistently add weight to the bar year in and year out. Moreover, adding weight to the bar day after day, year after year, cannot be your primary motivation. If it is, you will invariably quit, because 1) it is impossible to do s, and 2) that concept sucks the fun entirely out of lifting. Contrary to what this bitch-made new jack internet breed of coaches and lifters seem to believe, the primary motivation behind longevity and success in lifting weights is, and must be, sheer, unadulterated enjoyment. You’re not a machine, no matter how hard you jock the band Harm’s Way and jack your dick/clit to that dipshit from Big Bang Theory and those two autists from Star Trek.

As Gordon White said in The Chaos Protocols, “whether you achieve your goals or not depends on how you navigate the intervening complexity between where you are and where you want to be.” Thus, your overarching goal might be the 300-400-500 club (is that even still a thing?), so that you’re benching 300, squatting 400, and deadlifting 500lbs. It’s far from an unreasonable goal, but if you are in your first month of training and never played a sport, you might as well add “with Chris Hemsworth’s physique, training only three days a week, and while on welfare” for all of the probabilistic good it will do you. Is it impossible? Certainly not, though it would likely only happen on a long timeline. As such, you should allow for more time in your plan and break your goals into bite-sized chunks. Treat every massive goal like Kobayashi approaches a mound of 100 hot dogs- he doesn’t just swallow each sausage and bun whole. Nor does he just stuff fistfuls of food into his mouth like an asshole. Nor did he begin his life as a baby trying to attack the world record for competitive eating. Instead, he trained his stomach over time, continually refined his methods as he progressed, and eventually came to dominate his sport. Do you think a virgin would set out to break the goddamned gangbang record without ever having broken her hymen or sucked a dick? Hell no. She masturbates multiple times daily about epic gangbangs, starts fucking, likely has a terrific string of bad luck and a vicious coke habit, and only then embarks on an effort to break the record. That lofty goal is the shining light toward which you continually move, whatever it is, but you take steps to get there rather than just jumping up and down like an asshole trying to reach it before you’ve even figured out how to fly.

“The Buddha’s solution is for us to give up attachment, to give up striving. This is sound advice where you stay a peasant if you were born a peasant. No amount of desire could turn you into a prince. But we live in a world where, at least in theory, one can accomplish great things regardless of their birth status.” – Gordon White

Why anyone would take the advice of a lazy vegetarian with a serious eating disorder is beyond me, but in the lifting world his “satisfaction is the death of desire” horseshit will lead a lifter directly into the “nobody gives a fuck” percentile of their peers. Successful lifters are marginally content with their accomplishments but forever striving to improve. This doesn’t mean setting a goal of 100lbs per year on their total or anything so precise, but rather a commitment to making constant, small improvements that will yield massive results over time. As Charles Fort said, “all biologic phenomena act to adjust. There are no biologic actions other than adjustments.”

I.e., tell people accusing you of program hopping to have a coke and smile and shut the fuck up. The simply want you to fail; to blindly follow the herd off cliff after cliff rather than making innumerable small and occasional large tweaks to your process as you go.

In closing, don’t conflate satisfaction with settling for mediocrity. Nor should you blindly chase idealistic goals without incorporating a reason and acknowledgement of the intervening complexities you will face. Lifting is a journey- there is no destination, and if you think it has one, you might as well just fuck off and play checkers, because you’re just wasting the time of the people around you by interacting with them. It is a limitless, pride-and-ego-filled, thoroughly enjoyable quest for self-improvement and the transcending of the normal human form. Good enough is never enough and it shouldn’t be- climbing the next hill on the horizon, embarking on the next adventure, and learning the next new thing is what life is about.

Movement is life. Complacency and stagnation are death. And question everything.

“In the topography of intellection, I should say what we call knowledge is ignorance surrounded by laughter.”- Charles Fort

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