The Weight of Excuses
At this moment in human history, lifting weights has become something close to a moral obligation for a young man.
I say this because modern life is now an assault on the human body. Desk jobs, fake food, soy, seed oils, funky chemicals, mock stress, soft couches, smartphones, blue lights, heliophobia, safetyism, plastics, plastics, plastics—in so many ways the things we consume and the way we live undermine our vitality. The evidence is obvious enough. Posture is drooping. Waistlines are expanding. Energy levels are declining. A twenty-two year old male today has the testosterone of a sixty-seven year old from 2000! Anyone not noticing the deterioration of the human body in real time is not paying close enough attention.
It’s gotten to the point where a man with broad shoulders and athletic posture has become a refreshingly jarring sight, some sort of endangered species from a different decade.
This isn’t just a matter of aesthetics and hormones. Such a decline has deep political implications too: the decline of the body as an expression of political ills and a foreboding sign for the future. Enervated, round-shouldered men can pose no challenge to the will of petty tyrants or globalist tycoons, but are just human livestock under the modern regime—consuming, sleeping, and repeating in the open air zoos our elites have designed.
What does lifting have to do with any of this? A barbell is the single most effective way to check and reverse these ravages, which makes hitting the gym not just a form of self-defense but also an act of service to freedom loving people everywhere, dead, living, and yet unborn.
As such, a young man better have an excellent reason for choosing not to lift. I’ve compiled a list of the arguments I hear most frequently, and a few comments on why each argument falls short.
“I don’t have time”
Almost everyone is convinced that they are sooo busy with all the obligations upon them. There aren’t enough hours in the day for all the things that we must do. I’m skeptical about these claims to constant busyness, but even if we take them seriously what’s fascinating about lifting is the way it returns time to us, in at least a couple ways.
Lifting gives us time because it gives us energy. The testosterone we produce while lifting enlivens us and gives us the eagerness, the thrust, the oomph which alters the nature of time, or at least our ability to make the most of it.
Lifting also slows the clock on our body. The scientific types will give you explanations involving telomeres and whatnot; the rest of us can just trust our eyes and instincts enough to understand that Father Time takes a much gentler toll on men who lift weights.
So while lifting does take time out of our busy schedule, it changes the quality of the rest of our life.
“I don’t have time” can be said about any pursuit. We don’t have time because we don’t want to make time. Besides, lifting need not require so many hours: I get results from hitting the gym three times a week, sixty minutes each session.
“Lifting is vain”
Yes, there is a danger that a man will feel good about a) putting in hard work at the gym and b) looking and feeling a bit more studly and c) understanding the connection between work and reward. I know of few activities in life which teach the relationship more undeniably than lifting.
Vanity is always a danger—but that’s hardly unique to lifting, though it is perhaps accentuated. A man will indeed require some moral virtue to not dwell too much on his gains, but that’s hardly a compelling reason to forgo something so beneficial.
What interests me more is how our newly developed strength can be put to good use. If strength can lead to vanity, it can just as easily increase opportunities for generosity. A man of prowess has gifts that can be given to others, ways to make himself exceptionally useful to those less strong—his example, his assistance, his protection. He becomes indispensable.
“I don’t want to get too big”
Don’t worry, you won’t. Nobody walks into the gym, hoists some dumbbells, and leaves looking like Arnold circa 1976. Getting that BIG requires serious intention to get that BIG. Instead of getting confused for a professional bodybuilder, you will simply become stronger, more athletic, more confident, and more handsome.
“I don’t want to get hurt”
This is a serious concern only if we ignore the obvious fact that inactivity presents a greater risk of injury than weightlifting.
Yes, injuries can and will result from lifting incorrectly, just as injuries can follow from doing almost anything incorrectly (driving a car, playing golf, sawing wood, etc). That’s why it’s important to learn technique.
Yet I’d argue that nagging injuries, when they do happen, are good opportunities to investigate what we’re doing wrong and learn how to use the body correctly. (Often enough, the cause is tied to the ravages of sedentary lives and bad posture.) Over the years I’ve experienced a handful of nagging injuries, each of which disappeared when I identified why and retrained my body. I am better off having suffered these injuries and learned how to rehabilitate.
"The gym is artificial”
This is the wannabe philosopher’s excuse and, frankly, one that I am somewhat open to—because there certainly is something contrived about divorcing fitness from the rest of our lives and reducing it to the gym. Ideally we would exercise through the requirements of the day, hunting mastodons, wrestling with other men in competition for females, hoisting stone for the cathedrals being built, and so on.
My issue with this complaint is the wannabe philosopher’s implication that we can get similar results through other ways which aren’t similarly abstracted. I’m all for hoisting boulders and chopping wood in the mountains, like Stallone in Rocky IV, but that’s not really an option at present. Meanwhile, the gym is open and it offers me the equipment to develop real vitality—and it’s just not that big of a sacrifice of my principles.
Those who complain about the artificiality of weightlifting are often perfectly willing to heat their food in a microwave or do any number of contrived things.
What’s more, it’s not like a) functional, outdoor, Rocky IV-style exercise and b) lifting weights in a gym are mutually exclusive. Sports, hiking, sprinting, calisthenics, boxing, other martial arts—these are crucial components to add to any lifting program.
“It’s boring”
Of course the gym can be boring—if you are doing the same things all the time, in which case your sessions are also ineffective.
Any good program calls for variety to keep things interesting and challenge the body in new ways. This means incorporating different lifts and different activities outside of the gym.
Another way to avoid boredom is to lift with others. Bronze Age Pervert says that real leisure is in training for war with our friends, trying to bring out the best in each other. If this sounds boring, if you’d rather be watching Avengers 14 or playing Call of Duty 81 than developing into a formidable man with your friends, then I don’t know what to tell you.
“I hate gym culture—those meatheads on steroids are awful”
Only those people who have never really been in a gym, and never met real weightlifters, can say such things. Of course there will be some louts, but they are fewer and further between than the television leads one to believe. Gymbros are often warm-hearted people who might be potential friends of yours.
“What matters is the size of your heart, not the size of your muscles.”
Any cliche that draws such hard distinctions between the interior and exterior of a man is increasingly obnoxious. Such lines sound like psyops started by Big Food and Big Soda and other predatory money-printing organizations that have a vested interest in pumping us full of noxious compounds, all while we tell ourselves not to worry because it’s what’s inside that counts.
Interior and exterior are components of the same man, reflecting and shaping each other. The man who trains his body is also developing mental and spiritual virtues.
“A man doesn’t need to be stronger than he needs to be”
A fellow I used to work with said this puzzling line to me.
The implication is that modern life doesn’t demand anything strenuous from you and therefore you need not be capable of doing anything more strenuous than pushing a lawnmower over grass—if you don’t have a riding one.
Only a lame and defeated man, spiritually castrated by modern life, is willing to give away his vitality just because he supposedly doesn’t need it. But even then—the comfort and ease of modern life are unsustainable and fake anyways. We’re already seeing that difficult, unstable, and perhaps violent times are on the way. Best prepare accordingly. Physical prowess will serve us very well in the difficulties ahead.
(By the way, this fellow then had the nerve to ask me and others to help him move his ridiculously heavy antique furniture when he bought a new house. Turns out the strength of other men comes in handy!)
“Toxic masculinity”
This is actually the best reason for not lifting! Or at least for certain Soyjack types.
If you’re so preoccupied with buzzwords and lazy intellectual fads that you think a man’s attempt to grow stronger is “toxic,” then you definitely should not grow stronger. In that case, please do not lift weights. The rest of us will keep doing our thing, though.
Conclusion
This is an all-hands-on-deck moment. With the world in such a sorry state, we don’t just need men of good morals and intentions, but men with those qualities and strong bodies.
I wish the best of luck to the man who does not lift. Ultimately each of us gets to make his own decisions and live with the consequences. I simply hope that he isn’t lying to himself, offering excuses that don’t withstand much scrutiny.
Yes, lifting is hard, at least at first, and we are dangerously accustomed to ease and comfort. Soon enough, though, one learns to enjoy the difficulty and appreciate the rewards that come from embracing difficulty.