I REFUSE

More fun stories from real life, because sometimes procrastinating to write my blogpost gives me an opportunity to do some living.  Was out on a walk with the Mrs yesterday, and we started off in suburbia before we ended up on a nice path by a lake near the house.  We hadn’t been on it before, so we decided to just follow it and see where it went.  We soon transitioned from pavement to a nature path, and from there ended up completely twisted around in what I believe were actually horse trails upon reflection.  We’re walking on a carved out grass pathway surrounded by very tall weeds/marshland, but can clearly see where we want to end up: we just don’t know which trail or path we need to take to get there.  We eventually find the way out, and all in all the experience was totally enjoyable, but in discussing it my wife told me she was glad we found the path, and I told her I wasn’t worried, because if worse came to worse, I was just going to walk through the weeds straight to where we wanted to go.  When she said she wasn’t going to do that, I assured her that I would carry her through it, so that she wouldn’t have to concern herself with ticks or other nasty critters.  When she asked why, I said “because I refuse to be trapped by grass”, and from this she made the pointed observation that I refuse to be trapped by a lot of things.

How I saw it in my head

And that’s today’s lesson: “I refuse”.  My wife’s observation was incredibly spot on, and I could do nothing but admit her accuracy when faced by it.  She elaborated that she was referring to how I refuse to be trapped by weather, having a history of driving through dangerous blizzard conditions, flashfloods, mudslides, etc, all of which she has had to endure alongside me, so it’s etched into her mind.  However, my training is mired in “I refuse”.  One of the primary ones, that constantly seems to blow the mind of others, is that I refuse to do mobility or flexibility work.  The more I get told that I “must” do it, the more I refuse to do it.  And I’ve been told that I must do it for over a decade, which, in turn, is a decade of refusing.  AND a decade of succeeding!  Where are the consequences that I was told I was going to face?  It’s going to happen when I get old?  Well how interesting, because….

I refuse to grow old.  I’m in my mid 30s with 19 years of training mileage, and I’m training harder and crazier than I ever did in my 20s, despite what I hear from my peers about how everything is harder and worse in your 30s.  I find THAT to be the fundamental issue: they tell themselves it’s going to get harder, and it gets harder.  I refuse to let it happen, and I force my body to adapt to that stimulus.  Much like the expression “We don’t stop playing because we get older: we get older because we stop playing”, you grow old when you start training like you’re old.  So many people have simply given up while they are in the PRIME of their lives, and I observe the unfortunate ways their bodies decay over the next SEVERAL decades from neglect and, ultimately defeat.  Not me: I refuse.

What many of my peers wanted for their 30th birthdays

I refuse to be trapped by injuries.  This is one I see SO much among other trainees, and it just blows my mind.  ONE part will have an injury, and they just quit ALL training.  “Broke my hand: looks like I won’t be lifting for the next 3 months”.  What?  Go pull a sled, or hit up the leg press, or safety squat bar squats, or zercher good mornings, or cable or machine work, etc etc.  These people lament how they “love” training and won’t be able to train and won’t put in ANY effort to figure out other ways to train.  Man, if this is how they treat things they love, I’d hate to be a family member or loved one to these people, because they are QUICK to abandon their love.  I hate training, and I will rig up the most Rube Goldberg-esque contraption possible to train around whatever injury I have because I REFUSE to be trapped by injury. 

And fundamentally, that boils down to the fact that I refuse to let anything external to me determine MY fate.  This is Sartre’s “radical freedom” taken to the extreme.  It’s Nietzsche’s “Will to Power”.  The fact so many philosophers have discussed it as a means of existentialism is proof of concept of just how inherent such a notion is in ALL of us: that we CAN refuse.  And when you wallow in self-pity about your powerlessness, you simply refuse TO refuse.  Otherwise, exercise your ability to refuse when presented with an obstacle that threatens your success or presumes to alter your fate. 

Shoulda refused this idea from the trainer

And do so out of anger.  Understand that these external variables are an affront to your very nature, and that they act in hopes of defeating you.  And you refuse to be defeated!  You refuse to let them have the last word!  And if you crash and burn in a fireball, it is on YOUR terms.  You decide your fate, because you refuse to let anything decide what will be your downfall BUT you.  When you go out, it’s because you decided to, and when others tell you your time is up, you refuse to listen.  You refuse to give in to fear, to injury, to age, to fatigue, to convention, to science, to anything that is not what YOU want it to be.  And if people tell you that’s insane, you can refuse to listen.