A GOOD STORY

Inspiration for today’s post comes by way of a conversation I had with Will Ruth, who I’ve had the pleasure of competing alongside and who also runs r/strongman on reddit, with a dedication to maintaining a solid signal to noise ratio that I find incredibly admirable.  In discussing Jamie Lewis’ latest rant, I found myself expressing the sentiment that “these days, I dig a good story more than I care about facts”, and since expressing that I’ve been reflecting on the significance of that.  It becomes especially topical as I observe that this blog has grown to be 7 years old, a feat I had no intention of accomplishing upon it’s outset, especially as I’ve remained diligent in updating it weekly, meaning a substantial amount of work having been created.  But I also think to the outset of the blog, and the name itself.  “Mythical Strength” was a nod to the notion of “strength of legend”: strength so immense that stories, tales, and myths were created around it.  7 years ago, when I started writing, it was exactly what I hoped to capture and, truthfully, what I hoped to achieve on my own.  Fundamentally, I’ve found that stories, legends and myths, irrespective of their truth, are immensely more valuable than the facts.

Sometimes, a good story can have a ridiculous plot

Allow me to share a few “good stories” of my own.  My hardcore readers will recognize these, but going back to my childhood, my father always liked to share stories of his buddies in basic training when he was in the Air Force.  My dad served 4 years and, to this day, maintains that serving was one of the best decisions of his life, and, in turn, in my childhood, his time in the Air Force had a significant impact on how he raised me.  He’d tell me stories about a guy that was a professional boxer that would catch flies in the barracks with his bare hands, about a dude that studied Tae Kwon Do and jump kicked over my dad’s head, and also a time about a guy with an afro (remember how old I am and then factor in the era my dad served) who leaned forward over a candle during a shoe shinning party and lit his head on fire.  However, 2 stories really cemented in my psyche as a kid: one about a guy that went from no abs to a six pack set of abs by doing 200 sit ups a night, and another about a dude that took off his shirt and was ripped out of his goddamn mind that attributed his physique to 200 push-ups a night.

My dad told me these stories frequently, first as a young kid and then as a teenager as I started getting bit by the fitness bug and, in turn, they were the “physical myths” I grew up with.  And much like a kid that doesn’t think to question how Santa can get around the whole world in just one night, it never dawned on me to notice that “200” was the magic number my dad settled on that seemed to just be the universal “a lot”.  Those numbers WERE magical, and if I did just that, I’d get these same results.  And so, at age 14, when I started turning my life around physically, I set out to do these things.  And I accomplished them.  And I didn’t get the results I expected.  And I pushed even harder, going for 300 a night, and then 400 a night, before I gave up on the myth.

But it looks like the world didn't

How many of us had these myths?  My dad’s friends in basic training were someone else’s uncle that could bench 800lbs in his basement and he did it with HIT.  Or it was someone’s big brother that got totally jacked by working construction over the summer and eating a jar of peanut butter a day.  And these were just the “local myths”.  What about the Colorado Project?  Or Super Squats “30lbs of muscle in 6 weeks”?  Or Hulk Hogan telling us to say our prayers and take our vitamins?  Circus strongman of old?  Or the original myth of Milo of Croton?  Or Hercules, or Samson?  Or watching a Rocky montage, something we know for SURE was fake, but was still “a good story”?

What was the point of these “good stories”?  They drove us to action.  It implanted an idea in our head, and even if that idea was totally unreasonable, it now existed.  Prior to the telling of that story and the sharing of that myth, the idea simply “wasn’t”, but once spoken and shared, it now existed, and was something to be pursued.  And even if the end could not be realized: so what?  I could do 200 push-ups in one go as a 15 year old, and I held at that number for a long time before deciding to chase at 400 at 19 years old.  I’m 34 now, I never do push-ups, and I can still knock-out 68 in a minute when called upon because I built up such an immense amount of volume and repetition in my youth that I’m STILL riding it out.  Chasing after the 30lbs of muscle in 6 weeks on Super Squats taught me a TON about the significance of effort in both training and eating. And who else out there has a story about chasing after something ridiculous, completely failing to achieve it, and growing significantly from that effort?

Assuming you remember the lesson when it's over

Too many people are unwilling to pursue something if it’s not supported by the facts and, consequently, they tend to be in pursuit of facts that place the greatest possible limits on themselves.  There are entire communities out there dedicated to rooting out “fake natties” (lifters that use steroids by claim otherwise, for my lifters that are fortunate enough to not be infected by this toxicity) with a real primary mission to establish a norm of sub-mediocrity for human performance, claiming that pretty much all noteworthy physiques are only achievable through drugs, and that a natural trainee hits their lifetime potential after a mere 2 years of training.  Hah!  The same is true of those that believe they have determined their maximal effective volume, constantly watch dogging for the dreaded “junk volume”.  Go do some 10x10s and get back to me.  You can only train like Arnold if you’re on drugs?  Tell that to all the kids that bought the Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding and ran the programs exactly as written.  Before we had so many “facts”, we had a bunch of good stories, and, consequently, a lot of folks willing to go out, do something stupid and reckless, and gain a ton from the experience.

I quite frankly don’t care about the facts anymore.  That story is boring.  The story of the facts always ends with us being lackluster and underwhelming.  I’d rather hear a good story: something that convinces my mind that there must be more, and that it’s simply a question of reaching for it.  And who knows: maybe if you hear enough of these stories, after chasing after enough of them, they may tell one about you.