RECREATIONAL SUFFERING

  

Dave Tate pissed off a lot of people when he wrote that, if you can text between sets, you’re not working hard enough at the gym.  I do not work hard enough at the gym, because the inspiration for this post came as I was cruising reddit between sets and saw some dude lamenting the fact that he “literally did not have time to eat”.  You see, this individual was VERY busy: they had school AND a job.  I extended the greatest degree of sympathy I could at 0330 in the middle of my workout and offered a solution of PBJs (thanks Dan John!), but like many of my posts, this got me thinking in the middle of my workout and it dawned on me that there seems to be a misunderstanding among the younger training population.  Specifically, the misunderstanding is this: just because you experience suffering in your life doesn’t give you a pass to avoid suffering in the pursuit of your extra-curricular goals.  Quite the opposite: on top of your day-to-day suffering, you’re going to need to engage in a little RECREATIONAL suffering as well.

Most of these men have torn muscles right off the bone, but soft shell crab is what did them in

 

What do I mean by recreational suffering?  I’m talking about ELECTIVE suffering: suffering that you CHOOSE to experience.  Day-to-day, everyone suffers INVOLUNTARILY.  And look: we all fight our own battles and everyone is having the hardest day of their lives every time you meet them, so playing the “suffering Olympics” is stupid.  Someone is working 2 jobs to make ends meet and support their family , meanwhile, someone is living in a war torn destitute location and hasn’t slept in days for fear of being murdered, meanwhile someone had to skip their morning coffee because their alarm didn’t go off: all of us are suffering.  But, in turn, no one chooses this suffering.  And yes, Sartre would argue that everything is a choice and we are all burdened with freedom, and others can argue that there is no such thing as free will in the first place: quit being so academic for a second and to quote Joe Dirt “quit focusing on the wrong part of the story.”

 

RECREATIONAL suffering is when we actually choose to go out of our way to suffer for our goals.   When we’re forced to suffer, it’s really nothing special when we endure it: what other choice did we have?  It was either that or lay down and die, and there’s something of a “survival bias” in place regarding that one.  But since everyone suffers every day, to simply suffer involuntarily is to be average.  To be ABOVE average, one engages in recreational suffering.  They go out of their way to experience discomfort and make sacrifices such that they are able to do things that other people don’t do.  They wake up early to get training in, or sleep less, or meal prep rather than eat a bunch of junk, or they watch less television, or they don’t drink, or etc etc.  There are millions of ways to engage in recreational suffering: the point is, it has to be engaged IN if one wishes to achieve the benefits of it.

Not pictured: fun

 

The other thing to keep in mind about recreational suffering is this: it makes NO difference what your baseline of suffering is.  Your body flat out doesn’t care.  You don’t get a pass simply because you’re already suffering enough in your daily life: you have to CHOOSE to suffer to get above and beyond your current station.  You have NO free time because you go to school and work?  Sucks for you man: sleep less.  Or get a slow cooker.  Or learn how to sneak away on a break and speed eat a snack.  Or just f**king get to YES somehow (reference my previous work on that). I saw a dude who wanted to gain weight, and when told they’d need to engage in heavy physical exercise immediately wanted to talk about how they had no gyms nearby and when asked if they could buy equipment replied they “had no space to workout”.  You have no space to do a kettlebell snatch?  You need to go do some recreational suffering my dude. 

 

There’s a myth out there that, if at any point in your pursuit of physical change you experience ANY sort of discomfort, you are doing something wrong.  This primarily stems from a bunch of corporations and talking heads that want to promote this VERY idea so that they can sell you their garbage product that won’t work, primarily because you CAN’T sell hardwork and suffering: no one will buy it.  No no: we all wanna buy the “20 minutes a day, 3 days a week for INSTANT results” bunk and the pills and powders and magic formulas.   Folks: if it was easy, more people would be jacked.  That’s WHY we find physically impressive people so physically impressive: they are living manifestations of recreational suffering and toil.  When you see someone really physically accomplished at something, you are observing someone who is REALLY good at subjecting themselves to misery and, in turn, someone who has spent a LOT of time BEING miserable.

To the point that we blatantly villainize the lazy and make heroes of those who suffer 

 

And allow me to alienate some of my audience here, because I’m going to talk about the strongest example of recreational suffering I know of.  It’s not lifting weights: anyone who thinks that is most likely in terrible shape.  It’s not swimming.  It’s not martial arts.  It’s RUNNING.  Why?  Because at any given point while running, you could just stop running…and experience no consequences.  When you’re squatting, you get the bar on your back and squat down, and at that point, you can either dump the bar or finish the squat.  And honestly, finishing the squat is a far better prospect: you can just rack the bar and THEN be done, vs having to clean up the mess of a dumped bar.  When you’re swimming, if you decide you’re “done”, you either complete the swim or you drown.  But when you’re running, you have to choose to run for EVERY step of the run.  At any point you could just NOT run.  At worse, if you’re on an outdoor run, you now have to take LONGER to get to where you’re going because you have to walk, but hell, you could always order an Uber if you’re really in a bind. 

 

So hey, if you decide you need to learn about recreational suffering, get up at 0300 and go for a LONG run sometime.