LIONS AND SHEEP: BE THE SHEEP

  

In my typical contrarian fashion, I’m going take the trite “lions and sheep” expression and reverse it.  For anyone somehow NOT aware of what lions and sheep gets at, it’s your typical 1980s Gordon Gecko-esque metaphor talking about how the majority of people are sheep, meekly following the herd without question and with no real means of defending themselves, whereas the “apex predators” of the world are the lions: living prideful at the top of the food chain as the “king of the jungle”, carving their own path and doing things on their terms.  From this, we even get derisive terms like “sheeple” used to describe the majority of humans that just go with the flow and do what they're told, whereas WE, the “enlightened”, need to break free and embrace the powerful lion inside of us.  Bah I say!  Yes: pun-intended.  I’m here to argue in favor OF the sheep, and why we should embrace such sheepdom.

I was pretty close to going with this

 

What makes the lion so great?  They’re apex predators, cool.  What does that mean?  As predators, they hunt and kill the food that they eat, and as apex predators, they live without any other threats to their existence (outside of, of course, humans, which are such “good” predators that we’ll kill animals we have NO intention of eating…but I digress).  They are on top of the food chain, and anything they want: they take.  When they’re hungry, they know that they can just waltz into the savannah, find an animal, kill it and eat it.  And the lion is SO sure of its ability that it will even leave some meat behind!  The lion helps itself to the prime cuts of its kill and leaves behind the refuse for the scavengers: hyenas and the like, who possess the proper digestive enzymes to consume carrion without experience life threatening illness.  Isn’t biology and evolution a hoot?!

 

The sheep…is not that.  The sheep is the complete opposite of ANY sort of predator: apex or otherwise.  The sheep is prey.  The sheep is a vegetarian: its “prey” is grass and grain.  If you’ve ever mowed a lawn: you’ve engaged in the cat-and-mouse predatory game that a sheep engages in when it goes for the kill.  Lions live in prides, with a head male that sires heirs with a harem of females.  Sheep congregate in herds with no real social order.  Sheep seek the protection OF other animals FROM other animals, relying on a sheepdog or a shepherd to protect them from the very apex predators that make up the ranks of the lion.

 

But what I find admirable about the sheep is its eating habits.  Whereas the lion will eat until it is satisfied, then move on and nap for 18 hours until it’s time for the next kill, a sheep will literally eat until it dies. 

Amateurs!

 

That is not hyperbole: if left unchecked and unregulated, a sheep will eat until the point that they overload their digestive systems with too many calories and too much lactic acid and die from it.  They will die from the very act that is supposed to keep them alive.  The job of a shepherd is to PREVENT THE SHEEP FROM EATING TO DEATH.

 

FIND ME an animal more aware of its “purpose” than the noble sheep.  You wanna talk “biological imperative”, you wanna talk “will to live”, you wanna talk survival: the sheep.  The sheep is SO committed to living IT WILL DIE FROM IT.  Because the sheep ISN’T an apex predator.  It does NOT have the assurance of the lion that food will ALWAYS be available to it: all it has to do is go out and take it.  The sheep does NOT know when its next meal is coming, so when it HAS that meal, it takes it for ALL that it is worth.  It abandons all sense of self-awareness, self-preservation or basic comfort.  Marinade on that last point (Hah!  A food pun).  You ever eat a little too much at Thanksgiving and feel uncomfortably full?  Can you even fathom what it’s like to eat to the point you literally die from it?  Can you imagine how much agony you would have to be in prior to that moment, yet you STILL keep eating?  The sheep is admirable!

It's like this, but eating cheesecake

 

The lion quiet literally rests on its laurels!  It has grown lazy and complacent FROM its apex predator status.  It has no challenge, so it does not rise to meet any challenge.  It lives a life of resting and feasting: that is the life of most modern westerners!  But the sheep?  The sheep lives in such constant existential fear of annihilation that its drive to live overwhelms its biological governors!  This is the sheer manifestation of “will to power”: to engage in overcoming to such a large degree you exceed your actual capabilities and expire from it.  Look at how “game” this fear of destruction has kept the sheep, whereas the lion spends 7/8ths of its existence unconscious and unaware.  Which animal is truly living?

 

The sheep inspired me in my last run of Super Squats.  I was given a bar, a rack, and an objective: squat the weight for 20 reps.  I knew what squatting the weight would do for me: achieve physical transformation.  I know what I had to do.  And I remember feeling my hamstring tear on the eccentric on the 20th rep, just to hit the bottom and finish the concentric and rack the weight.  Because like the sheep: I was going to squat until I died.  Think of when you’ve seen someone pull a 15 second deadlift single, not even inching the bar up by MILIMETERING the bar up.  They are blowing out every blood vessel in their face, but they are GOING to get that rep, because they are the sheep, the food is there, and they must live.  Hell, consider taking a direct lesson from the sheep, and all the times you’ve observed a trainee that is CLEARLY uncomfortable with how much they are eating, but they continue to do so because they have goals.  John Berardi spoke about eating his post lifting meal IN THE SHOWER, because there was a fair chance he was going to throw up SOME of it and he wanted to be able to clean it up quickly. 

There's a reason I review this book so positively 

 

Do you have the dedication of the sheep?  Will you keep going until you literally die from it?  Or are you some sort of lazy, spoiled lion: going out for the kill only when it’s on YOUR terms on YOUR time, and merely eating until you are satisfied?  Try living so hard you die from it sometime.  You may find, in your pursuit of that limit, you reach some INCREDIBLE outcomes.