WE DON’T STOP DOING IT BECAUSE IT STOPS WORKING: WE STOP DOING IT BECAUSE IT’S HARD

 That title is a mouthful, but the inspiration comes from an observation I read in James Pieratt’s “A History of Physical Fitness” which, alongside his other book “Preparing for WAR: the training of History’s Top Warriors” make for fantastic “toilet reading”, stealing the phraseology from Jamie Lewis, who himself said the same of his “bite sized history” book.  Just short passages of fun gee whiz info, rather than full on academic text.  But in either capacity, like many physical culture history nerds, a conversation eventually turned toward the Spartans, and how awesome they were in their prime as it relates to being warriors and a warrior/physical culture, which, of course, leads to the inevitable question of “what happened?”  And, ultimately, the Spartans eventually slacked on the warrior ethos that had made them so dominant in their region, which resulted in their fall from grace before the entire region was eventually conquered and history rolled on.  But WHY did the Spartans give up on this ethos?  Was it because they found a BETTER way?  No: clearly not, by nature of their outcome.  It was, instead, that they found an EASIER way, and, in turn, they chose THAT way, because being a Spartan is hard, and eventually NOT doing the hard thing won out over getting the results doing the hard thing got them.  In the world of physical transformation, we see this exact same thing transpire, and so frequently trainees interpret a NEW way as being a BETTER way simply because it’s an easier way…but, quite often, it turns out that being easier is the only thing that makes it better: not the outcome itself.

Yeah, bare knuckle boxing sounds brutal, until you realize this was the easier option than rough & tumble fighting

 

My go to example here is that, in 1967, we already had two men that could bench press over 600lbs raw: Pat Casey, and his training partner Billy “Superstar” Graham (yes, the professional wrestler and world’s strongest man competitor).  It’s worth pointing out the year because, in 1967, the bench press was a VERY new lift, with Doug Hepburn having managed a 400lb bench in 1950, and a 500lb bench in 1953, with other pro-wrestler Bruno Sammartino having set a record of 565lbs in 1959.  Contrast this with the clean and jerk appearing in the first ever modern Olympic Games in Athens at 1896, and 2 hands anyhow/strongman style overhead lifting having existed for LONG before that, and then take a look at the actual equipment being used for bench pressing (Doug Hepburn had to have the weights handed to him, since they didn’t have actual bench press stations yet) and you can understand the significance of TWO men being able to hit over 600lbs in 1967.  In the 58 years since that record has been set, we’ve yet to see it get eclipsed by 200lbs, with Julius Maddox having come the closest with a 355kg/782.6lb bench press in 2023.  Now consider, in those 58 years, the “advances” we’ve had in terms of drugs (I’ll start with the obvious one), nutrition (Pat Casey swore by meatloaf sandwiches smothered in mayo between sets), exercise science, the equipment itself AND the much larger talent pool to draw from, along with how much the bench press itself has become an ICONIC lift in our society (the very tool that is used to evaluate a man’s strength, whereas that was previously a sentiment reserved for the press overhead).  When we look at this, we KNOW, objectively, that the training approaches of the past ABSOLUTELY worked.  They made men big and strong, to near superhuman levels and, most likely, given access to the same drugs, equipment, and early exposure/technique improvement, these guys would be setting very similar records to what we’re seeing today.

 

So why did meatloaf sandwiches with mayo between sets of 8 hour long dip workouts (yes, he really did that, getting 200 reps with over 250lbs on his body) fall out of favor in place of intra-workout protein drinks and minimum effective dose?  Did the methods of the past NOT work?  NO!  They CLEARLY worked.  They worked INCREDIBLY well: they were just HARD.  And soon, easier ways came around, and we interpreted the existence of these easier methods to infer that they were SUPERIOR methods…but are they?  Or are they simply easier methods period, and with that we have a tradeoff in terms of effectiveness?

Seriously though: look at that garage sale special he's benching on

We cannot mistake newness as a marker for superiority: something being new or more recent does not immediately make it superior to what came before it.  This falsely presupposes that all new ideas SUCCESSFULLY build off the success of the old method, but take a page from Olestra and Pepsi Blue: sometimes “new” is far far worse from what came before it.  Or like when we replaced all those awful for us animals fats with all those super new transfats in our fastfood and Oreo creams.  Additionally, this same thought process puts us in a place where we immediately discredit anything that ISN’T the latest and greatest: believing that HUMANS operate like machinery, and that methods become obsolete.  The success of the present does not invalidate the success of the past, and, in truth, we have to appreciate that, absent the success FOUND in the past, we’d not be able to enjoy or appreciate our present successes.

 

What is the point of this ranting: that, so often, when I wish to find a new way forward, I, instead, look for an OLD way forward.  These methods worked: they were just HARD.  But why is that a bad thing?  Isn’t that the whole purpose of physical transformation?  You do hard things so that you, yourself, become a hard thing?  You endure, and in enduring you grow strong?  Because, quite simply, if this was easy, wouldn’t everyone be jacked?  The outcome of physical transformation is the outcome of one that regularly engages in things that are difficult, and that includes the difficulty of the training AND the difficulty of the nutrition, in the case of the former being willing one to DO something whereas, in the case of the latter, it quite often an instance of willing one to NOT do something (don’t indulge in the garbage).  And this constantly engaging in difficult things self-perpetuates: the more you do it, the better you get at it, and the greater a challenge you can take on in order to continue to grow. 

I mean, I'm fairly certain Sisphyus is REALLY jacked

 

Take some time to appreciate the past, rather than the present and the future.  Try a diet of nothing but whole foods and see what it can do for you.  Don’t reach for the protein powder when you need a fix: cook yourself some steak and eggs.  Don’t reach for the weight gainer if you’re short on calories: sit down and eat an honest to goodness meal.  Quit trying to calculate your minimum effective dose to get the maximum return on your training and go see how much weight you can squat for 20 breathing reps, or go knock out an 8 hour dip marathon where you absolutely NEED those meatloaf sandwiches in mayo between sets to power you through.

 

These methods STILL work. You aren’t handcuffed to ONLY use what modernity has afforded you: you have the entire history of humanity to draw upon for inspiration on how to achieve physical transformation.  People didn’t stop using the methods because they stopped working: they stopped using them because they’re HARD.  Don’t lose that Spartan edge: DO the hard things and get the hard rewards that come with them.