Fight to Live
Silence the barrage of excuses and work, sweat, push, to relish the wonderful ache, the healing and the growth that tells you, you still fight to live.
I’m happy to say I’ve been waking more sore than usual, often rolling out of bed with a weakness in my legs and a dull ache in my shoulders. I can usually shake it off by my first coffee of the day, but when it happens, I grimace as much as I smile about it. It grants me some satisfaction knowing that I’m doing something to keep this body more alive than ailing, having switched up a simple workout routine to shock the body into new adaptation, new growth. Years ago, a beloved friend, nothing short of a brother, would confront and confound colleagues with his unnerving commitment to physical disciplines. He wasn’t tall by any means, but had built an impressive physique through a daily adherence to his disciplines. “Take a day off,” they’d tell him, biting into a doughnut and scoffing at his relentless devotion to consistently working out, confronted by their own complacency more than anything. He’d shrug them off and jokingly retort that they could sit and watch their own pants tighten (in a manner of speaking). He was intelligent, compassionate and utterly graceful in his selflessness and care for those he loved, granting me his time, patience and tutelage at a tough time in my life.
Among other gifts, he gave me a considerable collection of weight plates that he’d amassed and outgrown over the years. A set that still sits in my garage beside a humble homemade squat rack, and a basic bench. But more than the plates themselves, he granted me an example, an attitude of self-discipline and relentlessness that savours the gift of life and a call to strength that many of us are familiar with. He gave me the gift of accountability, as we’d check in with each other every morning to make sure the other had worked out. He taught me to to rise early to attack the day with relish, giving time for one’s spiritual, intellectual and physical disciplines. He also granted me a simple, human insight into the excuses we can make and the fallacy of giving any of them any credence at all.
Nobody plans their decline. Not one of us. We don’t plan our weight gain, our diabetes, our sagging posture, our lethargy, our flagging ability to focus or deny ourselves, our detrimental diet. Nobody plans to die, one day at a time, drinking themselves to sleep and falling into the technicolor stupor of their screens. We don’t decide to become sloppy, slow and banal, attributing everything to the inevitabilities of ageing and broader cultural and lifestyle trends that excuse our own indolence. But it happens. It happens to so many of us, or those who have gone before us. As with any discipline, our decision to act, to engage, to commit, must be bolstered with a diligence and resolve that refutes the bleating, mewling cries of our sloppy subconscious.
It’s too cold out. It’s too hot. It’s too early. It’s too late. I’m tired from work. I’ll be too tired tomorrow. I have to make that phonemail. Send that email. Do that planning. I don’t have the right clothes. Not sure where my sneakers are. I have a niggling injury. I’ll wait til someone can join me. I’ll start fresh next week. Next month. In the new year. I’ll make it happen. It’ll be easier if I make a clean break. A clean start. I need a different setup really. A new membership. A personal trainer. A new gym. New gloves. Not sure about my right knee. I’ll start. I really will.
You already started. You started months ago. You decided, secretly committed, to your own complacency. Your own decline. And without intending to, you’re making great progress too. How long since you brought yourself to sweat? How long since you felt the cold bite of the bar in your hands? How long since you wondered if you could make it back up from a squat? How long since you nailed a set with strong, clean reps til you couldn’t lift it another inch? How long since you woke with your legs aching, joyously, for the dignity of their efforts the day before? We are incredibly adept at excusing ourselves from our disciplines. This is just as dangerous, as challenging in our health, as much as our art. But we can no longer excuse ourselves without accepting the inverse state to growth, to adaptation, to discipline - despair and decline.
Recent progress in the science and practice of physical disciplines also leave us little excuse. Even if we wish to commit little time each day, or each week, the benefits to our wellbeing can be enormous. Consider the practice of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), which challenges the body with sets of intense bursts of application punctuated by less intensive sections of ‘rest.’ Tabata training is one such example of this approach, and I can attest to its euphoric and enervating effects, which take very little time at all. I’ve never taken to running for long distances or sessions, despite the appeal of developing such a capacity and the respect I have for those who do it. It hasn’t been my thing, but with HIIT, it doesn’t have to be.
Resistance training saw an interesting development in Tim Ferriss’ book, The Four Hour Body, in which he presented an approach to weight training and mass building through what he referred to as ‘Occam’s Protocol.’ The approach employs full body workouts, with single sets of slow reps for each muscle group - taken to failure, when the body couldn’t possibly lift another millimetre. It’s taxing, but once again, time efficient and incredibly effective. Even an old school 5x5 approach, which I’ve recently returned to, can be both efficacious and efficient when you apply it to one or two muscle groups a day. Literally ten minutes is enough to do something to safeguard your health, your strength and bear fruit.
Another critical element is the example we’re setting for the children in our homes and our communities. The last thing we want to do is normalise lethargy, decline and a disposition to decay. They need to see and understand that the body doesn’t thrive in a state of inertia, of stasis. This is particularly important for those of us with more sedentary vocations. Our children must see and understand us living purposefully, thoughtfully, thankfully. This is crucial across our disciplines, be they creative, spiritual, physical and relational. We must live an example that is consciously engaged in the world, with our loved ones, our designs and our duties. We must maintain our temperance, strength and a reverence for the lives we’ve been given. As such, we teach our children to safeguard their own wellbeing, to thrive by joyously pushing their bodies to new states, new strength.
A final gift of a physical discipline, is one that we find across most domains our life. When we apply ourselves resolutely, with a system and a habit that begins to reward itself with progress and the satisfaction of diligence practice, we become liberated from doubt and choice. When the action becomes automatic, the resolve becomes a reflex, then it doesn’t feel like effort. It doesn’t feel like work. When you spend day after day deciding whether or not to start, or what time, or how, or with you - you become crippled by every question. So decide now. Tell your loved ones to elevate your accountability. Make it damn near impossible to avoid. Try to connect it with an existing habit or behaviour to improve the chances of making it stick.
Silence the barrage of excuses and work, sweat, push, even if it is for only fifteen minutes a day. The joy of it, the resolve, the presence and the practice, will spill over into your other disciplines, the rest of your day, the rest of your life, and you can relish the wonderful ache, the healing and the growth that tells you, you still fight to live.