The Strength Training Angle:

What the fuck does that have to do with anything?

"STRENGTH TRAINING HAS LESS TO DO WITH TRAINING STRENGTH THAN IT HAS TO DO WITH GENERAL SELF MASTERY AND EXPRESSING DEFIANCE AGAINST THE UNIVERSE IN THE MOST STRAIGHTFORWARD MANNER POSSIBLE"
- George Clooney

So there's gonna be a lot of content on this blog regarding strength training. This isn't a strength training blog any more than life in general is a strength training blog. 

Here's the explanation, which will blow your mind right out the back of your skull and definitely cost you your security deposit. 

Strength training is a process involving development and progression, like practicing the guitar, dialing in an accurate jump shot, or learning a new language. It is a skill just like those things, in that it has to be practiced, responds to repetition, and involves a considerable neurological component. However its usefulness, importance, and fundamental simplicity makes it the MOST IMPORTANT AND REWARDING SKILL/CAPACITY TO DEVELOP, among the practically infinite kaleidoscope of choices out there. Gravity is everywhere, movement is elemental, and health is imperative. 

Strength is for everybody. It is the physical equivalent to IQ. You can get scary strong without getting "bulky" (an irrational fear anyway), just like you can get educated without turning into a complete dork. Strength is elemental, a huge part of your interaction with the universe, and an integral part of your physical presence and being. Training strength - anaerobic exercise, anything from sprinting to lifting to press handstands - makes you healthy and makes you look good naked. It's the only way to actually, effectively 'tone' and get 'in shape'. It will improve you in ways that have almost nothing to do with strength training. Everything else is indirect and inefficient. Everything. We're not talking about exercising. We're transcending that shit. You need a goal, a plan, and an execution. That is training. That is flying in the face of disorder and entropy. Had to tie it into the theme, there ya go. 

I'm gonna make an unpopular but 1000% true statement and say that unless you already are enthusiastically engaging in and studying the quest for strength, then most if not all of what you know of physical activity is misinformation with deceptively limited applications, and you have a great deal to learn and massive room for improvement. The reason I'm sure that's an unpopular type of statement is because 'telling people things' is unpopular, even when they don't know those things and could benefit from knowing them. This is in turn because we live in an inefficiently passive-aggressive society, and people are by and large terrified of constructive confrontation, new things, and challenges. Whatever. That's why things like bodybuilding magazine programs, marathon training, yoga, etc. are attractive - they're pop culture, processed for group participation and mass consumption, and that would be fine if people didn't think they delivered results that they don't. They all ignore strength (or any) progression and therefore are inefficient. Marathons are easy. Sure they are exhausting, but training? You just run, a lot. There is no thought required, no planning except to download a template and follow it, and it will work for you because there is a huge margin for error, because cardiovascular fitness is quick and easy to achieve in a linear, uninterrupted fashion. Just as marathons develop impractical levels of endurance useless anywhere else, Yoga is stretching marketed as something more. You are LITERALLY just going through the motions. Get your mat and your lululemons and you're good to go. Yoga is great, but it's stretching and breathing, and that's it, unless you want to start working handstands, in which case you find yourself in the strength universe. Congrats. Following a bullshit "bodybuilding" template and housing $256.77 worth of supplements per week (DARK RAGE BRO HOW YOU FEEL) is non-threatening - it's all laid out for a strapping young lad in a nice package. Legit bodybuilders themselves however in a way most purely embody (pun?) what I'm getting at here. Crossfit? One of the best things to ever happen to physical culture, yes, but without a huge dose of expertise and discretion, it's a classic case of cultish group behavior and goofballery - the very model is the 'unknown and unknowable', aka chaos, aka disorder, aka no progression. The best Crossfit competitors ALL train strength specifically, and that is the core of their success in the activity. Planet Fatness Fitness is running an unstoppable business model, because it relies and capitalizes on the woeful lack of commitment/discipline and fear of challenge in the average person. They give out fucking tootsie rolls son. Pizza. That is a business that does VERY well. Think about that. In essence they actively work to destroy whatever is presumably achieved, before you even walk out the door. Disorder. Entropy. Chaos. 

ALL OF THE ABOVE DEFERS TO CHAOS, despite its packaging. That's why I'm talking shit. Going with the flow is chaos. There is certainly a time and place for letting things be and being at peace, for acceptance and relaxation, but training the body, striving for the improvement and mastery of one half of your existence (according to Descartes at least) is NOT the place for letting it be and chilling out. Planning, programming, striving, logging data, controlling stimulus, failing and reflecting, adapting, this is the machinery of strength training and these are things of ORDER. 

All of the 'chaos' activities will admittedly result in deceptive rapid improvements in general physical development - if you start out completely malnourished and sedentary (except marathons, which just make you skinny fat and destroy your knees from the outset and then give you a smug bumper sticker you can boast as you ironically drive distances on average shorter than 26.2 miles). But these activities will quickly stop delivering improvement in any capacity except the auxiliary one they misguidedly target, and even then decreasingly so over time. That's the principle of diminishing returns. It's the tendency toward disorder and regression. It's ENTROPY. Strength training KNOWS THIS and actively opposes this, it plans for this and adapts. It is the very opposition of stagnation and chaos. THAT is why it is so elemental and why STRENGTH TRAINING HAS LESS TO DO WITH TRAINING STRENGTH THAN IT HAS TO DO WITH GENERAL SELF MASTERY AND EXPRESSING DEFIANCE AGAINST THE UNIVERSE IN THE MOST STRAIGHTFORWARD MANNER POSSIBLE.

Simple physical strength facilitates everything and hurts nothing. A well-rounded strength trainee who has taken time to develop everything necessary to get strong (including mobility and body awareness most importantly) will be a better runner, a better yogi, a better squash player, a better furniture mover, a better lover, a better DJ, a better oxford comma, etc. Yoga is cool. Yoga is probably good for you. But people who train strength call that flexibility. It's a side dish. Yoga is a side dish. Strength training is an omelet, a steak, a burrito. Not a fucking side dish.

Questing for strength, and successfully surmounting its inherent difficulties, requires the development and cultivation of... 
The following qualities:
- patience
- self control/discipline
- humility
- commitment 

The following skills:

- goal setting, planning, and execution
- critical thinking
- troubleshooting, problem solving, adaptation
- experimentation and data collection/analysis
The following knowledge bases:
- nutrition and all its neurosis-inspiring facets
- simple machines, levers, biomechanics
- immune function, physical recovery, metabolic processes
- musculoskeletal anatomy, basic maintenance of the body and diagnostic ability

(also how to quickly perform addition in increments of 10,25,35, and 45, a life advantage you can't even quantify)

So there's the essay. Strength IS. You see a lot of this waxing philosophical shit in strength people. 

Odds are if you're here and read this far, you're a better choice of audience than my girlfriend.