Can You Be Stirred

The strength training world is ultimately an attempt to look for or become a “tough guy.” It is however unfortunate that most of the training done really isn’t tough. Also much of the attitude employed by mainstream training has nothing to do with building toughness. However if you’re reading this newsletter you’ve probably moved to the dark side of the training world. Your passion for strength has driven you into some maniacal workouts. You think Darth Vader wears a little too much pastel. But being tough is not about whether you train or don’t. It’s about staying the course regardless of what it is. Standing up for others who can’t. Having the courage to suffer to accomplish your goals, because make no mistake about it, if you intend to be the physically best you can be some of the training you do is going to be downright unpleasant.

Seeking pain isn’t the point of either training or being tough. It’s just a natural product of the environment of hard training. Productivity is what we should be seeking. In all this quest for being tough guys, much of the time I think we miss the point, and it can be overwhelming to the rest of your life. A passage in the bible says, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?” In our discussion, what does it profit a man to be the biggest, strongest hombre he can be if he acts as if there is iron in his brain as well? Or if he is so caught up in the tough guy act in the rest of his life that he can’t be stirred to powerful emotion because he’s just too cool or too surrounded by the pursuit of toughness in his own life that he can’t be tender when the time calls for it. Rough and tough is great, but there are times when you just can’t be that way.

In my opinion it’s more toughness and more strength to allow yourself to be tender with the ones you love than it is to act like the Terminator all of the time. You should be stirred by a powerful song, buy the look in your child’s eyes, by love for your family. There’s no reason not to be both. A crunchy outer shell with a soft-gooey inside…. Wait that’s an M&M commercial, sorry.

A man with a breadth of intellectual knowledge and the depth of emotional feeling, intense passion for life and love, an unshakeable spiritual faith and an external physical ability to rival a tank. The fact is, most of the truly “tough” guys I know all fit into these categories. Because in the long term you are driven by your emotional connection to life and training. Emotional content builds success and strength in life. Pour that emotion into your training and make yourself incredibly physically tough, but be the man you need to be in the rest of your areas of life as well.

Do you want to know how to get the physically toughest you can be? Pick up Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts. Add the knowledge in that book to passion for physical excellence and you’ll be shocked at the incredible gains in strength and endurance you’ll achieve. Be part of the new era of strength.

http://strongerman.com/martial_arts.html