Pyrrhic Success

Greetings Friends,

Alright class here is our lesson for the day. Is everyone familiar with the term “Pyrrhic Victory?” No? Let me elaborate. It is a term stretching back to the ancient Greeks that refers to winning a battle, but and this is a big but, the price of winning that battle is so high that it may not have been worth it. If you take your whole army out to fight just a portion of your enemie’s army and you win the battlefield for the day, but it costs you all your troops and the enemy still has another 50,000 troops around the corner waiting to fight another day then it probably wasn’t worth the fact that you lost the war just to win that one day.

Many of the things that we consider success in today’s world can be achieved, but if you are not careful achieving that success will have pyrrhic costs. More over, sustaining that success over any significant period of time may become pyrrhically impossible. Let me give a quick physical example.

Now I can exercise or you… or anyone else can workout probably three total hours a week and can eat a moderate whole food diet that still leaves room for enjoyment, practicality and building of health. In that three hours I can gain world-class strength as well as world-class fitness. I can build the ability to perform multiple strongman stunts or compete in any number of strength sports or be a devastatingly powerful and enduring martial artist or a phenomenal athlete. Plus I can have the time to actually run a business, take care of family, build my mind and spiritual life, walk the dog, read a book, watch a movie and generally manage a busy life quite successfully and happily. I can maintain this type of schedule basically indefinitely. OR I can workout six to seven days a week, three or more hours per day and I can eat and extremely strict, every two hours, very little enjoyment, but very effective cosmetic application diet. I may or may not gain the other physical qualities of strength, endurance, athletic ability, etc. I probably will not be able to maintain this for any significant period of time if I’m working out with any intensity. That is if I wish to stay married, employed, maintain any sense of sanity, family relationships, ever spend time with the kids, actually be able to pay for a mortgage and car, not have to eat cat food, etc.

The one victory you might achieve from adopting that extreme lifestyle would be that you probably would drop enough body fat to look “ripped.” You may very well end up weak as pond water, injured and over-trained with relatively permanent joint and muscle damage, not to mention one-dimensional conversational and mental skills. Also you will only maintain this for a short period of time unless it is how you make your living which will constitute you into less than 1% of the world, most of that 1% not actually making a living from that.

In the former example you may not end up looking as ripped. Depending on how you concentrate the rest of the exercise, diet and life you may get leaner. Depending on genetics you may actually get ripped, that however is just a look, not a function. You will however if you structure the routine right, gain victory on many fronts without paying an unsustainable and unreasonable cost. This physical example has easy and clearly demonstrated victories, but the principle behind this applies to every other area of life.

Is working 100 hours a week for years on end missing the rest of what life’s about to make some extra money worth the cost? Is selling your soul to please other people worth the temporary gains it might get you? The truth is that we all know that the answer is no. But if you’re not living consciously and defining success, you may be paying those prices and not realizing it.

Everybody goes through times where they pay the price. Working 100 hours or depriving yourself or putting out the effort that’s above and beyond gut busting and if you’re ever going to be a stellar success, some of those things are unavoidable. However if you aren’t holding the reigns to your own wagon and looking at the big picture of those costs in your life then you never get to the real side of lasting victory.

Think about it.


I don’t believe in giving you crappy training information just to waste your time. I believe in giving you unilaterally successful and flexible training information that you can easily put together to bring you to your ultimate physical goals. If you want the most complete and effective training information anywhere, get Twisted Conditioning I and II. Find them at Strongerman Products