Do You Even Lift?

Fitness and the Agentic Man

Bybon, son of Phola, has lifted me over his head with one hand

• Ancient Greek Inscription on a large rock

The Barbell is one of the most revolutionary tools ever created. From the cruder forms in the nineteenth century to its modern form in the world of bodybuilding less than a century ago, the simple, long, and durable steel bar is now a staple of every serious sports program. With the ability to add or subtract iron weights to either side in a precise, scientific way, training was revolutionized, opening a portal to unseen potential.

The practice of weightlifting has been around since antiquity, with Roman soldiers, Greek athletes, and Egyptian nobility understanding instinctually the benefits of being strong, and how to attain it. Where before they lifted rocks of varying weights, modern times allows for a far more methodical approach, translatable to any place from the most expensive resort to the comfort of home. It's no coincidence that world records continually got shattered as they entered the mainstream. With the addition of modern nutrition science, this has created the means for a man to stay strong, healthy, and competitive into middle age, with its benefits seen long into his twilight years.

Soon after the barbell's ascent, many more fitness machines were born, promising a more fine-tuned approach than simply lifting heavy objects up and down like a brute. The Nautilus system promised an even more robust experience, using rods in an elaborate machine to keep tension consistent through one's exercise. Specialized machines promised to work specific muscle groups in a more surgical way, eschewing the big, compound lifts of free weights. While those may have had a reasonable case back in the day, the dust has settled, and the barbell still reigns supreme.

It would seem strange that with all our understanding of physiology and body mechanics that a single piece of equipment, doing only a few major compound exercises, gives its users strength gains that complicated protocols, expensive machines, and scientific studies have failed to do. It's a perfect piece of technology, mixing scientific precision with human effort that strengthens, disciplines, and heals the user. It's not rare for a beginner to double his strength in the span of six months, and with a proper diet completely transform his body. The internet is full of stories of people with a multitude of chronic issues with pain, diabetes, or other metabolic issues finding their lives transformed not be physical therapists with expensive therapies or prescriptions but putting heavy weight on their shoulders.

Probably its strongest feature is universality. Playing football in a small rural town, out summer days were spent in a dank, musty weight room littered with old, rusted plates. Angry, sweating young men would spend their hours pounding more weight on, grunting in effort, and screaming in success or defeat. The barbell never lied about how strong we were. The sweat and pain separated those who would be on the field, both ways, to those who would sit on the bench. The ones who avoided the barbells for the other machines showed their lack of commitment in doing hard things, and the ones who injured themselves from letting their ego try to pull too many pounds got a hard lesson. The grime, mildew, and musk of the old weight rooms still brings me nostalgia. Before the University I attended updated their fitness facilities into essentially spas, there was the same dark, dank back room where the free weights hid, a gloriously intimidating atmosphere that kept the cardio guys away.

In later times, as working out in the Temple of Iron went from a working-class activity to the upper classes, you now had swanky, state of the art gyms with staff on demand, a coffee bar, and other amenities. Plenty of personal trainers were happy to charge 50 dollars an hour to watch you work out and give you a needlessly complicated protocol.

Whether in a crammed High School weight room or in a rich man's resort, the barbell didn't care. Either you could lift it or you couldn't. I knew doctors who would pull some serious weight alongside the tradesmen. Some were rough around the edges with tattoos all over their body, others clean cut. In my late twenties my gym was a haven for semi-pro powerlifters in the area, with posted signs everywhere telling patrons not to roid up in the locker room. Seeing some of the guys many did so at home though. While you would think this would be a weird mix of elitism and brutishness, they were the chilliest people I ever met. Whether you were deadlifting a single plate or five, they didn't care, except maybe to compliment the regulars on their progress. Everyone failed under the barbell at some point, and everyone had proper humility from the experience.

Marketing scams masquerading as gyms, such as Planet Fitness, have made it their entire strategy to denigrate gym culture as a bunch of low-status neanderthals. Their famous "lunk alarm", something that got pulled often in my short stay in that gym, tries to drive the point home that too much effort is a bad thing, that you need to be chill and relax, that you don't need heavy free weights. Just workout for a little bit on the leg extensions and have a bagel as a reward for your work. No worries man, we don't judge here. Like everything in modern society, the only people who were judging were the "no judgement people", and the only people serious about fitness are the ones not allowed in their gym. Of course, The Planet Fitness model is based off of charging people who never show up ten bucks a month, so it is reasonable why they would ban people who would actually use it. If there was ever an example of late-stage capitalism I hear progressives wail on about, it's that.

One of the most striking evolutions of political thought is how normatively non-political items became coded. The right wing embraced gym culture though never deliberately specifying it as an intrinsically right-wing thing. There was just the understanding that a strong man was a useful man, that a man who could follow a protocol, change his life for a goal, and follow through long-term was a man with self-discipline. Memes with Socrates and his student complimenting each other on their physiques became part of an esoteric and amusing subculture, and everyone knows about the guy who lifted the heavy rock. The left, in reactionary fashion, first tried to find left-wing gym guys, with hilarious results, followed by trying to code gym goers as fascist for being distinctively male and enamored with aesthetics.

This will never fail to crack me up.

It's silly, of course. There is nothing wrong about being in good physical shape, and just a decade ago there were fitness guys of all political stripes. Now, outside of a few e-celebs like Hasan “I’m going to kill you” Piker, it seems to be falling to the wayside. There's also nothing that makes barbell training an exclusively male thing. As much as women are afraid of getting bulky, hormones ensure that nothing like that will happen.

There's something around weightlifting that became antithetical to the progressive project. The consumption of protein could be seen as a culprit, with meat and dairy being the best source of nutrition for a man wanting to get big. There are still remnants of the instinct that weightlifting is low-status and not as refined as other athletic pursuits like triathlons. There's a bias in progressive circles for heavy cardio, though they are increasingly eschewing any talk of fitness at all. Overall though, the biggest reason for this progressive revulsion is something that makes a man willing to pursue bodily greatness outside the realm of fitness. The barbell gives an avenue to flex the most powerful ability of all, Agency.

Agentic Man

A primary similarity between the elite of the professional class, and the underclass that are its patrons, is the sense of independence. Anyone who has worked in the managerial class knows the bureaucratic structure is designed to ensure no cog in the machine can work without the consensus of the group. They go through a long education process, a process with the well-known open secret it does not confer skills for the majority of fields. And the ones that do educate real skills could largely be done through self-study. It does select for the ability for long, monotonous work though. It also shows proper compliance to established authorities, as they do the proper extra-curriculars, take the right tests, and write the right essays to work their way up the approval ladder. Contrary to the brutality of college in previous eras, it's years of largely low-effort work, usually not overly intellectually taxing once you get past the weed-out classes, mostly becoming an exercise in accepting the tedious grind. The harsh all-nighters are a thing of the past unless the student was shockingly lazy the entire semester. There's a subservience and acquiescence that envelops the entire project, far different than the ideal of these institutions fostering learning for their own sake.

Anyone who works in the underclass understands the stifling sense of helplessness in those who await their EBT transfers, stuck in a dilapidated home they have no knowledge, or intention, of maintaining. Usually they've been primed from a young age, coming in and out of incarceration where everything was decided for them. The dependence of the underclass to the largesse of the bureaucracy is a feature, along with their helplessness, and in return they riot on demand to terrify the enemies of the elite class.

Compare this to weightlifting culture and the difference is stark. In the gym, time spent means nothing. Even the amount of sweat that leaves one's body doesn't mean anything. What matters is whether the weight rises from the abyss through one's force of will. A guy with fuckarounditis pacing needlessly for hours through the gym who can't keep with a single incremental program loses to the guy who does methodical, focused work for a few hours a week. The guy doing dozens of sets on a machine to "get a good burn" without a plan finds his body not gaining any muscle or power. The guy with a short, intense, focused workouts will make strength gains week after week. The guy unwilling to eat well reaches a plateau, and the guy who chooses to eat too much gets rewarded by becoming a lardass instead of strong.

Contrary to the elitist academic grind, training time is far shorter, but infinitely more intense, where instead of one's effort spread to many disparate activities, there are only a few motions necessary, but imperative to do well. There's a reason everyone wants to skip leg day, even excellent athletes.

It's the willingness to work in hard, short bursts that show through motivation and perseverance one can conquer. Ultimately, you alone are responsible for how hard to push, when to back down, and what your goals are. There's no committee to make the decision for you. The barbell doesn't require a manager to give you a good performance review. The lift is the review, every single time, and the steel bar is the harshest judge of all.

Agentic Signaling

You may not like it, but this is what Elite Human Capital looks like.

As the age of credentialism comes to a close, we have to ascertain what should replace it. If institutions are no longer credible to separate the wheat from the chaff, there needs to be a new model. In the coming era, there's going to be more subjective criteria to decide who has potential. While the ability to deadlift two times one's body weight may not show a man's ability to lead, it does show grit and discipline that translates to other tasks. Requiring every member of congress to deadlift their body weight before voting would likely make our legislators far more effective, but it's not a feasible solution.

It’s not too much of a simplification to say that the modern political divide can be divided into those who demand more agency, and those who want everything programmed for them. The disagreeable, the types who eschew unnecessary hoops, the ones who value truth over harmony, have been maligned and mistreated in the managerial age. They don’t easily fit into an org chart, each bringing a unique flavor and skills to an organization. Coaches for ages have understood how to refine this sort of raw talent and build a champion. Every player knows a coach who demanded the best out of both his players and himself, and ones who never took responsibility for his own mistakes and compensates by yelling at his players.

What is need, more than everything, is the ability to scout this raw talent. It may be a nerd who programs a killer Hearts of Iron mod at 16. It could be a guy who can take apart an engine blindfolded. It could be a man with such inspirational oratory he makes you want to run through a wall. Whatever it is, the existing system is not finding those whose skills don’t easily translate to a resume. There are millions falling through the cracks, a portion of which could change the world if given the right opportunity. Contrary to espousing making life easier, every great movement has begun by fostering a mindset of rewarding grit and determination, with failures along the way not only accepted but expected. Ours is no different.

We need to stop thinking of ourselves as thinkers, analysts, political dissidents, etc. and see ourselves as scouts, headhunters, and coaches, creating an unstoppable team with a legacy that continues far after we turn in our uniforms. Such tasks are for tough men, agentic men who get under that barbell, both physical and metaphorical, day after day.

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