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With our archives now 3,500+ articles deep, we\u2019ve decided to republish a classic piece each Friday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems from the past. This article was originally published in August 2014.<\/em><\/p>\n When I first started the Art of Manliness, I didn\u2019t put too much stock in physical strength as an important component of manhood. Strength of character, sure, but physical strength was more of a secondary pursuit. Maybe it was because I started AoM partly to get away from the overdone fetishization of getting ripped that was (and is) promoted by other men\u2019s magazines. Maybe it was because I wasn\u2019t in shape myself at the time. (We often construct our definition of manhood in accordance with that which describes ourselves best, and I\u2019m certainly not immune to this temptation!) I had played football in high school, but after going to college, my workouts became halfhearted and sporadic. This was especially true in law school — between trying to keep up my grades and running a fledgling blog, exercise just wasn\u2019t a top priority.<\/p>\n Over the last couple years, however, working out, and lifting weights in particular, has become a fundamental part of my life. It started with my 90-day testosterone experiment<\/a>; I started exercising regularly to see what effect it would have on my T levels. When the official experiment ended, the habit stuck. I went from being fairly indifferent to exercise, to looking forward to my workouts as my favorite part of the day. And I found that building my body changed the way I felt and carried myself as a man.<\/p>\n At the same time, my research into the core of masculinity<\/a> gave me a theoretical understanding of the role of strength in the ancient, universal code of manhood. This research convinced me that strength forms the nucleus of manliness, as it truly makes all the other manly virtues possible.<\/p>\n Over time then, the importance of strength-building to a man\u2019s virility sunk into both my mind and my bones. Strength may not seem very necessary in today\u2019s world where most men sit behind desks at work all day. But being strong is never a disadvantage, and it is frequently quite beneficial on a variety of fronts. Most importantly, strength forms the backbone of the code of manhood. Today I\u2019d like to talk about why.<\/p>\n If the Protector role represents the core of masculinity<\/a>, then physical strength forms its very nucleus. It\u2019s the fundamental factor as to whether a man can hold his own in a fight \u2013 whether he can push back when pushed. It\u2019s thus central to how humans viscerally judge a man\u2019s manliness. You can call it stupid or silly or archaic, but it all goes back to the way we evaluate men \u2014 could they keep the perimeter in a crisis<\/a>? Though we now live in a comfortable time of peace, that hasn\u2019t changed the fact that men and women alike (even the most progressive of them) find men who appear physically strong and fit more respectable, authoritative, attractive — and manly<\/em> — than men who aren\u2019t. Additionally, lifting boosts your testosterone, which is the lifeblood of masculinity. Thus, if you want to feel more like a man<\/a> (and be treated like one), you should seek to build your body.<\/p>\n Obesity kills. Exercising and raising your T (which lifting weights does) keeps your body healthy and combats depression<\/a>. Need I say more?<\/p>\n Even in our safe, suburban society, strength still comes in handy. I want to know that I\u2019m strong enough to carry someone<\/a> out of a burning home to safety (as well as being able to save my own life in an emergency<\/a>); I want the strength to lift heavy bags of mulch when I\u2019m working around my house; I want to be able to put a would-be attacker on the ground.<\/p>\n In a way, strength can be classified as an antifragility-increasing redundancy<\/a>: most of the time we can rely on our tech and tools to get the job done for us, but you never know when you\u2019re going to need to get down in the dirt, and when you do, you\u2019ll be glad to be able to call upon your bodily strength. When everything else gets stripped away, what you\u2019ve got left is the most basic of struggles — muscle versus nature and muscle versus muscle.<\/p>\n Too often we think of strength-building as something for shallow cads and dumb bros. We set up a false dichotomy between virtue and strength, brains and brawn.<\/p>\n Yet many great men in history<\/a>, including philosophers, statesman, and writers, rejected this phony divide, and emphasized the importance of developing body, mind, and soul. They understood that without a strong body, a man will never be able to develop his other virtues to their highest potential.<\/p>\n You may be familiar with Theodore Roosevelt\u2019s conviction of this truth — how he transformed a weak, sickly boyhood into a strong and virile manhood after his father declared to him<\/a>: \u201cTheodore, you have the mind, but you have not the body, and without the help of the body, the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body.\u201d TR answered, \u201cI will make my body!\u201d and spent the rest of his life doing so, vigorously boxing, wrestling, hiking, swimming, and hunting until his death. What you may not know, is that another of history\u2019s most eminent men, Winston Churchill, had an almost identical story. His biographer, William Manchester<\/a>, details his transformation:<\/p>\n Sickly, an uncoordinated weakling with the pale fragile hands of a girl, speaking with a lisp and a slight stutter, he had been at the mercy of bullies. They beat him, ridiculed him, and pelted him with cricket balls. Trembling and humiliated, he hid in a nearby woods. This was hardly the stuff of which gladiators are made. His only weapons were an unconquerable will and an incipient sense of immortality . . .<\/p>\n Beginning at the age of seven, Churchill deliberately set out to change his nature, to prove that biology need not be destiny. Anthony Storr, the English psychiatrist and author of Human Aggression<\/em>, concludes that he \u2018was, to a marked extent, forcing himself to go against his own inner nature.\u2019 As a Victorian, Churchill believed he could be master of his fate, and that faith sustained him, but everything we have learned about human motivation since then underscores the immensity of his undertaking. W. H. Sheldon has delineated three dominant physiques, each with its concomitant personality traits. Of the three\u2014ectomorphic (slight), mesomorphic (muscular), and endomorphic (fat)\u2014Churchill clearly fell in the third category. His head was ponderous, his limbs small, his belly tumescent, his chest puny. His skin was so sensitive that he broke into a rash unless he slept naked at night between silk sheets. By day he could wear only silk underwear against his skin. Endomorphs are characteristically lazy, calculating, easygoing, and predictable. Churchill was none of these. He altered his emotional constitution to that of an athlete, projecting the image of a valiant, indomitable bulldog.<\/p>\n At times along the way he despaired. In 1893 he wrote, \u2018I am cursed with so feeble a body, that I can hardly support the fatigues of the day.\u2019 Yet he was determined to prove just as hardy as any mesomorph. In his teens he nearly killed himself while leaping from a bridge during a game of tag; he pitched down almost thirty feet and lay unconscious for three days. He fell again steeplechasing at Aldershot, and yet again when disembarking at Bombay, where he permanently injured a shoulder; for the rest of his active life he played polo, off and on, with his arm bound to his side. As a child he caught pneumonia. He suffered from chest ailments the rest of his life. He was allergic to anesthetics and periodically erupted in boils. Nevertheless, he refused to yield to human frailty. In his inner world there was no room for concessions to weakness. He never complained of fatigue. In his seventieth year he flew to councils of war overseas sprawled across a tick mattress on the floor of an unheated World War II bomber . . . He will be remembered as freedom\u2019s champion in its darkest hour, but he will be cherished as a man.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Churchill and TR understood that if they wanted to develop their minds to their peak excellence, and do something significant on the world stage, they could not spend their lives curled up in bed reading stacks of books. Instead, they would need the energy to travel the world and expand not only their mental horizons, but their physical ones too — to test their moral convictions and cognitive powers in the real life crucible of leadership. A strong body would take them where they needed to be, and help them perform nobly in the field. Without physical strength, they could never have achieved, or become, all that they did.<\/p>\n Thus, if you\u2019re interested in developing to your highest potential, you would do well to follow in these great men\u2019s footsteps, and seek what the ancients extolled as mens sana in corpore sano<\/em>: a sound mind in a sound body.<\/p>\n In addition to offering us literal energy to tackle our pursuits, strength-building also imparts many metaphorical lessons as well. The pain and dedication required to work out regularly teaches you about discipline, resilience, and humility, among other things. In his must-read essay, \u201cThe Iron<\/a>,\u201d musician and artist Henry Rollins sums up the power that lifting weights can have in forging a man\u2019s character:<\/p>\n It took me years to fully appreciate the value of the lessons I have learned from the Iron. I used to think that it was my adversary, that I was trying to lift that which does not want to be lifted. I was wrong. When the Iron doesn’t want to come off the mat, it’s the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn’t teach you anything. That’s the way the Iron talks to you. It tells you that the material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against will always work against you.<\/p>\n It wasn’t until my late twenties that I learned that by working out I had given myself a great gift. I learned that nothing good comes without work and a certain amount of pain<\/strong>. When I finish a set that leaves me shaking, I know more about myself. When something gets bad, I know it can’t be as bad as that workout.<\/p>\n I used to fight the pain, but recently this became clear to me: pain is not my enemy; it is my call to greatness. But when dealing with the Iron, one must be careful to interpret the pain correctly. Most injuries involving the Iron come from ego. I once spent a few weeks lifting weight that my body wasn’t ready for and spent a few months not picking up anything heavier than a fork. Try to lift what you’re not prepared to and the Iron will teach you a little lesson in restraint and self-control.<\/p>\n I have never met a truly strong person who didn’t have self-respect. I think a lot of inwardly and outwardly directed contempt passes itself off as self-respect: the idea of raising yourself by stepping on someone’s shoulders instead of doing it yourself. When I see guys working out for cosmetic reasons, I see vanity exposing them in the worst way, as cartoon characters, billboards for imbalance and insecurity. Strength reveals itself through character<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Not only does strength-building develop one\u2019s character and virtue, it provides the necessary backbone \u2013 the proper framework \u2013 on which to build our moral values. The cloak of virtue hangs very awkwardly on a man without fire and fight; it droops and sags when draped across a structure that lacks strength and firmness. We all know amiable men who are sickly thin or grossly overweight, who look like they\u2019d burst into tears if a bully broke their walking stick and would get winded mounting a flight of stairs. These mealy men profess to be nice guys, perfect gentlemen, but we don\u2019t respect them as men, or gentlemen either. They\u2019re good men, but not good at being men<\/a>.<\/p>\n The reason we may like <\/em>a nice but feeble man, but not think of him as manly<\/em>, is because his claim to virtue is weak if he doesn\u2019t have the virile fortitude and strength to back it up when challenged. What good are intellectual achievements and moral principles, if those who hold and cultivate them are subdued by those who care nothing for these higher values? It\u2019s important to have principles, but are you prepared to fight <\/em>for your principles? Likewise, can you truly say you\u2019re a \u201cgood family man\u201d if you could easily be outmuscled by a bad guy trying to get at your wife and kids?<\/p>\n As TR put it:<\/p>\n I like to have the man who as a citizen feels, when a wrong is done to the community by any one, when there is an exhibition of corruption or betrayal of trust, or demagogy or violence, or brutality, not that he is shocked and horrified and would like to go home; but I want to have him feel the determination to put the wrong-doer down, to make the man who does wrong aware that the decent man is not only his superior in decency, but his superior in strength<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Before modernity, a man had to be physically strong in order to survive and reproduce. Whether battling the elements or other men, our ancestors had to rely only on their cunning and physical strength to come off the conqueror. The men who tried to prove themselves in battles or hunts, dared to do great things, and had the physical strength to surmount any obstacle were the ones who were able to father children and pass on their genes. The ones who did not take the gamble, or did not have the strength and prowess of their peers, died childless, and their hapless genes died with them.<\/p>\n What this means is that we are all descended from the strongest, fastest, smartest, bravest men of the past — the world\u2019s alpha males. It is no stretch to conclude (as Dr. Roy Baumeister does in Is There Anything Good About Men?<\/em><\/a>) that the blood of greatness runs through our veins.<\/p>\n So, what are you doing with that genetic inheritance?<\/p>\n Playing video games?<\/p>\n Sitting all day while stuffing your face with taquitos?<\/p>\n In \u201cTrain for Honor,\u201d an essay included in the book Sky Without Eagles<\/em><\/a>, writer Jack Donovan argues that we shame our manly forebearers by squandering the legacy of physical strength they\u2019ve left in our genes. \u201cImagine the disgust and contempt our ancestors would have for us all if they lined up modern men on the street,\u201d writes Donovan.<\/p>\n When we train to be physically strong, we show reverence and honor for the men who came before us that had <\/em>to be physically strong so that we might exist and enjoy the comforts we have today. Performing a deadlift<\/a> is like lighting a votive candle for our manly ancestors.<\/p>\n Finally, besides the practical and character-building benefits that accrue to the physically strong, it just feels awesome knowing you can hoist a lot of weight off the ground. The first time I deadlifted<\/a> 450 lbs and saw the bar bending in the mirror, I felt like a beast. I let out a primal shout of achievement and carried that feeling with me the rest of the week.<\/p>\n Doing what your body is meant for, what it evolved for, is an incredible feeling. And to go your whole life without experiencing this feeling, at its peak, is a great shame. This is a truth that even Socrates preached way back in ancient Greece. When the philosopher saw a young man in poor physical condition, he admonished him by saying: \u201cIt is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit.\u201d<\/p>\nWhy Every Man Should Be Strong<\/span><\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nPhysical strength constitutes one of the few and most significant differences between men and women.<\/h3>\n
Building strength boosts your physical and mental health.<\/h3>\n
Physical strength is practical and prepares you for any exigency.<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nPhysical strength fosters well-rounded excellence and a life of full flourishing.<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nBuilding physical strength teaches life lessons.<\/h3>\n
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Strength acts as the backbone to our virtue.<\/h3>\n
Strength secures our virtue onto us.<\/h3>\n
Strength-building honors your ancestors.<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nStrength-building simply feels awesome, and manly . . . and awesomely manly.<\/h3>\n
What Does It Mean to Be Strong?<\/span><\/h3>\n
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