On Fitness

Welcome back to the new thing. My name is David Barnum with me as always. This is my good friend Alex Preyor, Harry Ochs. I'm feeling ripped, swole, jacked.

I am ready to bench press my thoughts, my wisdom through the stratosphere and into your minds. Dear listeners, how are you doing? I'm well, and I can't wait to re-renicate choke my good friend Greg Breyer. How are you doing Greg?

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't threaten me with a good time. You're doing great. Greg, remember speaking, so we're doing an episode on Finis.

Greg, right when we were going to MSU and David reached out to a wrestling coach or something like that. Yes. I was talking all this, like I'm going to fight you, Greg. I remember.

And you were like, oh, okay, how do you hope? And then he just doesn't show. Yeah. What kind of nonsense is this?

Some kind of Conor McGregor, like hype, talking yourself up. Come on, David, what's the answer? This will be our first Patreon, Greg versus David, in a cage back. I'll be able to be holding up the round cards.

I know punching. No punching. I mean, no, why would you want to punch your friend? All right, what about you?

What do you want to choke him out? Yeah. I wouldn't actually choke him out. He'd snap my arm if he was in position.

You tapped first. I wanted to see like a real fight. But the story I wanted to tell, so this episode is about what we want to say. It's about physical fitness.

Is that how we phrase it? Excellence of body and excellence of soul. A6. Yeah.

Sound body. Sound mind and sound body. Yeah. And Sana in corporate, Sana.

I want to tell a story. You were near my Corpo. You guys kind of rants about something really quick. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And then I went on my sugar daddy. And then I went on my sugar daddy. And then I went on my sugar daddy.

And then I went on my sugar daddy. Well, maybe I'll bring up the... Maybe I'll bring up the... I'm going to do it for two years.

I enjoy it. And I'm going to actually Greg. I had an hour half long wrestling class. So they were extremely difficult for me.

But so on Instagram, I follow all these sujitsu guys. And wrestlers and wrestling D1 teams. And so I'm getting targeted, micro-targeted by these advertisers that are invariably these like alphight. It's like, are you an alpha dad?

Hey, you wake up at 3 a.m. And then they say a bunch of other ridiculous things. And then so there's, as you guys know, there's a massive, massive cottage industry. I guess grown out of the cottage stage of mansions.

It's like rules of power. Read this book and we're 12 laws of power and hey, you need to be an alpha and it don't be a f***ing... You know, it's like, that's what they're saying. I know that Liverpool's got me eating like eight testicles a day.

I can't believe you guys like this. That's up from as usual six. So I started thinking, so they're like, you know, the hardest this is going to train your mind. But there are these, you can pay this ex-navy, I mean, this former Navy SEAL and some grifter buddies of his $20,000 to do a simulated buds class that's compressed into three days where they just call you bad names and dunk you in water.

And it's weird, right? And then I was thinking, a lot of these guys, they're litmus tests for being an alpha. All these has to do with the body. It always say, and I understand that.

But I would love to see them because when you start thinking of an alpha test in terms of wisdom, if she comes out to something up a picture of Shouse, it becomes insanely more difficult. So I think if I were to tell you, all right, Greg, you're going to train for the next year and a half. You follow superior to periodization with listing. I can, you know, all things being equal, map that you're going to be an XYZ place with your bench press and your deadlift and your squatting and say, great, David, I can see my progress.

That's real progress, right? But if I were to say, I'm going to give you this book, Plato's Republic, that the why is this people that have ever lived spend their entire lives reading? And then you still might not understand it. Like, that to me is an insanely more difficult task.

But whenever we had these alpha guys on Instagram, because of course you can't be like, hey, assholes, you're going to read the Republic, come to Alex's basement, we're going to prank you with leather whips until you get it. And I wouldn't sell. Maybe that would sell. Yeah.

I think I had a once a passing conversation with my colleague Paul here and he- The Duke. The Duke. I guess by the time this comes out, we will not be colleagues anymore. I'll resign.

But it's for me. We had a brief thought about opening up a kind of like a men's club, like gym slash like, you know, boxing area. Just get together. Like get together, you know, read books, smoke cigars, have a drink, all the good stuff.

So what are we going to talk about? How are we going to go about this Greg? You had a whole idea. This is a Greg as so or Greg taking the lead.

I like this idea. Right. So I think it is by the way, Greg, my old man or Clark Kent. I always bring this up.

Don't let this nice guy sis out for you. It was Alex's wedding. Okay. We're in Norway raging the fjords.

And everybody's at the end of this district. People are intoxicated. There happens to be a pull up bar as we just know. In the book and Greg says, oh, I can do more pull ups than you, Alex.

He starts doing them. Then Alex starts doing and then you see this like silent fire in Greg's eyes. Like he just couldn't lose. And I thought that was interesting, especially when Greg started cheating and doing these micro pull ups.

And I was kicked me in my junk when I was doing a pull up. I did do. Yeah. I need to do well used in my mind.

So I think there's a lot of good things. I want to do like one of these names. I mean, like, I think we should talk about the virtues of we all try to take care of ourselves. It's very important.

And we'll try to talk about the reasons why and what kinds of things we do. But in a way, David's right. I mean, clearly the things of the mind are superior to the things of the body. And so, I mean, Alex jokingly held up a picture of Strauss and we talked about sort of Navy seals intellectual workouts.

Strauss and notoriously was in terrible shape, took bad, really bad care of himself. Smoked like a chimney had a heart attack when he was relatively young and died and died at 70, what, 74? Yes, I'm sorry. So I mean, like, okay, so the guy we all looked to didn't exactly take care of himself.

And there's no obvious connection between the two, although I'll try and lay out the case that there can be and maybe the best case it should be. But there is a kind of toughness at the heart of the intellectual endeavor that I think physical toughness can prepare you for. But I think that David's right that the intellectual toughness is much worse. Like David said, you can track your progress.

You know, they're going to do this and the other. But this intellectual one, like you read them probably it's not just that like you don't know that you make progress. Like the progress might be you like you're more messed up. You have more quiet.

Like imagine going to the gym being like, oh, now I'm less fit. Fantastic. This is great. And so, and I'll just stress this.

And I don't know, like the other thing I would say is that I think physical education requires a degree of, I don't use this word somewhat loosely, courage. It takes a kind of toughness or courage to make it through tough workouts and to push your body through difficult things. And I think that the same is true of intellectual matters. And I don't just mean like the difficulty of sitting down and memorizing the five principal parts of this verb or something like this or declining nouns or something like that.

What I mean is that really the kinds of things that David was talking about is these texts. They, you know, the risk of overexertion and physical exercises you do damage to your body. And I think that there's a way in which if you don't know what you're getting into intellectually, if you're honest with yourself, you may not realize there may be a threat, an intellectual threat actually in doing these things. I mean, to overstate it, right?

What does he say? Is it the the Phaedrus or the Phaedo that philosophy is learning how to die? The Phaedrus, right? The Phaedrus.

Is the Phaedo where philosophy is learning how to die? Yeah. I mean, that's the one that's about death. That's why I thought it was not that one.

I'm so confused. What do I say? What are we talking about? What are we talking about?

What do you want to jump off in this? Why are we talking about fitness at all? Yeah, I think you're right to see a connection between the two. I mean, Socrates compares virtue to strength.

I mean, I think there's something real about that, that there's a kind of repetitiveness to sort of work, but then there's also a kind of need to adapt, right? There's a kind of a sense of limits, right, that you discover and that's relative to your age and your circumstances, right? There's only so much you can accomplish. And I find that as I exercise and I do things, there's a kind of, I like hiking a lot and hiking for me is a lot like thinking in that, you know, it's, you know, there's logic, right?

So it's like left foot, right foot, right foot, right. Like there's like a systematic part of it. Then there's also the, you have to keep your eyes on the train in front of you and notice its particularity as well. And you get tired and you want to take a break and there's, but you know, there's also this sense that around the corner, there's going to be something interesting, right?

Something unexpected and that's kind of what makes that fun and being path as well, right? Or beating off on the path, whatever you prefer to do. So yeah, anyways, the, I just, I find that depending on the physical activity, there is a kind of a similarity to thinking that the intellectual and the physical are not so sharply divided, right? I agree with that, Alex, on, on conversely, another reason, another thing that I enjoy when I'm doing serious physical exertion like Jiu Jitsu, it's a temporary suspension of time.

When somebody's trying to choke you or break your arm, it's, you can only, so there's a lot of talk about the exercise room. Yeah. No, just in fighting wrestling, right? The bedroom though.

Grappling now. So when you're walking on the path, you know, a nature path, Alex, you can take in a lot of things and you can think freely as much or as little as you wish. But when you're in this, when you're under physical to rest, for me, it's like time when I walk into the gym to grapple, it's everything stops and everything is frozen out, except for when I'm fighting. And in a way, that's pleasurable too.

It's akin to reading a good book. You just kind of forget that other things are in motion. Yeah, there's a way in which like, yeah, you have to focus on what's right in front of you, figure it out and then you can move through it, right? Yeah.

And then you can come back. I don't know if you and Greg want to talk about this. There's nothing like thinking hard about something, then exercising and then you come back to it with a kind of clarity. I only noticed this when I started moving again after hiatus is Greg, you've known this for your entire life since you were such an all-star wrestler is if you start performing at a high level in whatever sport or physical activity you wish to pursue, it brings in its train, a kind of discipline with everything else in life.

Like suddenly you're a timetable. So like, okay, well, you want to grapple, you want to run, you want to hike, you also have to do your job, you have to do your scholarship. So you immediately become more organized because you can't do it all just really nearly. You have to start eating well by necessity or you won't be able to perform at the level you wish to perform.

So everything tightens up. And also the mental acuity that this assertion brings. There's a certain amount of, I do think there's this analogy between exercise and philosophy. There's this toughness you versus you testing yourself, testing your limits, all that's true.

But like you said, there's research that shows that your mind repairs itself during long runs, for example. Your mind just goes into automatic mode and sort of starts to clean stuff out. Like you said, I'll have epiphanies on things I'm writing on or working on or reading out on a jog or something like that because my mind's kind of clear. I feel sharper when I exercise.

I'm proud of myself and that kind of confidence carries over into other sort of endeavors. Like I know that I can get knocked down and get back up and you write the routine and the discipline is huge. I mean, look, I exercise every day. I write every day.

And there's also a sort of psychological or mental well-being. Like if I can, I've been best in my life when I'm in a routine and doing things. And it's not just that I know what to do at certain times. It's also that like, okay, I've knocked these things out.

And so I felt like I've accomplished my list every day, if that makes sense. And I will, like my wife, sometimes at night, she'll be like, did you exercise today? What's wrong with you? And I'll be like, oh, yeah, I'm more irritable if I haven't exercised.

And you're right about like the sleep regulation, the food regulation. I'm like, okay, I probably shouldn't have another whiskey because I gotta get up to 5-30 tomorrow and go run a couple miles, all that kind of stuff. So just all that stuff is really important. We should look at some of the texts we've sort of at least indicated we talked about today.

But like there are all these benefits and I don't know. We think the show is really about the new thinkery and it's about philosophy and that sort of stuff. And I'm sure that some of our listeners, Jack, Sinner, Smokan and Scal, Wick, Yiller, saying, I'm not working out, you schmucks. But really, like I did one of the reasons I wanted to do this episode was kind of as a corrective to the kind of stuff you're talking about, David.

Like all these sort of super alpha, super masculine, super over the top kind of stuff. And it's like, just take care of yourself. And I know those guys aren't even the loudest voices aren't even people that have accomplished anything. No, they're rarely.

And I said Navy SEALs, but it's actually like rare. Oh, it's very rare to have the actual SEALs doing stuff. That's right. Yeah, they're a little bit more quiet.

It's these guys that have just taken a lot of steroids that I think want to be. No, that's right. And all that stuff, those over-meedy guys, like that all looks really unhealthy to me. You're carrying a lot of excess weight, which isn't good for your heart.

This guy you mentioned the liver king or whatever. Like every time I see a tweet by him, it's like, he doesn't actually eat this. Like all the community knows about it. He does eat it, but he's also pumping himself so full of the saucer.

I mean, it's disgusting. Full stuff. Well, I think there's a, one of the issues you got, like the thing you brought up about whiskey brings up the argument from the beginning of Republic six where Socrates aims to prove that philosophers are just not only the most competent, but also excel in decency and not by virtue of their moral education, but by virtue of being philosophers. And one of them is they pursue wisdom so much that they don't desire other things, right?

So, which makes sense. You can't sometimes talk about this how you can't hope to be, you can't hope to pursue wisdom if you're drunk all the time, it'll appear you're judgment and other things. So, obviously you have to have a semi-lockrum of moral virtue, but I think sometimes this one's not being understood in the same way, which is that, you know, I find that if I don't work out, I'm more tired, right? I find that if I take an hour out of my day to go lift or take a couple hours to hike, I'll get more done.

Now, the other thing Socrates warns about in the Republic back in book three is the way that athletes do it. And he doesn't like athletes. Athletes exercise work out all the time, and then he says they get into a sleepy habit. And similar to drinking, if you see an athlete and they're either doing these amazing physical acts, leaping through the air and doing these precise things, or they're like lying down on a couch at sweats, exhausted, right?

In both cases, it's very hard to really think and to pursue life in the mind. And in that case, the mind or the soul really is being subordinated to the body rather than the other way around where the body should be so fit and so trained that it becomes supportive of a fuller intellectual life. So it hasn't finished as a place, but it's a precarious place, right? One small point yesterday, I did a Murph yesterday, it was Memorial Day in it, I was pretty much out all day, but it was a holiday.

And I knew that we had family coming over and I was just going to be smoking ribs. And so I knew that I wasn't going to be, I didn't, I knew I could over-insert myself physically because there wasn't going to be much time to read and to write. And so I thought, well, that happened. So yeah, I was, I was right yesterday, but you're right.

Like, that's a good point. We're not actually too much exercise. I was listening to an interview with, there's a famous UFC retired fighter named Kabib, their magnumet off. So I was really talking about it, he goes, well, if you want to get to this elite level, let's just say with mixed martial arts grappling, he's like, you wake up, you have your first class, you have to nap, right?

You have to eat and then nap or your body won't recover or you're lifting in like second and third rounds the rest of the day. So it's not like you're coming home and playing with your kids or reading, but your body basically has to rest, you have to sleep. And then you have to live this kind of a part, you know, Spartan lifestyle, you're hit by certain time and you can't mess around and have those shrinks. So like, we'll get boring.

Go on. You remember that video a couple of years ago when Tom Brady went to Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay in the years, like he actually had a couple of margaritas and like, he couldn't even sit, his life, I mean, like, obviously maybe this is coming from a place of envy, but like his life looks awful to me. Like, it's completely regimented. And then his wife left them for a Jiu Jitsu guy, which is pretty awful, which is coincidentally the same time David Barr started practicing Jiu Jitsu.

It's just, it's a coincidence. It has nothing to do with that. And so, but yeah, I mean, like his life, like your point, I mean, like I ran two marathons when I was in my early 30s, late 20s or 30s. And like after the second one, I was like, this is, it's just too time consuming.

I mean, you have to train like 10 to 15 hours a week and I just, I can't maintain that. And that's actually bad for you. I consider one of the good reasons, would you just lose muscle? You're going to lose muscle running that far.

One of the things that I think is really good, and people confuse, I don't think, I'm not a big cardio fan. I like walking, I like hiking, maybe a little jog. But I think one of the important things, especially about getting older is to get strong so that you're resilient, right? Like disease, well, we've all had family members, whatever, who die of cancer and it's sad the way that it depletes and sometimes they survive, but you want to have to meet on those bones, right?

For survival, a sign of fitness is. You can get up out of a chair. Yeah, you can get up out of a chair, but being able to endure. It has to be part of a larger vision of the good life, right?

Just as you could ask, like, okay, how is the just life good? That's really a question about the place of justice ordinarily and even optimally understood within an account of happiness, right? And the good of your soul. Similarly with the good of the body, you have to think about whatever this beauty or excellence of body is in light of a full life.

That's absolutely correct. If you spend a lot of, if you spend just a little bit amount of time thinking of what athletic success looks like, and you think about these standards, they're all conventional, right? So it's, oh, I ran a marathon, right? How long's a marathon, Greg 26.2?

One miles. Okay, point one. That's one. Two, I can't.

It's point two, you're right. Sorry. So that's an arbitrary distance, right? So people are like, well, I don't just run marathines, I ran 30 of them.

Well, okay. And now I don't run marathines, I run ultra marathines. And I didn't just climb one peak, I claimed the seventh hall speaks of the world. So you keep just these artificial standards that can go on forever.

You just, okay, most of the pinnacle of success, yeah, I won a super bowl, right? I won a X number of times. So it has to be nestled within that larger framework or if you spend any time thinking about it, it kind of breaks down on its own logic. Right.

Yeah. Okay. One is that I actually do have a common model of this, a man who's taken good care of himself physically, but who never less about himself above all to the life of the mind. That's Charles Butterworth, right?

Yeah. He always did those runs with the hash house areas in DC. He always hiked. He always walked.

He would travel to the Middle East, to Europe and do these, you know, bikes. He traveled to the Black Forest. He sent out. He said, I didn't see any ghosts to hide in here.

Right, right. And then Bartlett actually also like he took up lifting in his 40s or maybe 50s, I think. And now he swims, he's taken that up later in life. So we have these, my dad actually has been a pretty good model of physical fitness for me and some other folks, but you know, I'm older than you guys by a few years.

And I will say that this having gold on a remarathon is on the other. Like I don't do those things so much. I mean, I've accepted the fact that at the stage of my life, I'm in managed decline, right? Like I'm never going to be, I will never be as strong as I have been.

I mean, that's just, I mean, there's a way. No, that's not true at all. You can totally. I could get as strong as I've ever been if I single mindedly devoted myself to that.

And I have no interest in doing that. That's how I do it. So I keep injury, so I'll begin. Exactly.

Injuries are so much more, and the same thing with speed, right? Like I'm never going to be as fast as I used to be. I'm never going to be as strong as I used to be. And so I go for a sort of overall, like I just want to be able to take care of myself.

I want to be a young son. I mean, at my Jerry Atchicade, I have a nine month old boy. I like to be able to get on the ground and get him off. I know you're going to help, but you know Robert De Niro territory with your boy.

Right. And so, you know, like I'll give you an example. One time I remember a buddy of mine called me, this was 10 years ago now maybe or more, but he was my age, even a little younger. And he called me to ask him, he called to ask me to help a move, a piece of furniture.

And I was a cash network, but I'm not sure. I wasn't very elderly. I can't imagine having to swallow my pride enough to be like, I need to call some dude my age to help do something that I recognize. I'm not capable of doing physically.

I don't know. So I just I try to be able to take care of myself and do things and do things. Like if I go on vacation and somebody's like, hey, let's go on this hike. I like to be able to do that.

But we're going to do this. I can do that. True, no problem. But I can sort of handle myself.

That makes sense. Can I try to shift this to political philosophy by taking what we're saying? I mean, I think the larger issue here is conventional and natural standards of fitness, right? Right.

Which has come up with like, there's conventional sports and there's also sort of more natural standards. And so the question becomes is, what does physical fitness look like according to nature and according to the regime under which you live? And I was just teaching Republic A and there's this wonderful moment where oligarchy shifts into democracy. And initially the oligarchs are still in pretty good shape because they're raised by the Democrats, right?

So they're still devoted to honor and the fitness and all that sort of stuff. And then they get kind of soft and it turns out they're out on the battlefield and the oligarchs need to get the people to fight and they're alongside each other and the people have been made poor where they live a rustic life. And so they're tanned and strong. They're used to the elements.

And two of them look to each other and they say, we can take these guys. And so they're able to take them. And in fact, the oligarchs are so governed by fear or so governed by fear, they might not even put up a fight. They might not even be like actual fighting, right?

So you, which the Russian Revolution was a bit like that, wasn't it? It wasn't like the French Revolution, which was super violent, right? Isn't that right? In any case, I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong.

No. No. Yeah. Russian for yes.

But I think, yeah, exactly. But I think there's it's, you know, you replay it when you hear about how the regime affects your soul, how it affects your habits, your customs, your opinions, et cetera. But he also talks about how it affects animals. And you can make the case that these conventions also obviously affect your body.

Right. So like you live in a decadent mass democracy and lo and behold, access to like cheap food that like hits a button. So you buy it, right? Like salty and sweet food is abundant.

Right. So you have an obesity epidemic and lo and behold, you get a counter movement of people who pump themselves full of testosterone and they look like some like engorged cock and it's, it's like this, uh, veiny, sinewy, like rippling thing. And it's obviously an overcompensation in the other direction. And it's, it's strange that Americans are some of the most muscular and then some of the fattest people in the world.

Right. That would be one way in which the habits and the customs trickled down to get the consequence and then the counter reaction. Well, small point on that is I remember Professor Mind undergraduate, this is the 90s when relativism was so the book man was talking about he suggested that he thought a limit to relativism would be the physical body because he thought, well, you sort of see it as there's no way to deny that you're just not healthy and in shape. And I'm like, I mean, all this body positive stuff these days, I'm like, I don't know, I think, I think even that's gone.

I'll see some and they're like, I'm healthy. And I'm like, no, you're not like you're one cheeseburger away from death. And that strikes me like it's, we've become so democratized that we can't even say things that are forget what's the highest end of man or something like this. Like you can't walk up a flight of stairs without getting gas.

Like that's unhealthy. Even that objective statement of fact has now been so thoroughly demolished by democracy that blows my mind. Well, like this is a size is like, yeah, I'm pretty sure the system of oppression is your cardio vascular. I'm like, to continue a lot of hate here, by the way, for this is the way.

And it's pressing me with plaque in my order. I think I told you guys I went on a trip. My father-in-law very generously to me and my wife and his wife down to one of these resorts in the Caribbean. It was amazing.

It was great. Fantastic. But the one part of the whole trip that I just couldn't stand was the buffets. There was just so much food.

And it just, I was like, can we please only eat at the restaurants? Because I was just so much food and I just all these people just like juggling four plates. And I just just like, ah, it's so gross. It's just really gross, man.

What I was going to say is that to extend this into the modern day political realm, you see from time to time in the usual suspect publications, articles that are denouncing the health craze, which by the way, there's no health or fitness craze, or fit men is some kind of right wing right, well, maliciousism right bubbling off. It's like, ah, Alex got muscles. You know, he must be an insane right winger. And really, he just wants a benign monarchy like the rest of us.

But so that's a very confusing, that's very confusing. I'm a little bit, for people that are out of shape or that are handling, it's one thing I think to say that there's slobs and things like this, I think that's true up to a certain extent. But I do think our food, Greg, so it's like stuff is stacked against people in a program. Look, I mentioned my father as a good example of a good role model for me at FITES, but I'll say the following.

So what my dad was in the Air Force until I was a teenager, he retired and moved close to where his family was, which is in rural Georgia. And there were no jobs in rural Georgia for men with backgrounds and security intelligence in the Air Force. So he strove to find a job and the only thing that is, there's not a shortage. Yeah.

And so he got a job working in grocery stores in the service industry. And originally the hours were sort of amenable to a healthy lifestyle, but eventually he has with everything, seems like the United States, middle management became increasingly sort of expendable and they made them have these terrible hours working weekends and so forth. And my dad got in really terrible shape. Now he retired a few years ago and he's getting into shape, he's going on hikes and so forth.

And so I do, I actually think that you're right that a lot of careers are not conducive. So the food is one thing, we'll talk about that. But the other thing is that there are a lot of careers that are just not conducive to taking care of yourself. And Alex and I and David to a degree, it seems, we're lucky enough to have careers where like, I can go to the gym in the morning before work and I work, I still work eight to ten hours a day.

But it's structured in such a way that I can figure out how to make time to do these kinds of things. And so look, I think that there's a lot of, a lot of modernity definitely pushes you away from exercise and the jobs, the average American community is like 30 minutes, one way or something like this. You're in the car for an hour a day, that's not conducive, which hopefully by the way you're listening to the new thing, create your community. But you know, like, and so there's that and then the food stuff.

Yeah, you're right. I mean, like I've always, like the healthiest I was when I was a single grown adult man because I was lazy. And what I would do is I would make a salad every night and I would cook up piece of meat every night. So it's jacked up to you.

It was like, I don't understand what people are like, I'm single, I'm getting out of shape. It's like, dude, you're single. It's so easy to get to your same. As the only single man on this podcast, newly single.

You're right ladies. Immediately. Immediately, I dropped like 25 pounds. Like my life now I wake up, I maybe eat a small like a croissant for breakfast, usually I skip breakfast and then I'll work until early afternoon.

I won't even eat lunch. I'll have like a kind of medium sized snack in the afternoon, you know, maybe go work out or whatever. And then I'll have like a nice dinner, like dinner is my big meal and I'll allow myself dessert and stuff like, and I find, I mean, you put this in the run of show of the idea of fasting, right? So that's what that focuses your mind.

It creates a kind of, and there's, you know, the republic, they think all night without eating, right? And there's a way in which that's, that's really true. Like you'll, if you get really focused on something and you're really working on something and you're just absorbed by it, you don't think about food and you'll find that you'll get a little hungry and be like, well, let me finish this. And then another two hours go about, right?

It really goes by quickly. So there's a way in which fitness and healthy eating obviously needs to be a part of it, but it just follows kind of a certain moderation or sobriety is necessarily part of a healthy life. I mentioned Butterworth and Bartlett and other folks, but I mean, Socrates himself exercised and exhorted others to do so. We know from the Republic that he was always hanging out in wrestling rooms and why, what are the reasons why I'm growing man hang out in wrestling rooms, but to exercise.

I can't think of a single other reason why I grew a man will be hanging out in a wrestling room with young men. But exercising. Yeah. You've got it.

In the memorabilia by Zenitham, we get a speech where Socrates exhorts a young man who was not taking care of himself to exercise more. This is in book three, chapter 12, I just read one small part. So the gist of this chapter is he's telling this guy to take care of yourself. But this I think is important and relevant to what we're talking about.

He gives two big justifications, one which we haven't even touched on, which is probably so important is civic, right? One of the reasons to exercise is so you can actually be useful to your city. And we I'm constantly reading about the number of how we lack sufficient citizens who are in shape to actually be in the military. That seems deeply problematic.

But the second reason is more important. This is book three, chapter 12, section six. Socrates says, since even where in your opinion there is least use of the body in thinking, who does not know that even here, many greatly falter because their body is not healthy and forgiveness, spiritedness, peevishness and madness frequently attack the thought of many due to the bad condition of the body. So as to drive out even the sciences or philosophy or something like this.

And so we've already touched on this several times, but here Socrates is pointing out that exercise is good for the body, but it's actually also a good for thought and thinking and science. That you can't do this. If you don't take care of your body, it's it can be a hindrance to thinking clearly and thinking well. If you're drunk all the time to take an extreme example or a hooked on that sweet, sweet, nectar of the gods that we call heroin, then you're probably not going to be around very long to the philosopher's body.

And we joke, but like we're all sort of devotees of Leo Shrass. How great would it have been if he lived another 10 or 15 years, you know, and not succumb to the words of tobacco use. And then there's in the symposium of Zenith and there's this as Socrates mentions that his friend caught him dancing alone and he laughs at him and stuff like this. And so everyone laughs at the notion of Socrates exercising in the morning by himself.

And two things, one is that he exercises by himself. He doesn't need anybody. And I suspect that that exercise is actually contrasted with the kind of manliness that the notion of symposium, I'm sorry, I'm doing this kind of rough shot manner. They just witnessed this play from a woman who's done a pretty impressive acrobatic dance with knives and stuff like this.

And so actually just look at how manly or courageous this woman is. And so then I think Socrates is a man who's dressing dancing by himself as contrasted with this woman who's very impressive. So Socrates does not seem like he's exercising for the sake of manliness, I encourage, but he's exercising so that his body will be fit so that he can actually think. But it's also like his dancing is a, his dancing alone is also probably a model for his thinking alone.

And maybe Greg, you can say a few words about your great hero Xenophon, where exercise is I mean, like central to early, the early parts of, it's a political science through exercise of the Syropidea. And then obviously the shorter writing. So I mean, Xenophon, it's front and central. But now we would say, Oh, horseback writing or hunting is an exercise, but that is not the way it was understood.

I will say if you've ever ridden horseback for any, like any stretch of time, you like people don't think horseback when you're barebacking. I believe bareback to handful of times. My wife was there, she wasn't impressed. And so, but yeah, it's hard because then it's all your thighs.

It's all your thighs. But Alex is the bareback master here. Well, that's isn't that the version way. I always use condoms with lauusus.

What? God's sake. So, it's not going to be in it, and it might be beautiful or something like that. Right.

Yeah, something like that. It's it's it is interesting. I think this is a passage like that, you know, can be really revealing of your soul because I find that I can lift it home. I can exercise it home.

But if I'm around other people, like, either if like I'm around like younger man, I'm like, I'm going to show these young whippers nappers. I still got it, right? Even though I'm ball or if I'm around women forget about it, like I'll be like, I don't care if I break my arms. I'm going to lift this weight or whatever.

And it's like, oh, this is incredibly tied to vanity, right? Like, and so, you know, I, you know, I'm clearly doing it. I'm aware that I'm doing this partly out of desire. And this is where it might be tied to the politics stuff.

What you were saying, Greg, about like, about how physical beauty, I mean, the funny funny thing about that is that there's still sexual sorting, right? Like, it's not like suddenly like liberal George Clooney is like, I'm leaving my beautiful wife for Lizzo. Oh, yeah. That's good.

It's still kind of a hierarchy. Do you know what? Everybody got mad at it del for losing weight. Yes.

It's like unbelievable. Now, how dare you get it? It is tied to the entity of Jujitsu. It's terrible.

There's some days that there's some 25 year olds in there and we're doing like, you know, 10 minute round or five minute round. And it's just in my head. I was like, this guy's not going to choke me out. I should not.

So because you have to tap, right? Or submit. I'm not submitting to this. It's called submit also, right?

Like I submitted him. And it wreaks havoc now with my vanity, but my sense of well, because another man is forcing me to, you know, tap. It's also stupid, right? I mean, it's stupid as I say that.

But that goes back to my suspension of time, I think, because when you're in this kind of arena, you're thinking of external things. And so it becomes everything to you all at once, even though it can be silly. Can I defend the hefty preference we have now these days, just to a small degree? Some little of the guys, I mean, do you remember how waveishly thin models were in the 90s?

Like, sort of way. Except for my angels and Victoria's Secret. Okay. I introduced a slightly more full-figured woman, which was my bow ideal, but they were not overweight women by any stretch.

I remember the 90s. They were these super strong models that just looked unhealthy. They looked in some cases like small, pre-pubescent boys. That's a mistake too, right?

Okay. We went a little off the rails. We're getting back on the rails. Greg, get us on the rails.

All right. We kind of, I'm sorry that folks don't work able to listen to that. They got really off the rails and we had a lot out. So let me just bring us back by asking them the following.

We've sort of been circling around this, but like, what do you guys do for physical fitness? What do you do? Like, tell me about your chit-toot. Tell me about boxing.

Tell me about what do you do day to day, week to week, month to month. Do you have seasons of the year? Like, how do you stay in shape of the season in your life? Okay.

I'll go for a second. I started getting back in shape a year and a half ago. Why did you try to get back in shape? I was just tired constantly.

I have a medical condition that's related to this episode. I have really don't want to put out there, but I'm just tired constantly. And anyway, I found out the only time when I was tired is if I was able to work out early in the day. And then I would still have to take naps, but it helped.

And so I've always wanted to wrestle do jujitsu, some form of fighting. And so I signed up because they're all these world class guys that actually live in minutes from here. And so I will do jujitsu five times a week. So, yeah, like three morning classes and then I'll meet up with people at around nine p.m.

I take it really seriously. I'm going to have my first fight in July. Are you serious? I'm dead serious.

I'll tell you guys about it offline. I wanted to invite you, but it's too small potatoes. Man, I think what I'm saying about that is Alex and I doing commentary watching it live. You know, a corner man is supposed to help me.

You can't just stay like. I'm going to go. I'm going to go. I'm going to go.

I'm going to go. I want to see you. I'm going to go. I'm going to go.

I'm going to go. I'm going to go. I'm going to go. I'm going to go.

Now. I stopped doing that. I don't know. I got enamored with powerlifting again.

But he was getting in the way of slender general flexibility. Yeah. I felt like Alex told me and you know, Alex, you guys are both very strong. And I was hitting a hos approaching the limit or it's like, okay, you could continue to trying to deadlift.

Rearling, you know, hundreds of pounds, but you know, you're putting your body at serious risk and so what do you really want to what kind of motor exercise do you enjoy and then what are the works, the accessory work. So my accessory work is just like lifting. I don't know, what you wanna accomplish? What do you hope to do?

Just really. is grappling, we were making jokes about Socrates and stuff, but the jujitsu gym is turned, it's a community. Like I said, time is suspended. So there are professionals, blue collar, dads, 25 year olds, navy seal types.

And so we just hang out after and talk. And so it's the community, kind of like your community, Greg, with a three, which I'm sure you'll discuss, that's part of it. But it's, I just want to do it as long as my body will allow. That's all I want.

I don't have any goals for it. I don't care about bells. So I keep doing it. Yeah, I mean, I've gone through various phases in my adult life.

I got pretty serious in lifting at one point. It's some pretty good personal goals. I got into running for a while, but I just don't think my body's built for running. And now I can do a mixture of lifting and different cardio kinds of workouts with this group F3 that you mentioned.

And as I got a little older, it's been nice to have this community that keeps me accountable and helps me get out there. But it's also been, it's a new reward for me. Like, I've worked out pretty much my entire adult life. And one of the major awards has been, well, I'm healthy.

But you're always looking for new motivations to keep at it. And one of the motivations for me right now is it's like, I've helped other guys get into shape who've never been in shape their entire lives. I mean, we had John Moser on the show, one of my buddies, I think he did, it's a wonderful life with us. And he like, you know, he was in his 50s and he had never really exercised consistently.

He, you know, he even said at one point, like I never thought I was an athlete, people told me that my whole life. And now he's like, you know, he's sitting PRs on bench, you know, he's didn't think he'd ever run a mile, you're in a 10 minute sub 10 minute mile, he's in his 50s, like just stuff like that. I mean, it's, I mean, it's rewarding for me to see these successes that other guys have. And it's a real community.

Like you said, we try to build each other up. It's only men. So what Alex mentioned about the idea that having women around there makes makes things sort of competitive. And I think that's true.

And so it's a way for, it's remarkably cooperative. There's very, there's some, you know, that sort of we try to keep it a day like we just we're not competitive. We're trying to build each other up. Those people get bounced out.

So if you have some guy that's, yeah, yeah, yeah, we, we have Matt enforcers. Is that right? Yeah, we sure do, man. It's just like any sport like if you have some cowboy comes in and signs up and it's just trying to break people's arms or it's just a jerk, like a mountain forcer will do their thing.

But it's like a year F three, right? It's the culture that you guys are establishing and used to wrestle at an extremely high level. Well, division three, but yeah, I consider that pretty serious. Yeah.

What about you out? Tell your story from St. John's because this is really remarkable. I mean, you were overweight, man.

Yeah. Like, like, I was like, this guy and he did it. Well, I actually had personal stories in mind when thinking about the regime in your body is like you go to college and there's like a college mentality of drinking, eating wings and pizza and, and like you're 18 and you can kind of hold that and then you gain the freshman 15, you're like, Oh, first, 15 and then the freshman 15 becomes a freshman 30. And you're like, yeah, yeah, software, software seven and then like senior diabetes, I guess.

But like you just feel this. And so I just, when I got to a buddy, Travis Mulroy, which he was like, hey, she just go lift weights. And so I just started lifting weights and I lost a lot of weight. He really knows nutrition, he really knows fitness, all that sort of stuff.

He's good in theory, but not in practice. He tends to let his dad have it so overcome him. I hope he hears this. But he, yeah, he got me back into it where I used to lift when I wrestled in high school stuff.

And so I just got back into it. And now for me, the goals are like, keep my energy levels up as I get older. I think, I really think Greeks are right that 40 is an age of flourishing. I feel like it's a good intersection of intellectual, psychological sort of powers and still maintaining really good strength.

Like if you have incredible, like the kids in their mid 20s, they're not, I don't care how much they're benching. It's really the guys in their mid 30s to mid 40s. Longest. It gets you feel strong and you feel like everything.

I just feel like a different guy now. And so part of it is just fitting in with this stage in life. Part of it is, is yeah, I maintain the energy for my work. I like hiking because I feel like it gives me clarity about what I'm doing in my life.

Like I think about what I'm reading. I think about what I'm studying. I'm thinking about what I want to do in the next year or two years, five years, 10 years. Like it just feels like cathartics.

I try to go on a few big hikes a year because I find that they're like, kind of clarifying. But also on a personal level, I got two young kids. And when you have a three year old and a one year old, they just want to be held all the time. I got to say, you know, my ex-wife, she's physically capable.

She's fit. She's not a big fat person like Greg wanted to say. But I, but she can't hold both kids. That's 60 pounds pushing 60 pounds between the two of them.

And it feels nice to just be able to pick them up, hold them both and they're laughing and they're talking in front of me as I'm playing with them. And we're all bonded together. Where sometimes I see these like Chubby dads who are five, 10 years younger than me. And you can see they struggle to keep up with them.

I'm like, that's not a good life. I want to be if I have another kid with another lady, like I'm like, pushing 50 or something like that. I want to be capable enough to kind of, you know, manage it. One of my two of my close friends here, they wanted them to join F3, but one of them didn't.

But they got these acronyms for their physical fitness goals. H2K and LGN. Their goals are hard to kill and look good naked. And I, the first one, at least I like.

Yeah, there's no exercises that would improve. Well, that's correct. Yeah. The lights turning them off.

That's what helps me. Yeah. I have a question for you both. Actually, I'm protocol.

You know, I listen to this podcast called the Huberman lab to Stanford professor. What's it called? The Huberman lab. I think Andrew Huberman.

I'm many of our listeners. I'm sure are familiar. Yeah. He interviews other doctors, but on specific subjects, but usually his episodes have a protocol attached to them.

So he'll talk to a sleep expert and then, or like a son out or something healing. Oh, I saw it by the way. And I love that. I think there are all kinds of health effects.

I hope that it's from Sonic. I try to sign up with a week to. But the question I have is about philosophy and exercise. Do you guys study first before a hard workout?

Which is to say, so let's say you're studying Plato. I don't mean casually reading. I mean, like you're taking notes. So this is like a deep way.

Would you do a deep focus before? Where did you find to be more efficacious, the deep focus before or after the workout? Because when I do it before, sometimes I'm like, I got this jujutsu, or whatever, I'm kind of like 5% of my brain is thinking about that. And then I'm looking at the time, looking at the time.

But if I do it after, I don't know, my brain is still fuzzy from the workout. I can, so I just care. It's what you guys do. The best case scenario for me, but there are other goals.

So those goals have sort of made things shift. But when I was a single man and young, I like to sleep till about 7, 30 or 8 and then go exercise first thing. So it's sleeping in and exercising first thing. And I felt energetic all day.

I could work till midnight, one o'clock two in the morning. Now that I'm married and now that I'm a kid, it's like the only time I can workout consistently is first thing in the morning. That's just a, there's no way around it. I do find that my mind is the most alert in like that two hour window right after exercising.

Like if I can, if I can find the discipline to go right and attack reading or writing, I'm great. I mean, we recorded this podcast late at night. And so I'm sure all our fans think that you guys are smart ones because I'm like, it's an hour past Matlocks. You know, like I'm like, my class of warm milk and matlock are supposed to be over an hour ago.

Like I'm done, like I'm toasted 8 p.m. Right? I've been on since four brother. 4am.

Yeah, that's for you guys. I just wake up the kids ruining me. I used to go to bed at four. That's for you.

Me too. And so that's the thing like life shifts and I'm not like I can't, because I wanted those things like they're important to me. But that meant that, you know, you're already shifting like physical fitness is still very important, but it's not the most important thing now. But I still try to do it every day, except for Sunday.

I don't, I generally do not exercise on Sunday. You might be wanting to rest day a week. That's a good thing to do. I probably need two rest days a week.

I'm getting to that level, but at least one that we're just doing something softer, a little yoga or something like that. Yeah, I find it hard to work out during the semester. It gets really hard. Sometimes you get like try to get one in a week at least.