The Optics Gladiator

Appearances are easy to manufacture.

Modern fitness is still more concerned with optics than output. The “industry” has long since capitalized on people’s laziness and insecurity — selling promises of celebrity 6-packs and 7-day cleanses. Modern technology has made this even easier to weaponize. However, there is still time to be the difference-maker and do what the “optics gladiators” and “fit-fluencers” cannot — achieve.

August 2023, ~5.5% Body Fat

Aesthetics sell. That isn’t the problem. In fact, looking good naked is a huge (beneficial) side effect of being a fit and capable human. While photo-shopped magazine covers have long since capitalized on people’s insecurity by curating “unrealistic body standards” — heck even Frankensteined body parts from different models — we see the same categorical errors exploding across social media.

To be clear, when I say “photo-shopped” I’m not talking about color grading, lighting, and saturation filters; I’m talking about changing the morphology of your body structure. Nowadays, you don’t even even have to edit photos and videos manually, AI can do it for you.

If you’re really desperate, there’s always cosmetic surgery — ab and calf implants for example — and the obvious option of PEDs has always been on the table. The latter however, would require you to still do some work in order to reap the benefits of, but I digress.

There is an obnoxious trend going around to role-play vanity by idolizing golden era (1970s) bodybuilding; as if to say that the only thing that defines one’s “fit”-ness is the amount of (hyperphysiological) muscle mass they can procure.

What’s more is that this will be exaggerated into categorical errors (logical fallacy) in two major way:

1. Assuming that the dietary practices of drug-enhanced persons are metabolized and partitioned in the same ways as non-enhanced persons also seeking to build muscle mass.

2. That excessive amounts of body mass are the only, and or primary, feature that define “elite and optimal” athletes; thereby contributing to the “peak” performances of those athletes.

Firstly, as I’ve noted before, the people complaining about an athlete or bodybuilder’s drug use probably lacks the willpower and genetic potential to achieve such results (with or without PEDs).

Second, many bodybuilders and powerlifters are notoriously un-athletic because they’ve trained their physiology (namely the spine) to be excessively rigid. If you can’t wipe your own backside and get out of breath tying your shoes, you’re not an athlete, and certainly aren’t “fit.”

The bar of capability has sunk so low. We’ve descended from aspirations of world and Olympic championships (athletics) to fitness (attributes desirable for survival), even further to exercise (simply exerting yourself being too much to ask), on down to movement (5K steps / day to not couch-rot), and finally hit bottom by calling anything above that and / or achieving a certain aesthetic is considered “peak.”

What’s really important here isn’t that anyone should feel ashamed by or discouraged from wanting to look better or improve their life. What’s important is that you should have the integrity and intelligence to know the difference between seeing and being, knowing and believing.

Talk has always been cheap and actions have always been loud.

A lot of people are eager to shout from the rooftops what you “need” — repent, vote, eat-this-not-that, do this-or-that, buy-sell… on and on. The reality is that what one “needs” is entirely based on what they want to achieve.

From the most bleakly existential sense, none of us “needs” to exist at all. If we simply want to remain alive, we can be pumped full of Soylent and prescription drugs. So, beyond that, what’s next, is a very pertinent question.

Where you are is likely not where you want to stay, but it is where you have to start. Likewise, the first big step or hurdle you encounter may be necessary, and it may be a good place to start as well. However, it’s likely a terrible — or at least underwhelming — place to finish. Base hits aren’t the same as home runs.

Perhaps, what is most important about developing one’s physical capability is that the process of doing difficult things changes more than just our bodies. By actually plumbing the depths we emerge from the other side forever altered. We can never return from whence we came. We will never see the world the same.

This experience cannot be manufactured by a surgeon any more than “some yolked guy on YouTube.”

When you truly achieve things worth talking about, you don’t need to lie or embellish. The stories stand on their own because it was never about the things (feats) in the first place; it was about who you became by doing it.

It’s for these reasons that I don’t think you can truly test yourself more than once per year. There may be other benchmarks like quarterly trial-runs, but to really savor and sit with an experience that fundamentally alters your perspective of your Earth-time takes… time.

Time to work. Time to plan. Time to think. Time to train. Time to recover. Time to fail. Time to analyze. Time to do the thing. Time to wonder if it was enough. Time to be scared. Time to be strong. Time to realize you know what others do not.

If everything is a test, you never get a chance to practice and develop the skills that will actually matter. Being tougher and grittier isn’t nearly as hard as paying attention and changing yourself.

If you’re getting “1% better every day” you’re still a novice. That’s okay. Will you still have the same vigor in 10 years when you’re fighting months for 0.01% gains?

You can keep your 8-12 second reels, complete with the perfect 3-second hook, inquiry promise, suspension build, and closing call-to-action. If that’s what keeps your identity intact, so be it.

I’ll keep climbing mountains.

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