You’re too skinny. You’re “glommy” fat – to use Rip’s colorful term. You feel weak. You couldn’t lift your own furniture so you had to spend money you don’t have last time you moved. You get out of breath climbing stairs.

You know something is wrong. So you try doing something about it. You try eating healthier. But the Oreos, Snickers, Twix, Coke, and all the other prepackaged, ultra-processed food-like substances sold in supermarkets continue to catch your eye. You try running, but it’s just not very fucking rewarding. You get hot and sweaty, but it’s not fun, and you have no measurable progress. You say, “I’ll run tomorrow,” and let Netflix play the next episode of your favorite show. No clear schedule of progressive progress keeps you to a regimen, even if you download one of those “couch to 5k” apps. What the fuck do they know anyway?

Not long ago, I was listening to the Weights and Plates Podcast with SSCs Robert Santana and Trent Jones. Trent mentioned an important distinction between motivation and determination. We’re trained to think that we can do anything with enough determination. “Grit” is the favored popular term, especially since the publication of the book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth. You just need passion and perseverance and you can overcome any obstacle. You can change yourself with enough determination – enough grit.

The word even sounds good: Grit. Dirty, tough. Full of rocks and sand. Hard. The coolest people out there are gritty.

But Trent made a point whose simplicity cut through so much psychobabble bullshit we hear nowadays. Determination and grit are important. Nothing of value can be achieved without long and Sisyphean periods of hard, boring work. Nothing. But without true motivation, no amount of determination will succeed. You can’t white-knuckle your way through life. You need an organizing ideal, something with a gravitational pull that wraps other aspects of your life around it.

People change – truly change, go through “phase changes,” not just marginal improvements, much like scientific paradigms change. A twentieth century philosopher named Thomas Kuhn wrote a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he posited a distinction between “paradigm change” and “normal science.” We’re used to thinking about science as a Popperian never-ending cycle of conjectures and refutations. We look at scientists as heroes of critical thinking, always trying to disprove the accepted theory, explanation, or paradigm. Scientists suggest ideas and others ruthlessly attack the idea, until the best conjecture manages to withstand extended criticism.

At least that’s what we’re taught. The last few years have helped undermine that assumption, but Kuhn noticed this well beforehand. Kuhn pointed out that science doesn’t actually work that way. Scientists work within a framework of accepted explanations, observations, and theories – what he called a “paradigm” that organizes all aspects of scientific inquiry. Statements made outside of an accepted paradigm are essentially nonsense to those who believe in the paradigm.

An example of this is the phlogiston theory of combustion – that combustibles have a compound called “phlogiston” that they release when burned, which is the cause of the combustion. That is simply pure nonsense when looked at within a modern framework. The words mean nothing because our “world,” shaped by current scientific assumptions, doesn’t include anything that could reasonably be interpreted as a phlogiston, and no sort of observation of a phlogiston could be made.

“Normal science” is not, in fact, a Popperian enterprise of attempts to refute the accepted paradigm but rather a sort of “building out” of an accepted paradigm. Scientists do not attempt to examine the edges of current theories to disprove them, but rather to corroborate and expand upon the accepted theory, adding detail and adjusting the accepted theory to fit facts. Scientists attempt to get published, and that involves remaining within the limits of the paradigm.

Kuhn draws upon the appearance of Copernicus’s theory of the motion of celestial objects (that we revolve around the sun). This theory was not significantly better at explaining those objects' movements than the contemporary geocentric theory. But the geocentric theory had already resembled a Frankenstein’s monster of a theory, with all sorts of patches and questionable explanations, and the time was ripe for a new paradigm.

For the sake of further illustration consider the accepted LDL paradigm of heart disease. Countless studies from all sorts of angles have called this paradigm into question (details of the research on the subject can be found in Malcolm Kendrick’s writings, primarily his two books: The Great Cholesterol Con and The Clot Thickens), and yet many researchers still assume its truth. They simply adjust their theory to fit the facts and massage studies to prove their point.

This is “normal science” – science gone bad, to an extent, but still the normal, day-to-day work of scientists. Researchers are not particularly creative individuals, and they are generally unable to reject an accepted paradigm in the absence of any reasonable alternative. Scientists do not just say, “Well, this must be wrong, and we have no idea what is actually right.” Instead, they continue to work within the accepted paradigm.

Kuhn, therefore, posited that scientific revolutions occur when 1) the prevailing paradigm has been weakened to the point of seeming almost laughable, and 2) a viable alternative is suggested. So, too, true changes to our lifestyles usually occur when these two elements line up: 1) we feel deeply that something is wrong and needs to change, and 2) something that can truly serve as a better organizing principle appears. I say “usually” because, occasionally, we stumble into those life-changing organizing principles by chance, but I’m not talking about things that happen by chance here – I’m talking about actually taking control and making a change.

We change – truly improve – when we find a new motivation. When we get married, have a kid, someone dies. When big things happen, and the ground is ripe for change. This may sound bombastic, and maybe it is, but barbell training, Starting Strength, can be that motivation.

I used to be a very skinny “skinny-fat” 6’2” male weighing 150 pounds. After some fooling around with random bodyweight stuff, some dumbbells and crap, I found Starting Strength, and all of a sudden I had a new motivation: to succeed at adding 5 pounds to my squat next workout. My schedule changed; my nutrition changed. I wanted something that made me change. I had to eat more. I had to make sure I slept properly.

Not because I simply understood the problem. Obviously, there was a problem. But because I had a clear, measurable goal to achieve: 5 pounds added to the workout. Because something with a strong gravitational pull necessitated those changes. Barbell training forced me to make changes I hadn’t had a practical, tangible reason to change.

It’s easy to say “I’m too fat” or “I’m too skinny” “so I’m going to eat differently.” “I’m always tired so I’ll sleep more,” but nothing in your life has changed to really get you off your ass and actually make the changes necessary to improve. When you have a new motivation, it drags the rest of your life along with it.

But the changes that go along with barbell training are much deeper than anyone who has not undergone them would understand. You don’t just eat more and better. Deeper things change. You learn things you didn’t know you would learn, about yourself and your limits, about your way of looking at life and approaching challenges. Your values change. You begin to appreciate new things. By adding a new gravitational force to your life, other satellites in orbit begin to subtly shift.

I began lifting with Starting Strength in early 2020. I was already relatively skeptical of government, having read Hayek, Friedman, de Tocqueville, and the rest of the classical liberal gamut. But I was not skeptical enough. I believed the propaganda about a vaccine and thought – at first – that I needed to wear a mask in public. I failed the test Rip talked about.

But change takes time. By the time the vaccine came out, I was already skeptical – but not skeptical enough as the totalitarian regime in Israel, where I reside, forced the entire population to get vaccinated as a sort of giant experiment in return for discounts and preferential distribution of the Pfizer mRna treatment. If they hadn’t forced me, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the shot. I had gotten that far, but I hadn’t gotten far enough to tell them to go get fucked. I wish I had, as I promptly got Covid twice and needlessly exposed myself to risks they said didn’t exist.

I already somewhat believed in self-sufficiency, in skepticism of government, in independent thought, but I still trusted the “market” and large companies. I figured the invisible hand would force them to take into account my interests or something. This is one small example of a way of looking at the world that has changed thanks to finding Starting Strength.

Lifting itself didn’t change this. But lifting is not simply picking the barbell up and putting it back down. Lifting is learning something about yourself. Will I try the 5th rep even if rep number 4 was grindy as hell? Will I do the program I have written down today even though my girlfriend just dumped me and I feel like shit? Will I dig deep to see what I can do, thereby changing mentally – thereby adopting new ways of doing things?

Beyond the questions actually asked during lifting, I begin to dig deeper. I want to succeed at lifting – will I continue wasting my cash on Snickers, cakes, and soda? Or will I man up, buy some meat, and learn how to cook it myself? Lifting has now made me learn how to cook.

And then I say, well, I can probably hold my own in a fight now – will I do something to make sure I can defend my family if an intruder breaks in at night instead of relying on the government? Lifting has engendered more self-sufficiency, more questioning of authority and the accepted social structures in which we all live.

Will I be responsible enough to sleep at night instead of staying up watching porn or YouTube all night? Lifting has made me realize what is of value and what is simply a time-sink. And then, as I disconnect from relying on others, from the large corporations forcing their ideology down my throat, as I turn off CNN, YouTube, and whatever other crap I’m imbibing, I begin to breathe fresher air mentally. I turn off the sewage pipe spewing crap into my living room for years and clean up my mind and my life.

Things deeper than just eating cleaner and sleeping more change. Subtly, slowly, over the course of a year, two, five – you change. Your opinions change. Your attitude toward yourself changes, thereby changing your attitude toward life. By adding a new element to the stable orbit of your life, lifting disrupts things. It makes you think about things. Taking it seriously forces you to reevaluate things you had never even considered as problematic or in need of change. It also creates a new motivation that can fuel the determination to make these changes. Because some of them aren’t easy. In our shithole culture/media/government/world, they demand constant attention, and you’re not sure that you can keep it up.

But you learned under the bar that not being sure you can do something is no reason not to at least ride it down to the bottom and try to bring it back up. And if you fail today, you deload, reevaluate your program, your recovery – whatever might be the problem, even something you hadn't considered before – and get it done next time.

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