Trains Go Somewhere, Does Your Training Get You There? by Mark Hatmaker

 

I use the photo as a jumping off point. That is the 55-year-old me enjoying a lazy Monday afternoon searching the river limestone for semi-submerged caves to explore.

The image spawned a few, “What are you doing to look like that, Old Man?” inquiries.

 

First—Thank you. Everybody digs praise.

Second—Allow me to list a few things I am not doing.

·        No Olympic lifts.

·        No kettlebells.

·        No powerlifts.

·        No roadwork.

·        No heavy weight.

·        No “rep” higher than 8 on anything.

·        No diets [I am a daily donut connoisseur, among other sweet things the Good Lord put on the planet.]

·        No supplements [unless you count fish-oil for an Old Man’s knee-bones.]

·        No needles.

·        In short, none of the usual business we associate with “Bro-ness.”

Third-What I am doing is following Old School ways. Using a variety of old practices and exploits to allow the body to adjust to the facts of physical expression under the “stresses” of journeys, quests, travels and adventures.

We’ll delve into specifics as this loose series of essays rolls on, but first, what follows today, is a little mind-setting to perhaps bust us out of the habit of mistaking recess-activities and hamster-wheel rote expression for the “prize.”

With that said, the title of today’s sermon again…

Trains Go Somewhere, Does Your Training Get You There?

 

Let’s define terms.

 

We all use the word “training”, and we know exactly what it means, “To prepare.”

 

It entered our vocabulary when this nation and others saw railroads as the major form of high-tech transportation. [it remained so well into the 1930s.]

 

The word “training” began being accepted as facile metaphor for military preparation, as to be “trained” was to “stay on the tracks” to hold the course.

 

It trickled into sporting vernacular meaning essentially the same thing.

To skip training or to be lax about it was to “go off the rails” or more simply “to derail.”

 

The useful railroading metaphor allows us to see that our bodies/minds/skills are not where we desire them to be in the present moment. We have an eye on a distant destination—literally or figuratively. So, we adopt the iron dictates of a steel track and get to rollin’.

 

But the word, in its original intent, stipulated that you were going somewhere, you had a destination in mind.

 

To the Old School Hoss mindset static bike rides to nowhere, “Fran” every 8 days or so, and roadwork for t-shirts would be an unfathomable concept.

 

Also, an unfathomable concept, using a Concept 2 rowing machine and never actually plunging a surf. Never executing a high-brace during a nether-puckering plunge of rapids.

 

I’m not picking on Concept 2’s or any other gear, but you get the idea.

 

The Old School Hoss mindset asks of any endeavor or piece of gear, does this get me where I’m going?

 

It would neve occur to ask, “Can I do this forever for the rest of my life and never have to leave my house or leave the path around my block?”

 

[If you are curious about the venture a wee bit further premise, I suggest having a look at the offering titled, Risk-Free is Not Free at All.]

 

Let’s use an exemplar as our next jumping-off point.

 

“For myself, I hardly ever do exercises. I find exercise as a sport unbearable. I much prefer to set off and suffer during the first few weeks of a journey.”--Wally Herbert

 

At first glance, that statement/opinion seems to be one of a slacker and anathema to all the “Hoo-ah!” “I never miss a training day!” cadre out there.

 

Again, at first glance…

Lest we think Mr. Herbert a slacker.

·        He is likely the first man to have actually reached the North Pole via an overland route.

·        In a 40-year career he has trekked more than 23,000 miles in a sledge and/or open vessel, over half of that 23,000 miles was untrodden territory until he arrived.

·        He mapped over 46,000 miles in Antarctica.

·        He came within 200 miles of reaching the South Pole via dog sled before having to turn back.

·        He made a 16-month journey to be the first to make a surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean.

·        Ranulph Fiennes, no stranger to adventure himself, has called Herbert “the greatest polar explorer of our time.”

 

And yet, when home, try to get this guy into the gym.

 

Is Mr. Herbert encouraging sitting pat and staying put?

 

Obviously not.

 

When one digs deeper, he is asking two questions…

 

QUESTION ONE

“What are you waiting for?”

 

How many times have you said or heard variations of the following?

·        “When I finally drop these few pounds I will…”

·        “When I get in better shape I will…”

·        “When I can fit into this swimsuit, I’ll…”

·        “When the kids go off to school, I’ll…”

·        “When my tax refund comes in…”

·        “When I retire, get more time…”

·        “When I’m a better person than I am right now.”

 

Wally Herbert would advise going from Zero to 60 with no lag between the decision and the act, no gap between the dream and the manifestation of that dream.

 

The standard [and wise] advice to those who await their better selves before doing anything “better than their current selves” is “Go Average! Go Often!”

 

Whatever your “Well, when I’m ready I’ll…” that’s holding you back, I wager it’s not as daunting as Mr. Herbert’s going from a chair in his study in Scotland to trekking across the Arctic Ocean for 16-months.

 

QUESTION TWO

 

And this is the question that ties into our Old School Hoss mindset stage-setting…

 

“What are you training for?”

 

I ask you my active cadre, look at all the box gyms, the Globo-gyms, the garages filled with Rogue/CrossFit paraphernalia….What are we training for?

 

Do we have a big adventure looming on the horizon? [Lord, I hope so.]

 

Or are we filling time on hamster wheels to nowhere inside our mortgaged Habitrail environments?

 

Once we get beyond Mr. Herbert’s surface read, we see he is not asking us to NOT train, he is asking us to GO!

 

To do something no matter what and to not expend energy in fruitless pursuits that allows our activity-consciences off the hook.

 

He is holding us accountable where some of us sit in self-satisfaction thinking such thoughts as “Look at those couch-potatoes and look at me, I go to the gym four times per week!”

 

Mr. Herbert looks at couch potatoes and the exercise-sanctified alike and asks “So, what have you done? What are you going to do? Where are you going to go?”

 

The correct answer to that tripart questions is, Don’t wait. Go.

 

And to all of us who dig training, let’s put it to interesting use.

 

Let’s have stories better than “How much do you bench?” or “How many reps?” or “What’s your best 5K?” “What’s your Fran time?” “I’m so sore from last night’s WOD.”

 

Snore.

 

If we are to embody Old School training, to the word, our tracks lead to somewhere.

Our tracks always have a “where” in mind.

 

The Heroic Journey Prescription

 

Joseph Campbell, the avatar of resurrecting the importance of myth and heroic journeys in the personal sphere offers the following.

 

He posits that our human tribal bands evolved in communities where journeys, quests, rituals of achievement were a vital and integral part of “becoming.”

 

There are no Hero-Tales of sitting put and standing pat.

 

No Viking Song Cycles called “Knud the Brave Who Stayed in his Garage Lifting 4 Times per Week.”

 

Campbell sees our loss of questing, our forgoing of journeys as a cause of much ennui and a bit of “soul remove.”

 

“The one who watches athletic games instead of participating in athletics is involved in a surrogate achievement.”—The Power of Myth, p. 131.

 

Read that, passive consumption, or non-achievement.

 

The next step up the ladder…

 

“…that’s characteristic of our sedentary lives…there is or may be intellectual excitement, but the body is not in it very much. So you have to engage intentionally in mechanical exercises, the daily dozen and so forth. I find it very difficult to enjoy such things, but there it is. Otherwise, your whole body says to you, “Look, you’ve forgotten me entirely. I’m becoming just a clogged stream.”

 

The remedy seems to be a return to journeys, a return to quests, a return to expedition, a return to a train on a track that actually goes somewhere.

 

I sympathize with those who find it hard to exercise. The hamster running furiously on the wheel is running out frustration to be free. The hamster did not buy that wheel for himself. His captors did.

 

We buy our own hamster wheels. We are wise to disdain them.

 

“OK, Mark, that’s all kind sorta interesting, back to that photo; what are you doing to look like that at your age?”

 

We’ll get to that in Part Two of this series, it will be titled, “Lords of the Lakes, Sinbads of the Wilderness.”

 

For a wee bit more on Old School Unleaded Training see here and here.

 

For more boots-on-the-ground skinny on Old school Ways delivered to your door in video and training syllabi mode each and every month.