Buckle up, Crew, as
we’ve got some ground to cover.
First, “Face under
pressure” is, obviously, a reiteration of Ernest Hemingway’s original quote
on the concept of “Grace under pressure.”
Some refine to
simplicity and say it was his definition of courage/guts, but in a letter to F.
Scott Fitzgerald, he makes it clear he has something more in mind than sheer
guts. As a matter of fact, he’s a bit disdainful of guts or courage on its own.
“It makes no
difference your telling G[erald] Murphy about bull fighting…. [I] Was not
referring to guts but to something else. Grace under pressure. Guts never made
any money or anybody except violin string manufacturers.”-A letter dated
April 20, 1926.
Hemingway was
expressing a courageous ideal as something more than mere bravado, he
reaches for something that might be closer to the Italian concept of Sprezzatura, a word that appears in the
1528 volume titled The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione.
The Book
of the Courtier is a
manual that seeks to define and instruct the ideal courtier/man-at-arms who
strived to be skilled in arms and athletic events but also equally skilled in
conversation, music and dancing. In essence, an all-around Man.
Castiglione defines Sprezzatura
as "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal
all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and
almost without any thought about it".
An English
correlate-word may be insouciance, but that still falls a bit short. The
word, “cool” as in the cinematic Steve McQueen comes closer to capturing it for
modern eyes.
“OK,
Mark, thanks for the literature lesson, but what the hell does this have to do
with training?”
Old school training
practices, both physical culture [conditioning] and combat, embraced a slow but
steady approach. In other words, no “1 Year to Jiu-Jitsu Blackbelt”
roadmaps, or “Gain 20 Pounds of Muscle in 60 days!” aims.
Rather the goal in
both endeavors was the assumption that you were in for the long haul and were
comfortable with the day-in, day-out of this lifelong embrace.
With that said, in the
realm of conditioning/physical culture, mere muscle size was not the goal
[seldom was] it was more about overall development. Bringing along the muscles
and the ligaments and the tendons and the stamina simultaneously.
Striving for only one
of these attributes, to old school minds, was a recipe for imbalance and future
injury.
We’re all aware of the
imbalances between strength and stamina in the marathon runner compared with
the powerlifter. Both athletes may excel at the directed aim, but it is at the
self-chosen expense of another attribute.
The athlete who
chooses “20 pounds of muscle in 60 days!” is likely choosing tendon and
ligament damage—the rapidly depleted ibuprofen and Naproxen bottles tell the
tale.
So, what
exactly does this have to with the title of this seemingly random walk?
Many early strength
athletes, physical culturists, boxers, wrestlers were advised to maintain a
neutral face, or “exercise with a cheerful demeanor.”
One was not to “discompose
the lineaments into masks of thwarted ambition.”
Training while
maintaining a neutral face or adopting a “cheerful demeanor” was [and
is] brilliant on two counts.
Count One: Face as Effort Guide/Training Barometer
If one is able to
train, say a given desired reps at a desired weight and remain neutral faced,
we have a built-in visual emotional indicator that the athlete has likely
mastered that given task under that given load.
The need to grunt,
snarl, contort the features are the signs of a body under stress—stresses that
may be a bit on the “too far” side at the moment, stresses that may lead to
that ever-dwindling ibuprofen bottle.
[We see echoes of this
in legendary Golden Age bodybuilding coach Vince “The Iron Guru” Gironda’s
commandment of no grunting, grimacing, rule. He emphasized No Vanity or
Theatrics: Gironda viewed loud noises as an ego-driven distraction rather
than a sign of hard work.]
If the boxer or
wrestler is able to perform a given round or mat drill with a neutral or Stoic
face from top-to-bottom, we are seeing a mastery of a given skill, good
conditioning, and signs to “bump it up.”
The face becomes our
training log, our barometer of when to move to the next level, or when to tweak
downward and find our grace under load or in movement.
“But, Mark,
exercise and training are meant to be stressors, how is one to improve if we
keep it so light that we can stay relaxed?
To that, I say, “Who
said anything about relaxed?”
The aim is to perform
to the top of your neutral face or cheerful ability.
Note, Hemingway never
said bullfighting was boring or easy, or doesn’t take guts, he was urging for
grace in the face of such things.
Castiglione was urging
"a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one
does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about
it".
He did not say that
being a well-rounded courtier was without effort, he instructed that our aim
was to make what requires effort appear effortless.
Which brings us to…
Count Two:
Face-Training as Grace Training
We train to perform
well in our given sport.
We train to perform
our job to the best of our ability.
We train to respond as
ably as we can in high-demand situations.
Part of performing
well, responding well is stress-management.
If we train to
intentionally contort to internal stressful states to such a degree that the
exterior barometer of the face displays internal distress, well, the old-timers
thought that we were setting our default to responding to stress with
stress.
Face Under Pressure
asks that we train by adopting this old school protocol into our regimen
allowing us to train short of injury and foster broader based progress.
It also trains the
taming of the internal state to a state of external composure to better ensure
that the calm, cool, collected demeanor manifests when we need it.
If we train to grunt,
snarl, and grimace under stressors, that just may be our default in
“out-of-gym” stressors. The internal/external loop is deeply intertwined.
Call it cool, Sprezzatura,
behavioral hack, internal-external loop training, the Face Under Pressure
protocol was highly valued from Renaissance men-at-arms to old school
combination men and physical culturists, to Arthur Jones’ exercise research in
the 60’s and 70s’.
To snag this bit of
training for yourself is pretty cheap, all you need is a mirror or a training
partner who calls you out when you “exceed the bounds of a cheerful
demeanor.”
Resources for Livin’
the Warrior Life
The Black Box
Warehouse
https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/
The Indigenous Ability
Blog
https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/
The Rough ‘n’ Tumble
Raconteur Podcast
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