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STRONG Life Podcast ep 477 Stop Playing the Victim: How to Take Control and Crush Life Brought to you by DAD STRONG – Strength Training
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30 Responses
I was about to take down the weights and body compositons of my high school weightlifting class. One of the girls refused, saying she was uncomfortable with her weight and that by finding out how much she weighed would damage her self-esteem. She said her parents didn’t want her to damage her self-esteem. Maybe if she would come to the realization that nobody but her parents gives a damn about her self-esteem she could actually move forward and do something about it!
its starting to get like that over here (uk) so i have just brought a copy of your ebook and so i will man up and train at home
It’s quite the same here in Germany.
Sports in School mostly suck – because even the fattest and slowest “athletes” can get quite good marks.
There were guys und girls in my class in 2009 who ran the 5k in much over 30 minutes and clearly couldn’t do a single pull-up (we also never had to – “yeah lets do a circle: 5 push ups, rest, 5 lunges, rest, 10 sit-ups, rest,….”) and still got average marks.
After school i began training with my federal states law enforcement agency. And it’s also the same here.
In a period of half a year we had 3x90min of different sports per week.
Which meant: 90 min of self defense training & boxing (which was hard but okay), 90 min of either idiotic circletraining (“i don’t know what to do today, lets fuck up our trainees or bore them to hell”) or swimming, or 90 minutes of running with the “the slower you run the more you run”-method.
All in all i have to say: there is no “physical culture” here in germany.
In school all the guys were talking shit about how much to bench and how much to curl, the girls all talking shit about being vegetarian and the benefits of sitting on an ergometer on lowest setting while reading a book.
Here in the law enforcement agency its not much different.
We have sport-teachers here, that are proven marathoners or triathlethes, who don’t know shit, but they studied “sports and physical training” and are therefore qualified to train all of us – not.
In our weight room at our barracks here, there are tons of useless equipment.
literally: few machines, many cable-turrets, several benches, lots of dumbbells and curl equipment and no (yes! not a single!) squat rack or anything like that.
And so you can see the young and old officers benching and curling like there is no tomorrow, doing lat pulls for fun and in between some sit-ups.
Nobody cares about squatting, because there is a leg press. No one cares about pull-ups, because there is the lat-pulldown and so on.
It sucks.
And those are the reasons i train underground style.
I love bodyweight-training and currently i’m going from pr to pr.
Today i tested myself and did 250 bodyweight-squats in a row – because fuck you you sucking bench&curl bodybuilders.
i rely on a mix of bodyweight training “convict conditioning” style with crossfit and underground strength style workouts and i love it.
I will close now:
you Americans are not the only people who have to deal with the pussification.
Greetings from germany 🙂
you both are excellent writers, I want to say ive found the article and your resppnse to it, very accurate and it has got me all FTW -rebel- anti govt- duck the system letsstart a riot type of mood, you got my motor running to put it simply, thank you. great job, great point, lets do something about it! I am down. my kid is nine he is being brainwashed and made lazy by society and electronics ..we go around and around about screen time, he has gerd/asthma but does play baseball but yeah kids are so lazy now. it IS scary if youre smart enough to think about it asnd ralize whats happeniung.
that’s what I didn’t realize before your article, THEY WANT US WEAK> duh ! I should’ve reslaixed that a long time ago. this is the push I needed to begin my jogging routine like ive wanted to but keep putting off for years, jeeze, I thank you. I live in northern California and have one son. his dad is not in his life often and isn’t a good influence when he is. my son im afraid is going toward the latter side of the field, I ask him many times to go play get off the tv, he is strong and wants to fight for the remote. its terrible the tv is a m9onster. sadly we are licving with my mom so I cant control what she watches and she will watch his show and it s a constant bttle to cut off the screen time it just freaking ducks, id cut the cord if my mom would not throw me out and sue me …lol
I and some others are trying to start a web-based exercise program based on bodyweight and kettlebell training. I decided to contact the local Army recruiter to see whether he’d be willing to recommend our site to kids who wanted to enlist, but were worried about their ability to handle the physical training. I was in the Army from ’85 to ’80, and we got to talking about the changes in kids and in the Army. He informed me that drill sergeants were not allowed to yell at trainees, and could punish them with no more than 10 pushups nowadays! Heaven help us…..
Keep on ranting, Zach! Some of us are listening, and doing our part to spread the word.
Shit doesnt just hit the fan, it comes in tonnes
oh damn, i didnt realise that my comment was “The comment:. i thought i was registering. well anyways. bro, keep rantin (if THAT is called rantin nowadays). you have inspired ME of all people to get me arse back in shape. granted i was never “overweight” or… ah screw the crap we americans throw around. thanks to your so called “rant” thats more of a scientific research (take a look at the research bein conducted by the “non-governmental” non-thinking, all inclusive, humanist, sensitive … dolts… apparently we are to be content by their approach. ya know what? i feel like i was a lost sheep. questions kept comin but answers were few and unfulfilling (that should be a word). power to you bro. and best yet power to all those who cherish discipline, respect (for those that deserve it) and bootstrap approach (copyright by me right now at this moment) >XD
I totally agree with 90% of what your saying. I just wish you had not mentioned the army as an alternative to the laziness of our kids. I find guys like you who are passionate about good health and hard work are what our youngsters need. I’m sure the army has a way of making large groups of people follow discipline and yes probably, while keeping them in relatively good physical health. But it’s certainly not the place to encourage how to handle adversity, accountability, responsibility and especially not decision making skills. Most of them learn to follow, not to lead. So, while strengthening the body the army is weakening the critical mind. If we wan’t our children to make a real difference in the future, yes they need to learn hard work and the unlimited benefits of a real effort mentally and physically but they also have to be thought self motivation and leadership. That’s how all your teachings will become contagious Zach.
By the way, i didn’t know you were Romanian, i love that country.
peace !
Marc, I think had you ever served in the army, or any of the armed services, you’d understand that critical thinking, decision making, risk evaluation, how to endure hardship, and leadership. They actually go about training people to be leaders.
It produces people who know they can do hard things when they must, who have pushed their limits, and who have lead, and been held accountable for the results of that leadership. No military wants a herd of sheep – you need a long line of leaders, one after the other, so that as groups become smaller the next man (or woman) in line takes over.
In the end, it’s all about leadership, and the physical is just a side benefit!
I enjoyed your article the last time it was posted and it still rings true. I remember Air Force boot camp. At the end of the 30th day of training, one of the requirements was a 1.5 mile under 35 minutes. Yes, you read that right. An entire 35 minutes to run far less than two miles. (Really wish I had become a Marine instead.) As a nation we have allowed the mediocre and the lackadaisical to set the pace.
We live in an era of the excuse. Don’t give anyone the appearance of fitness, you must be doing steroids. Here, eat, you can afford it. Discipline and consistency are words of the past. Now it has become give in, succumb to your urges. Get abs in four minutes while you inhale your favorite junk foods.
I once visited a gym where deadlifts were outlawed, squat racks were non-existent, and heavy lifting was banned. Intimidates and scares the hell out of the other members – not allowed. But, boy, they had the most modern sit down equipment, complete with TV’s, small personal fans installed to keep you from sweating, magazines to read while you have a leisure, stress free workout.
Until the pendulum swings in the other direction, weakness will only drive the will to exert one’s self further down in darkness, while the strong willed, disciplined individuals become a faint memory and a small minority, still holding on to what made civilization great in the first place.
@Nicholas: You’re right, brutha, guys like us are bringing back the truth – that you gotta work for that shit, earn it and sweat for it.
4 minute abs and shortcuts exist in fantasy land.
It’s hard to follow your rant, though I might agree with it, when you call it the ‘pussification’ of america. I’m assuming you’re insinuating that American is becoming like a vagina? Likening someone who is weak to a woman is extremely degrading. Use your words wisely.
@Laura: Laura – I’m hoping that you would be able to tell by reading this has NOTHING to w/women, it’s a “phrase” and if I TRULY wanted to relate this to women I would have mentioned so in the article.
But, as you can see, I did not 🙂
It’s just a “phrase” and of course I knew some people would be offended, this is the way it goes when topics of this nature are expressed.
If you have difficulty following my rant then you are perhaps not as involved as I am with seeing how people are short changing themselves with regards to success in ALL areas of life:
– business
– health
– fitness
– sports
– career success
– the list goes on and on, people are getting soft, both mentally and physically, and I felt the need to say something about it. Period, end of story.
Thanks for writing 🙂
Serious truth. People who would rather argue semantics than content are obviously not interested in content. Trolls gonna troll, simple as that. Awesome rant Z, you have a movement and nothing can stop it. When the cold hard rain of reality hits these pussified guys and girls they are going to wish they had someone to listen to them whine about how a name offended them. For the rest of us, drive on, hard work and smart training = results. Thanks for everything
This is all true !!!!
People want results without work.
Nothing in this world is free – that is what I teach my son.
100% SOLID BEEN ON THIS FOR A WHILE GOOD JOB! YESSSSSSSSSSS
You just said what all old school think discipline is the key does not exist in the fake gyms and PT classes are getting cut in schools
It’s got to the stage here in Australia where to join one of our state police forces, one of the physical requirements is to perform five push ups. That’s right, five push ups! Good times ahead.
HELL YEAH!!!
I’ve followed your stuff for a while now but this is the first time I’ve felt the need to comment. I’ve been ranting about this exact thing for a while now. Coaching rugby in the UK at ages ranging from Under 16 to Under 7s I see exactly this sort of thing going on weekly. We have parents feeding kids sweets on the side lines (Under 7’s) to give them “Energy” to get though a 2 minute game of tig WTF??? (My type 1 diabetic son sometimes requires a banana part way through but hey he DOES need it)
Also working as an IT manager after putting my self through courses and re-training to get out of my stuffy factory job. I see so many weak people in the office that think they are owed a job and a living. They use sick days as extra holidays WTF!!! We take the competition out of so many aspects in schools and it is like you described it starting to show in business and will only get worse while we live in pampered, nanny states. Hell we have no swings or climbing frames near our house due to a kid falling off and the parents suing??? WTF!!! Also if a kid gets wrong at school the parents og in and have goes at the teacher I’d have got a hiding for getting wrong never mind whether I was in the right or wrong..
Dude this article is so on the money for me and has hit home to stuff that I’m really passionate about. I am the guy working out in the back yard with a barbell and dumbbells from ebay a pull up bar and any heavy shit I can find 😉 The “Gyms” around me are the ones you mention where actually sweating and pushing to the point of wanting to hurl is frowned upon. Doing intervals on a treadmill was seen as abuse of the equipment MAN WTF have we become???
Keep up the great work man!!!!!
Dude I know what you feel bro. At my high school, they shutdown the gym a couple of years ago. A while before I. Now there are just a bunch of weights sitting around all dusty. Also, it is only when I read your article that I realised how true it is what physical education classes do. In Canada, here, it’s the same damn thing. You can walk if your too tired to run and most of the classes is free time doing frisbee,soccer,basketball. 1/3 of the class just sits thought it, it’s pathetic!
Zach, thanks for bringing so much truth! I am a PE teacher and there is so much I see on a daily basis that just disgusts me. Kids who despise any type of physical activity, if it’s not a video game, they have no interest. I have parents who send their kids with excuse notes explaining why they are not allowed to participate in PE for the lamest reasons. I even had a parent call me to complain that they didn’t appreciate me working their children so hard because they woke up sore the day after we did a fitness activity. Then perhaps the most infuriating thing is my fellow PE teachers that are out of shape and have the worst diets. They only became PE teachers for the wrong reasons. So much for setting a good example and living what you teach. No leading from the front here. This is just the fire I needed to get me jacked for the upcoming year. I plan on hanging this article above my desk to get me amped every time I need some fire. Like I always say “What would John Wayne do”!
I agree with most of these comments and especially when the children can’t be children and raised pansy ass good for nothings. What most of these kids need is to stop playing these fake video games and get off thier ass. Then join the infantry or Rangers and be a real man that can take what ever life has to throw at them. I remember when i was young riding a bike and skateboarding with out a helmet, drinking out of a hose on a hot day. Now adays people look at things like this in horror and i smile because they are pussified. The person i really look up to in this area is George Carlin the comedian.
• I promise you, my dad NEVER changed a diaper
• My dad NEVER cooked
• My dad NEVER took anyone to a little league game (of course my mom did not either, we rode our bikes or walked)
• My dad NEVER did any of these chores
On the other hand………..
• My dad provided….we always had food on the table, we NEVER worried that we would be warm in the winter….his job was to PROVIDE…and he did and he would have held his head in shame if he did not.
Tonight on TV, I learned that in 40% of American households, women are the primary bread winners….and men are staying at home talking care of the children.
On the same TV I see all kinds of ads on ED….sooo, my conclusion is:
If you can get a hard on you no longer have to provide for your family….just be able to service that woman you live with and take care of the children you father and you will be ok…you will be provided for….and you can look forward to your wife coming home from work and hope she doesn’t find some other guy with a bigger dick.
Thank you for commenting. I am a high school teacher and all I hear is “I’m tired”; “What do I do now” or “Do we have to do the reading?” My favorite: “Can I get some ice?” My daughter had a problem with her dance teacher. I told her: “YOU talk to her yourself and YOU deal with the consequences.” Failure builds resiliency- or at least it did before everyone became a shining star at everything. I blame the F-ing internet.
Reading this i guess im lucky as my highschool weightroom has everything you said many gyms dont have
It’s funny because I have been saying the exact same phrase to my fellows and family. It’s the pussifacation of America. You could go so far as get into the homosexual aspects and how that’s rampant, but I tend to just dwell on sports in the USA. Football and Basketball. These guys can barely come in contact with each other, in football it’s sad because that’s supposed to be the only outlet for men who really need to beat the shit out of each other or someone. The basketball is way overboard too. In hoops you would be taught when a guy comes across the key you give him a forearm to the chest and walk him across. That was called good defense. Now you have to wait till he gets on the block and then the kids can hump each other on the block nice and easy. The major contact sports in this country have just lost. It’s almost getting dumb to watch. On a different take I have always complained you can’t even smack a guy up side his head if he mouths off or says something rude to your girl. This country is way in the dull drums of a “Pussification of America”, I had to google this phrase and your site was the first that popped up. Thanks Just would be nice if all men were allowed to be men, and women were ok with being a “woman”
One time, when I was a senior in HS, a gym teacher threatened students with detention for trying to climb a rope in the wrestling room. I was born in 1990 and graduated in ’08. At my HS, students and teachers would probably have needed signed parental and administrative permission to let students climb a net; I’m not even joking. About the only things we did in gym were play with soft kick balls, we did occasionally get “tested” on things like running the mile, how much you could stretch, how many pull ups you could do, etc.
There are social dynamics at work here that could be studied till the end of time. I believe changing this attitude starts at home, and studies seem to indicate that children of single parents tend to be more obese/lazy. My opinion (which matters to few) is that technology/social media has had a much higher impact than anything on children especially. And that’s where it starts. But all great empires rise and then fall. Ours will one day.
Dear friends-
Today I was laying in bed thinking, what happened to America. It’s like we are becoming pussies. Then I wondered: is there a pussification of America? I googled it and got your webpage.
I just want ya’ll to know that pussification isn’t just happening in the gym or the classroom. It’s everywhere. It’s getting a trophy for just showing up for soccer even though your team came in last. It’s sensitivity education where “parental status” has become the new no no. Now we have to be sensitive to people’s needs for “diversity” for anything you can think of. This has gone too far. We have 15 an hour minimum wage where people get paid 15 an hour to sit around and flip burgers. Are you f’in kidding me? Minimum wage jobs are suppose to pay low so that you have a desire to actually improve your lot in life instead of expect people to hand you a pay increase. We’ve got a generation of idiots known as mellinials who think that I as heir employer should be bending over to make their employment a pleasant experience. These days people are addicted to their smartphone. They check their phone, Twitter account, email, and Facebook account 227 times a day. And they wonder why they got passed up for that promotion?!? Soon we will have anti fat people discrimination. It will become illegal to call someone fat. We will have to say they are physically challenged. Then we will have the government telling us that we can’t call people pretty or others ugly else we offend someone so the government will make that illegal too. I’m sorry so how is the government going to convince my dick (or penis for you sensitivity people) up for a 200 lb ugly fat woman? Is that going to be a civil rights violaion subjecting me to damages?
Take me back to the day when Americans had balls and weren’t pussies. If you are offended by his statement go f yourself. We are on a gradual decline to a second rate county and the reason is that individualism, initiative, and self discipline has been replaced with diversification training, lawsuits galore, and a need for someone else to take care of you while you play on your smartphone.
Well lucky for America, manliness is no longer required. Anyone that disagrees with you on the international stage is subject to embargos, and nuclear attack
On a national level, there will always be ‘free range’ kids which grew up the old fashioned way, and they will be the future leaders…not a real problem, things will be fine.