The Three Pillars of Flexibility and Mobility

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There’s a very specific type of reader I’m pushing this blog to. So, already I’m guessing you train hard: In the gym, on the mat, in the ring, on the court, in the arena, etc. Ideally, several of the above.

But if there’s one aspect of your health that you overlook, I’m guessing it’s flexibility and mobility. I know because I overlooked it for years, and it came back to haunt me.

I started training hard in high school. By senior year, I was putting up lift totals just north of 600lbs. Nothing earth-shattering, but some pretty serious weights for a kid whose body was still growing. Since then, I’ve been lifting regularly and competing in sports that are not known for their kindness to the human body – football, rugby, hockey, and martial arts.

My body started to fall apart around the age of twenty-five. Suddenly, my knees couldn’t take a 135lb squat to parallel. My posterior chain tightened up and started fucking with my lower back. Regular injuries became a fact of life in every sport I played, even beer league hockey and co-ed ultimate frisbee.

As a young man, it’s far too easy to ignore the long-term damage you’re doing to your body by training hard. And yes, while training is by far a net positive for your body and soul, you are doing damage as well. Fortunately you can mitigate this damage, improve your present performance, and set yourself up for a long and healthy middle age, by following a few simple rules:

1) Stretch

I do two Yoga classes a week. Yoga is not magic. It is stretching. Also, a great opportunity to meet hot, flexible girls. Make a yoga class part of your weekly routine, learn the poses that loosen up your tight areas, and practice them on your own time at home or between sets.

2) Myofascial Release

Myofascial release involves the use of pressure and massage to loosen up pockets of hard, immobile connective tissue. You can get a proper ATP Release massage done if you’ve got the cash, or just pick up a foam roller and bust out a half hour of excruciatingly wonderful pain on your own. I roll out my upper back, IT band, quads, and calves at least twice a week. It’s the best sort of pain, and loosens up my posterior chain (calves to hamstrings to glutes to lumbar to upper back) which has mostly ended the chronic lower back pain I was starting to develop.

3) Eat Your Goddamn Vegetables

This very well may be a placebo, and it could very well be due to other changes I’ve made in my lifestyle and training routine. But, once I started eating a garbage bag full of leafy green vegetables with every meal, many of my old, nagging chronic injuries started to fade away.

Eat Your Goddamn Vegetables

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Smart people have figured out by now: Mainstream health and nutrition advice is absolute garbage. If you live in North America, look around at the heaving, rippling flesh, hanging off your peers like slabs of gristle – and realize how badly the conventional wisdom has failed them.

But dismissing conventional wisdom is easy. The hard part is choosing what to replace it with. A bit of research will lead you to some basic truths that the rogue nutritionist community is reaching a consensus on:

Sugar is bad

Wheat is bad

Bad oils are bad

For a long time, I ate what I thought was a pretty damn healthy diet, simply because I was avoiding all of the above, and eating truckloads of meat, eggs, butter, avocados, and olives. Vegetables? Hah. I’ll toss a sprig of parsley on my steak, and call it a day.

Now, I start every day with a tall vegetable juice and few pieces of fruit, I have a salad for lunch, more fruit before I train, and dinner always comes with a massive heap of broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, brussel sprouts, or carrots. I eat berries and kale chips like popcorn. The results:

– I feel fucking awesome.

– I’m having great workouts. PRed on the bench and squat in the past month, after almost a year off lifting.

– Old injuries are on the wane. My knees have been the weak link in my squat for half a decade. Suddenly, zero pain.

– Hangovers have become extremely mild

– I’m appreciating fruits and vegetables more than I ever have. Carrots and green leafy vegetables are tasty. Fruits and berries are a sweet dessert.

The resource that got me to make the switch towards eating more fruits and vegetables was Juicing For Men. I had always been sceptical of the juicing movement, because everyone I’d ever heard talk it up was a mush-headed hippie. JFM doesn’t go on about the healing properties of absorbing the plant’s life energy into your own or increasing your thetan levels or any such bullshit. Simply: Vegetables are full of nutrients that will optimize your body’s performance in a variety of ways, and turning five pounds of veggies into juice makes it easier and more convenient to get those nutrients. I don’t even own a juicer yet, but I look forward to unwrapping this one Christmas morning.

If you’re on the fence about picking up a juicer, try this experiemnt. Add a gallon of V8 and a few heaping bags of cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, kale, spinach, carrots, apples, bananas, blueberries, kiwis, and whatever other produce you like, to your weekly shop. See how it affects your training, energy levels, and overall health.

If the result is that you look, feel and perform better, pick up a juicer of your own and check out Juicing For Men for a ton of tips and recipes.

Why You Should Resist Online Dating

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Online Dating is an incredibly powerful tool. I have a dozen friends who are absolutely killing it on Plenty of Fish, OK Cupid, E-Harmony, and other sites.

But for the first three months of my mission to become the absolute deadliest hunter of that most dangerous of quarries, woman, I am absolutely refusing to touch a dating site.

The best thing about online dating is that it allows you to bypass the most difficult and psychologically stressful part of any seduction: The Approach. Taking hold of your balls and approaching a hot girl is difficult, even after you’ve done it a thousand times. With online dating, you can effectively approach hundreds of girls in a few hours, all of whom are open, all of whom are single, all of whom are separated from shame-inducing eavesdroppers and cock-blocking friends, and all of whom will welcome your advance, or at least be ambivalent to it.

But there is one major meta drawback to online dating: Doing all of your approaching online makes you soft.

Online game allows you to avoid approach anxiety. Real game (meat game) forces you to confront it.

Online game allows you to avoid the risk of public rejection. Meat game forces you to decide that public rejection doesn’t matter, and realize that any tool hating on you for getting blown out wishes he had your balls.

Online game allows you to avoid inconveniencing girls who don’t want to get hit on. Meat game forces you to stop giving two fucks about thirty seconds out of some girl’s life.

Like I said, online game is a useful tool. But it’s also dangerous, if you come to rely on it. That’s why I spent the past two months lining up dates and bangs through day approaches and one night stands.

Sometimes I was successful. When I wasn’t, I went hungry. If I had given myself the easy out of retreating to my laptop to send messages to girls, how many fewer approaches would I have made? How many fewer nights would I have gone out?

I have no doubt that many guys who do all of their approaching online do quite well for themselves. But a man who cannot approach women in his day to day life and at the bar is not a complete man. If you’re using a dating profile to supplement your pipeline, in addition to your night and day meat game, more power to you. If you’re using it as a crutch, take some time off from computer screen and go cut your teeth in the real world.

The Thumotic Oath

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Once upon a time, a man’s word was his bond. Why do you think courts ask witnesses to swear oaths before giving testimony? As strange as it may seem to us now, breaking your word was once considered serious business.

My personal policy on lying is this: I do it all the time. Mostly to women, but I will lie to my boss, the police, bouncers, or other people outside my immediate circle, if it will benefit me. In a world of lying cravens, the habitually honest man puts himself at an unnecessary disadvantage.

But here at Thumotic, we are carving out a little slice of the world that is safe for traditional masculinity, and that means taking our oaths seriously. So before you sign on the dotted line below this oath, I want you to be aware that you’re doing something real. You are making a commitment. You are swearing an Oath, to me, to yourself, and to whatever Gods you choose.

If it appeals to you, copy this oath out in your own hand and sign where appropriate. Put it up on your fridge, in your office, or in your bedroom. Do it to add to you strength. Do it to bind yourself to good habits. Do it to force a commitment on yourself. But whatever your reasons, do not do it lightly…

* * *

The Thumotic Oath

I, _______, hereby swear the following:

I will train my body. I will grow stronger, faster, and more agile. I will build my physique, and show the world how much respect I have for myself.

I will fuel my body. The majority of my diet will consist of vegetables, fruits, and clean meats.

I will control my vices. Alcohol, tobacco, and drugs will be my servants; they will not make a servant out of me.

I will treat what friends and family I admit to my inner circle with honesty, generosity and respect.

I will unapologetically pursue the women and relationships that I desire.

I will not waste money and resources on stupid shit.

I will not waste time and attention on stupid shit.

I will remain calm, unemotional and nonreactive to the world around me.

I will dedicate my life to the constant improvement of my body, mind and spirit.

I will set an example, and so lead the men around me out of the darkness.

I will help build a world in which traditional masculine virtue is celebrated, not disparaged.

I, _______, swear all of this on my honor as a man on ____________.

The Thumotic Manifesto

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The typical 21st century western male is not a man.

He is a limp-wristed mangina, a coward, a collaborator and a fool. He is an embarrassment to the thousands of generations of his ancestors who lived lives of struggle and sacrifice, just so that he can sit on his arse and wait out death in a perpetual state of quiet desperation.

The modern man lives a life that his ancestors would consider sad, pathetic, and deeply unnatural. The excuses he offers would make them laugh. His fatalistic, self-pitiful posturing would make them cringe.

Thumotic is a place for men who reject this path. our society’s flight from traditional manly virtue. It is a home for men who are unashamed of their masculinity, their pride in themselves, and their lust for power in all facets of their lives.

Thumos is a Greek word which translates to spirit, fight, or gameness. Thumos is the humour which inspires a creature to bare its teeth and fight, rather than cower meekly in a corner. Thumos is energy, lust, desire, bloodthirst, pride, righteous anger, the will to power. It is Life. It is what we have lost, and must now find.