I can’t walk properly (twisted my knee) and I definitely pulled something in my back. It didn’t help that I did two hours of heavy weights at the gym yesterday morning also, but damn - my first roll was intense. Despite the pain, I haven’t felt so strong, and quite frankly, young, in a very long time.
Maybe young is not the word. More….virile, or Alive. You know that feeling you get after having accomplished or built something. If you’re a man, you know what I mean. I woke up early and even though I couldn't straighten my leg, and felt pain rolling over, I felt good.
My theory about testosterone has always been that it’s an “on demand” hormone. In other words, the body produces it only under conditions where it is necessary. Everyone goes on about how we have a crisis of testosterone and it’s because of the plastics and PUFAs, the polyester clothing, the seed oils, the blue lights and all these esoteric things. As much as there is truth in all this, the reality is that it pales in comparison to placing oneself in danger and under pressure.
Now..this can be psychological, but to really get the benefit, it must also have a physical element. And if you lead with physical, psychological will follow. A fight will charge you more than a Zoom argument or bankruptcy hearing ever will.
Think about those jacked up dudes in prison. You think they’re eating some organic diet from Whole Foods, free of environmental plastics and seed oils, or sunning their balls and sleeping on Egyptian cotton bed sheets? Of course not. They are eating slop, sleeping poorly, getting minimal light…but somehow, they’ve probably got double the T levels of most men. Why’s that? Because they have to.
Why in the hell do you need High T levels for an office job? To type on a keyboard? To confront your HR manager? To order you Starbucks, or catch an Uber?
I don’t have any hard data on T levels in prisons. This is my bro-science-self talking, but I can tell you there is something here. I’ve hung out with some rough dudes, and they weren’t eating a Paul Saladino approved diet. Sure…it catches up with them in time and they age faster, but that’s another point.
Nor is the point to go to prison, eat slop and lock yourself in a dark room to get jacked. You should eat well, eat organic, get sunshine, wear natural clothing, avoid blue light and environment plastics. All of these things help, especially with recovery and therefore longevity. But if you think that’s going to “fix your T levels”, you’re mistaken.
The only thing really fixing your T levels is physical danger and exertion.
A quick story about a recent experience of mine:
How it Started
About two and a half years ago, while I was jumping country to country trying to escape lockdowns, I found myself in Sao Paolo, Brazil. For a long time, I’d had BJJ or some kind of martial art on my “list of things to do” but as we all know, life gets busy and unless you make the time, it shall be filled with other things.
Well..I got lucky where I was staying, because there was a dojo right across the road. All I had to do was go downstairs and enter. Even so, it was Corona time, I was busy raging against the machine with podcasts, writing and my business, so I kept putting it off, until one day I just went down there, signed up & bought the Gee. If there’s something I’ve learned in my life, it’s that hesitation is weakness. If you want something, you have to act. Simple. The men who shaped history have been men of action first. Thought is important, but it’s a supporting factor. Action is the prime mover.
"The purpose of man is in action, not thought"
- Thomas Carlyle
I did about 15 - 20 classes all up, and seemed to have a knack for it. I’m not exactly tall, but am flexible, have good mobility, a higher than average strength to weight ratio from years of weight training, and I also did a little Capoeira and gymnastics in my early twenties.
So BJJ just seemed to fit me. The only problem is, I left Brazil and stopped training. I carried the Gee around with me in suitcases for a bit, then left the suitcase with a friend for a couple years until I got back to Brazil earlier this year. I put BJJ back on my ‘to-do list’, but once again, between travelling, moving, establishing ourselves in a new city, it wasn’t until I returned from Europe in August that I actually started once again. Eight months later!
How it’s Going
I convinced the owner / master to allocate the classes from Sao Paolo to my record so that I could get my stripes faster (I’m travelling again soon and wanted to get some combat in beforehand). In our dojo, you need two stripes on your white belt before you can actually roll. Each stripe is 30 classes of basic fundamentals, which takes about 6 - 8 weeks of regular attendance, unless you really come to extra classes. It took me about six weeks to get both stripes with the prior classes boost, and last night was my first roll.
Ahh the irony and lessons of life. We are all t’s subject. Little did I know that Friday night classes, being the last of the week, were not the usual “intermediate” class. Instead it’s the one where all the advanced guys come to kick the shit out of each other one last time before the weekend. I walked into 2 x three-stripe blues, 2 x three stripe purples and a brown belt. To give you an idea of the difference, my two stripes on white are 60 classes, which is roughly 3 - 4 months of experience, or in my case, I fast tracked to six weeks. These other belts are a multi-year process. Some of the guys had been training for 10+ years.
So I walk into this, and immediately laugh inside…like… “well, you asked for it, here you go dumb ass”.
Luckily, I have one of the best instructors. It’s not just his skill as a practitioner, but his skill as a teacher. He is very good, and we’ve developed a pretty unique master-student bond. I think it’s because I’ve taken the training seriously and been very diligent to date.
He guided me on the first roll, and immediately, you realise that “this shit isn’t as easy as it looks”. You spend weeks learning basic moves with people in the fundamentals classes, but in those, nobody is fighting back. You can complete a move and practice it again and again. But here, in a combat scenario, the other person is moving and countering your moves. You are literally wresting just to hold on and exerting yourself just to claim a position of dominance, and when you get it (the only reason of course in my case is he went easy on me for training purposes) you forget all the moves and thing you’re taught! I remember getting a side control and then thinking… “now what the fuck do I do?”
This is life. This is where you realise intelligence is not just in the brain, but is more importantly, in the body. This is why I am fundamentally opposed to modern brain-in-a-vat theories and ideologies. These nerds view the body as just a meat suit, and they are so far from wrong it’s not funny. The body is as much a part of the “mind” as the brain is. One cannot exist without the other. You ignore the body at the expense of the mind.
So anyway. In that moment, you have to breathe and “get out of your head” to allow your body to go where it needs to go next. There are things that naturally make sense, especially if you have a bit of body intelligence, like your centre of gravity and where your arms and legs should go, but here we enter the next lesson or concept.
Without training, more often than not, you will simply trap or position yourself in a way that a trained opponent can take advantage of. Herein lies the importance and purpose of training. It is the conditioning of the body to act without having to consciously think about it. And it’s only when you do this, that you can actually separate out the thinking part of yourself to observe the situation. Your body creates the space for you brain to think. It’s a symbiosis. This is how and where mastery happens: when intelligence becomes something you have embodied. When you become unconsciously competent.
My variant on a well known learning model
Closing Thoughts
Women (and women-like-men) often wonder “why do men fight”, and they generally say this from a place of caring, confusion or both. This question of course touches on this broader concept of conflict. In the notes above lies the answer. We fight because life is struggle. Life is a conflict of wills and fighting is an expression of will. Through fighting we feel alive. It is literally an expression of life, especially for a man. It’s why our bodies and minds are designed, or have evolved, they way they are, it’s why war will always exist on some plane, why we’re drawn to action films, why sports exist and why warriors are revered.
Don’t think that we will some day just “transcend” fighting. If we do, we’re no longer human, or alive.
A final thought also on T Levels…
You want to boost your energy, virility, testosterone?
Go and fight. The Gym is cute, but there’s a different level of danger that comes from an inanimate barbell versus another human trying to tap or knock you out.
I’ve chosen BJJ because it reminds me of chess. It not only requires strength and endurance but strategy, thought and intelligence. That’s why I put Bergson’s quote in my Twitter Bio.
"Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought"
- Henri Bergson
There’s more I could go into, but it’s Saturday morning and I’m feeling good. Going to take the wife to a sauna and cold plunge session followed by a massage, Sushi and despite my fucked up knee, some “us time”.
If you liked this, let me know in the comments below. I didn’t expect to write this piece. I just woke up feeling in pain but amazing, so felt the need to write in my personal diary - and as I was writing, figured parts of it could be public.
I also explore this “Mastery is in the body” concept in way more depth in The Bushido of Bitcoin. And yes, I know I’ve been promising it for a while, but I can tell you that my final manuscript went to the editors last week. Not sure how long it will take them, but fingers crossed for a Christmas or early next year launch.
See you in the next Chronicle!
Svetski
Follow me on Twitter (I still refuse to call it ‘X’)
Stay tuned for a big piece I’ve been working on about the Peter Pan culture we live in and the modern fear of ageing and dying.
Great stuff Alex. Have also spent the last couple of years being put through the ringer on the BJJ mat!
If I may ask, do you get your testosterone levels tested? I have no reason to doubt that your feeling better and stronger is related to higher testosterone, but there may be psychological factors that aren't related to testosterone. I know I feel stronger (not necessarily physically) after finishing a good piece of writing but I doubt my testosterone levels suddenly jumped. (Maybe they did -- it's not practical to get an instant test.)