“Entombed in this which we carry about with us and call the body, in which we are imprisoned like an oyster in its shell.”

Plato

If I cherish my body, I make a slave of myself

Epictetus

TLDR: You are not your 6-Pack

We exercise to look good. This is a reason so embarrassingly fundamental to physical training we hardly ever mention it alongside other benefits like longevity or stress reduction. We want to look good on the beach. At the office. Without clothes on. And we believe that the better we look, the better we will feel. But what exactly should we look like?

To find an answer to this question, we often look externally. We look to friends, role models and the culture. Legendary strength coach Mark Rippetoe explains how physique focused bodybuilder magazines influenced his training when he was younger. “We wanted to look like the guys in the magazines, contest bodybuilders in contest shape, with thin skin, visible vascularity, nice arms, and most of all, abs. Abs. Slabs of abs. Washboard abs. Abs were the sine qua non of the male physique.”

Abs still are. But print is dead. In 2023, you’re probably on TikTok or YouTube looking for answers from a laidback Texan or a personal trainer from Adelaide. Not to mention the tried and true method of comparing ourselves with others. These external influences are powerful. Developing your own strong or lean body signals all sorts of important information to those around you and ultimately forms part of your persona.

Your persona can be thought of like a nice suit or warm jacket, a “protective cover or mask that an individual presents to the world. It has two purposes: first to make a specific impression on other people: second, to conceal the individuals inner self from their prying eyes.”¹As humans, our strong need to rely and fit in with others leads us to tirelessly build and maintain these flashy coats.

Similarly, we sculpt our bodies to look a certain way, helping us stand out or fit in. There’s nothing inherently wrong in doing this, but we might start to obsess and overly identify with our constructed physical image. When we do that, we squash down how we really feel. Pioneering Israeli educator Moshe Feldenkrais warns that when we hide behind a persona “every aspiration and spontaneous desire is subjected to stringent internal criticism”.² We forget what’s underneath.

Take mirrors for example. Mirrors are useful. They help us dress ourselves properly and can show us things that we can’t see, like a bit of broccoli stuck in our tooth. But in the gym, mirrors encourage us to focus on specific body parts and fuel our natural propensity to judge ourselves. The more we focus on our biceps, the further we go from naturalness. Not only can the results get freakish, but the dissatisfaction seems to increase. When professional bodybuilders take it to the extreme, both their mind and body become vulnerable to breaking down.

Our personas and their impact on our physical appearance aren’t going away. But like a squirrel probably doesn’t need that many nuts for winter, we also don’t need to spend all our energy on maintaining these images (which will probably change next month anyway). Ideally, we spend less time on Instagram, and end up looking more like, regular, healthy humans and less like the Liver King.

So next time you are thinking of going primal, or getting big, or being the kind of guy who does an Ultra at the drop of a hat, consider any of the following questions:

• What types of food is your immune system sensitive to?
• How would you hold and move your body if you inherited it today?
• Imagine you inherited a new, fit body. How might you eat or move differently?
• How did you burn energy when you were a kid?
• How would you exercise differently if the internet didn’t exist?
• How would you exercise differently if you were the last person on the planet?
• What kind of exercise would you like to be doing in 10 years time?
• Imagine you fast forward 20 years into future. What do you wish you ate in those 20 years?

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Footnotes

^[1] Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols (New York: Dell Publishing, 1964), 350.

^[2] Moshe Feldenkrais, Awareness through Movement (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 6.