Eleventh Commandment

Be strong.

God left one commandment out of the Bible. Perhaps the Almighty delivered this commandment to Moses but Moses forgot to bring it down from the mountain. That commandment is Number Eleven: Be strong.

- David Ben-Gurion

Reflecting

Murder, theft, lying, and envy are bad.  Most people, religious and secular, intuitively know it.  Don’t lie, cheat, or steal; certainly don’t murder anyone.  But knowing these before or after the Ten Commandments were written down doesn’t matter if you’re harmless.  The liars, cheats, thieves, and murderers can continue with their work.  And they will.  But if you’re dangerous, then you matter.  Then your other virtues matter. 

You might see injustice and want to help, but if you’re weak you’re merely a witness.  Instead, be a strong friend and ally.  Be ready to have someone’s back in a fight.  If your friend turns around to see who it is, do they think, “oh thank God it’s you”?  Be that person.

Strength allows you to navigate highs and lows.  What you need is humility on peaks and perseverance in troughs.  Unfortunately, virtually all external feedback is the opposite – feeding hubris on the peaks and humiliation in the troughs.  It is natural for others to just linearly extrapolate the short-term, thus offering encouragement and discouragement at almost precisely the worst times.  Only enough internal strength can withstand it.    

Training

Perfect weekend weather for trail runs, CrossFit, and stone lifting.

The purpose of life is finding the largest burden that you can bear

and bearing it.

- Jordan Peterson

Fueling

Supplementing

In theory, supplements aren’t necessary for everyone.  But in practice, vanishingly few people get enough magnesium, vitamin D, or creatine.  With little risk or side effects, those three should be almost ubiquitous.  And few men reach middle age with passively optimal testosterone (ditto women and estrogen).

Measuring

Recovering

I prefer active recovery to being sedentary after workouts, so started blacksmithing on weekend afternoons,

Closing

Tim Kennedy and Jason Khalipa are two of the highlights from jiu jitsu camp; they’re some of my favorite people on a number of fronts.  But what happens when they face off against each other?  They battled for some charity money and bragging rights, both of which were immediately put to good use, across fitness, grappling, and shooting.  What happened?  I won’t give it all away but it is worth watching. 

Jason programmed the fitness challenge: 2k meters on the C2 then max number of 135 lbs. hang power cleans in 10 minutes.  I have not tried this yet, but it is a terrific challenge.  One should try to get off the rower in seven minutes and get right on the bar for 10-15 reps / minute in the last 3 minutes.  30 would be good.  45 would be great.  Jason’s form was perfect.  Tim more or less bicep curled it, but put in an impressive performance despite not using traditional form.

Grappling was a bet on whether Tim could submit (or position his opponent where he’d be killed were it not limited to BJJ rules) Jason five times in ten minutes.  Tim is a third degree black belt under Royler Gracie and one of the best grapplers in the world so he’s quite hard to beat, but Jason could fall back on solid jiu jitsu and freakish fitness both in terms of brute strength and, especially towards the end of ten minutes, strong cardio.  Seeing these two fight makes one prefer to have such men as friends instead of enemies.

As for shooting, Tim is a decorated combat veteran who served as a sniper and sniper instructor in the Army special forces while Jason is newer to firearms, but has been training for the Tactical Games.  This round determined the overall winner.  Both men lived up to Ben-Gurion’s eleventh commandment. Check it out: