To Be Free Men

Why bother?

To be free men, we must be strong. There’s several forms of strength of course, but this post is about physical strength.

Why is physical strength important? Having the ability to take action and get shit done is among the highest priorities when it comes to defending yourself and your family. Perhaps an even higher priority, is the ability to do work. What kind of work? Anything the world throws at you. Do you dream of having a homestead to build your freedom? What about when disaster strikes? Are you gonna sit on the sidelines and watch the men work to save lives, clean up, and return your community to business as usual? I sure as hell will be the guy in the middle of it, and if need be, capable of stepping up as a leader to guide people. Would you rather wait on the government to come save you and your family? I could never forgive myself if I failed my family in a disaster or defense situation because I didn’t have the strength or endurance to outlast the situation, or the enemy.

How to build strength

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as they say. And I am no personal trainer, I’ll admit firsthand. I do have experience and success lifting weights, doing calisthenics, and whatever is in between. I’ve never been a very muscular guy, but my ability to do work, outlast many of my peers, and show the occasional feat of strength has proven beneficial in every career choice I’ve had, and has been a key contributor in many fights won, whether real, staged, BJJ, whatever. While training in BJJ, much more experienced men loved to roll with me, just because I never gave up, and always had just a little bit left in me to surprise them, and make sure they had to work for a victory.

In my opinion, there’s little use in isolation movements while training with weights, especially with machines. It’s my understanding that they can often help build more strength in your compound exercises, perhaps to help overcome a plateau, but even still, the money is in the compound exercises. What’s the difference between isolation and compound? We’ll just assume that some of the audience have yet to do the research. Isolation exercises focus on one muscle, or muscle group, such as leg extensions to build quadriceps. Compound exercises, especially for beginners and intermediates, give you a lot more bang for the buck. Instead of focusing on your quads, for example, you focus on overall leg and back strength by doing squats and dead lifts. Pushups and dips instead of cable flies and tricep extensions. You get the idea. The point is, common sense tells us compound exercises are far more applicable to real world situations, and also help build overall physical endurance, and burn more calories than isolation exercises.

Just to reiterate, strength with endurance is far more beneficial and applicable to the real world than muscle volume, and that is what I recommend men who seek freedom train for. Find a workout plan that focuses on compound movements, with lots of reps. In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing my own workout plan for those that are interested.

Building Endurance

I do not enjoy running. Early on in the Marines, I sucked at it. So I was made to run a lot. I just didn’t have the abs to keep up, they’d always cramp up, then I’d be holding my side, barely above a walking pace, as the section constantly turned back around to get me back in line. My section leader back then was a fairly accomplished marathon runner who seemed to me more built like a body builder. He was a freak of nature to most of us. After running the two dozen of us for 5-10 miles a day, he’d go run some more. Most of us were exhausted, wondering how the hell he still had more in him. Even though I was one of the slowest in the section, whenever we PT’d with the whole platoon, company, or battalion, we destroyed everyone else. Though the pace was usually slower and slower the larger the group was, our section was known for being able to keep pace, and avoid people falling behind like nearly every other section or squad. We had a lot of pride in that. In fact, our endurance helped us shine and succeed in a lot of training and events. We enjoyed being the best in nearly everything it seemed like.

Eventually, maybe it was my abs that were finally able to keep up, I could hang as long as nearly anyone else with the running. And thankfully that happened before we had new guys in our platoon. You definitely don’t want to look weak in front of your subordinates.

Instead of running, I always preferred rucking. Even in my earliest days in the Marines, when I sucked at running, I excelled at walking long distances with a heavy pack on my back. Uphill didn’t even matter. Being in a machine gun section, we had to carry more weight than most other grunts. We had such a great reputation in our section that we were often put in the back of the line, instead of the front with all the other crew served weapons, to harass and motivate stragglers, and if need be, even carry their gear. If you couldn’t keep up without even carrying your own gear, you were assumed to be overheated, and were put in the back of the humvee with a corpsman (medic), where he’d take your rectal temperature, just to make sure you weren’t coming down with heat exhaustion or worse. It was humiliating for the men who fell out.

So what’s the point of this backstory? Maybe you have no desire to be in the military. Maybe you’ve already completed your service. The point is, there’s numerous situations where a man may need to grab what he can, carrying as much as possible to reduce the load on his family, and walk. Think fuel shortages, electrical grid failure, natural disasters. Maybe you’re a hunter who normally hauls a deer home on a SxS. What if it didn’t start when it was time to head home with your meat supply? Do you think your cell phone will always save you? Think again.

Even if you love to run, little can beat the practicality and satisfaction of picking up a load, and carrying it a long distance.

Take Action

So what are you waiting for? Do you prefer to live life vicariously through those posting pictures and descriptions of their workouts on social media, telling yourself one day you’ll start, when you have a little more time? Or are you a man of action, aching to be stronger than you were yesterday, stronger than your peers and enemies, giving your enemy a second thought just by looking at you, and knowing you won’t be an easy fight and he should find an easier victim, and most of all, knowing that if your family ever needed you to, you would have the strength and endurance to give you the edge you need to keep them alive and safe, no matter what should happen? Or are you counting on the government or your neighbor to do it for you? There are no choices in between.

When you compare the state of our country to when it was founded, you can point out some big differences. They had slaves, women couldn’t vote, and many native animals were being slaughtered to near or complete extinction. But they got a lot of things right, too. The Constitution ensured limited government, the Bill of Rights ensured maximum individual freedom, and there was no IRS or income tax. Men had to be strong, skilled, and hard working, or they often died young, and alone. If these examples are pros and cons, some might consider that last sentence to be a con, but I disagree.

There are a lot of benefits to having men around that are strong, skilled, and hard working, and the more, the better. These are the types of men that can be counted on to take action. They knew how to provide for their families, and they did it, or they died. Today, how many of us can provide for our families, other than just earning a decent paycheck? Some of us at least are working on eliminating debt, being financially prepared for the hard times that seem to be repetitive, and inevitable. But what if there were nothing to buy with that paycheck? No groceries at the store, no water from your faucets, no electricity from your outlets. Even if you can hunt and fish, how many living in the city would have access to game during a fuel shortage? All of these issues are the elephant in the room to me.

I won’t sit here, typing away, claiming to be an expert on these subjects, who has it all figured out with all the plans in place. I’m here to learn, just like you. And I’m here to share what I research and experience firsthand.

Where to start

Getting started is definitely going to be the hardest part for most people. No matter what you’re learning or accomplishing, it’s hard not to get distracted by what still needs done. Let’s start by listing what needs done.

1. Get your finances in order. Debt is our enemy, and banks and government work hard to keep us all in debt, so we can all keep working, and paying more interest, taxes, etc. Do what you can to increase your income to speed things up. Get rid of things you don’t need or can’t afford. Downsize your house. The list goes on, and theres infinite resources on how to accomplish this. My favorite is Dave Ramsey.
2. Build a surplus of food and water. There’s no need to to acquire a year’s worth of supplies just yet, but a week or two is a great start. There’s several great books on prepping to help you out with this. I like to think of the surplus as buying myself a little more time to get things figured out if/when SHTF. What needs figured out? Permanent sources of food and water. Raising meat. Growing a garden. Harvesting rainwater. Drilling your well. Think you can’t raise your own meat? Research aquaponics, and meat rabbits. All the meat you’ll ever need, and very little space needed to implement. Start working on that garden.
3. Get your butt in shape. The healthier you are, the less money and time you’ll have to waste dealing with chronic, self-inflicted diseases such as type 2 diabetes. And it’s not just about avoiding the doctor and endless pills the rest of your life. Men need to do work. Find a workout plan that works for you that builds strength and endurance. The best bang for your buck are compound exercises, whether free weights or calisthenics, and should also include endurance training. My favorite for endurance? Rucking. Check out www.goruck.com. While you’re at it, cut WAY back on on the processed foods and sugar, some of the top contributors to diabetes. We should also add self-defense here. Every man should be familiar with most common firearms, and working to be an expert with whatever he choses to defend himself and his family with. There’s also several great choices for martial arts training that are very applicable to self-defense in the real world. Jiu jitsu will get your ass in shape.
4. Most of us feel we could never survive without electricity. If that includes you, start your backup plan. A properly sized generator and a surplus of fuel is likely the cheapest route, but fuel can always run out and it doesn’t store forever, so it’s not a permanent solution. Start looking into solar and wind power with battery backup as more permanent solutions. Your environment will dictate what option or combo works best for you.
5. I mentioned earlier in this rant how previous American generations had nearly annihilated many native species. Some were killed because of their value, like bison, and some were killed out of fear, like wolves. I don’t believe in killing any animals, unless its for meat, or self-defense. When it comes to meat, we have to remember that wild animals are a perishable resource, and they need to be hunted responsibly. And I absolutely cannot understand how anyone can justify killing a wolf or a bear because it lives near you or your ranch, or whatever. It doesn’t matter how many generations we go back, the native animals were there first, and they deserve to stay, whether you see them as a resource, or just enjoy their company. The same logic should be applied to everything living, including other predators, herbivores, trees, and other plants. You cant’t remove any of them without screwing up something else. Every resource utilized (plants, animals, water) should be done so with responsibility. And while we’re at it, stop buying junk. All this cheap plastic crap we buy, toys or whatever, has to be shipped from overseas (unnecessarily adding to pollution), doesn’t last, and ends up in trash piles (more pollution). It’s a waste of money (we’re trying to get out of debt, right?), takes ridiculous amounts of energy to recycle (more pollution, again), and takes thousands of years to decompose. No matter how anyone feels about climate change (I’m not exactly sold), we can agree that we should leave the earth cleaner, with more resources, for the next generation.

In conclusion

These are not necessarily in proper order, but getting rid of debt is my top recommendation. Everything else can be built up over time, but the sooner the better, and it’s a lot easier when you’re debt free. Soon I’ll start adding resources with books, articles, podcasts and whatever else works for me to stay motivated, and build skills, strength, confidence, leadership, and hopefully one day, complete FREEDOM.

Thank you.