It's Ok to be "Vain"
purplespengler.blogspot.com/2019/07/Posted Jul 5, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC
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purplespengler.blogspot.com
agreed, people lie to themselves too much and the definition of vanity has been warped in common times to include anyone who makes effort to look good in ways that is not socially acceptable.
Spend 2 hours every day on your makeup every day, totally fine and normal. Watch your fucking diet, meal prep and workout and hour or so per day? Vain as fuck
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Very true. Taking care your physical health is somehow frowned upon, whereas being vain in terms of clothes or cars or whatever is absolutely fine.
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I feel it comes down to envy.
Doing your makeup or buying new clothes is a lot easier than being consistent with nutrition and a workout routine.
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Probably because of the negative stigma towards "gym bros" who are "only there for looks".
Like 90% of people talking about lifting "seriously" ridicule people that go to the gym just to look better.
You don't wanna be a gym bro who's worried about what they look like. You're a real man, you're here for strength.
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Which is a shame, because there can be fun in embracing the bro culture. I've developed more into a bro after years of lifting. Strength is still my main goal but who doesn't want a wide fucking back and huge arms. It just looks good. It looks strong.
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Right? It's so dumb. Why would you want to make fun of someone with a goal that they're actively achieving, just because it's different from yours?
Most of the bros at the gym are just having a good time.
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but who doesn't want a wide fucking back and huge arms
Well, gym bros aren't known for the former really
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My trigger is when someone not really all that big or aesthetic tries to claim they're superior to someone absolutely massive because they lift more but they're in that dunning-kruger stage where they don't understand that if the massive guy were to increase his specificity he would absolutely demolish them numbers-wise.
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Yeah man his muscle is all fake muscle I'm way stronger because I deadlift.
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Or vice versa - if they tried the big guy's routine with his weights/rep/sets/rest, they would be wiped out.
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Great analogy
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Physicality is beautiful - I totally agree. Whether it is a body lifting big weights or a body that simply looks capable; not just of strength but for endurance and other physical skills too. People can see when another looks capable. Most like that appearance. It should be appreciated, rather than defamed as Purple said; jealousy of what looks good.
Further, some might like the deception of an underdeveloped body when training for strength. To those 'less aesthetic' types it is like being a "sleeper car"; more capable than it appears. Except the issue here, in real life, is that those anti-aesthetic types are rarely capable. They fail to complete the guise set out for. There is a division, to them, of strength and aesthetics and of endurance and whatever other physical quality to categorize and "specialize" in: I'm a powerlifter, not a bodybuilder. After too many years of this they realize they lack the look and the means of each. Becoming bitter lifters, mad they could not achieve strength because previously they had refused to build the machine responsible for its production. Now they cannot "take advantage of beginner gains" and so they do not even try to reverse course. Defeatists in the weightroom should have their memberships revoked.
Within this vein are those who resist bulking; trying to eat more to build a bigger machine. "I don't care about aesthetics, so I don't care about getting bigger. I only want to get stronger." This undermines the goal from the get go because of some rationale against self beautification. They get stronger at a dismal rate because they refuse to make their 'motors' bigger; a bigger muscle is a more capable one. Often not wanting to get "too fat" they fail to see how much they in fact do care about aesthetics. Like Purple said, they should just accept their modest goals and not try to deceive others. This same lifter probably has a gaming PC with a thousand bells and whistles and an equal number of colors the diodes can blend and dance through. Aesthetics matter there, but not to them. Hilarious.
Then there are some who bulk without limitations because "they don't care about aesthetics". So they plump up to 50% body fat and do get stronger in the process; but not as strong as they could have - bulking is needed for building muscle, that gets us stronger too; isolation movements like curls matter more in these periods than in 'peaking' phases. But to the fat guy who "only cares about strength" doing biceps is below him. As a result he will only look like a fat guy. With probably a weak bench compared to his squat; squat eventually outpacing deadlift - falling victim to the SS meme. Strength being a demonstration of skill, largely depending on the practice the lifter has had with the chosen movement or instrument. Eating to get bigger but 'training for strength' is a piss poor way to bulk up. Their mindset should be: Eating bigger to get bigger.
Bigger does mean stronger. More aesthetic is the visual representation of capacity. For an artist it is of their skill. For a lifter of their physicality.
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To those 'less aesthetic' types it is like being a "sleeper car"; more capable than it appears. Except the issue here, in real life, is that those anti-aesthetic types are rarely capable.
This is a great additional thought on this subject dude. It's like some of these guys are living with a Dragonball fantasy in their head. Like, "Ha ha ha, these fools have underestimated my power level, but they would be sorry if I showed my true form."
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Completely agree. They're just a bunch of neckbeards who get absolutely put to shame by the big meatheads when push comes to shove, no matter how much they believe otherwise.
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Granted this is a "I know somebody who knew somebody" story but my roommate said he had a certain two classmates: one was somebody who wrestled in high school and made it to state, jacked and still putting up big numbers in the gym. The other one was a 400lb neckbeard. Neckbeard would deliberately try to provoke jacked guy, possibly being deluded into thinking he was fine because he'd taken a few karate classes way back.
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Lol how fucking delusional can you be
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Haha! MUH POWER LEVELS! - exactly that.
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I may weigh 130lbs, but wait til I take off my weighted training clothes.
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now weighs 110 pounds. Exactly the weight of a single dumbbell often pressed by others in the same gym.
How can they not see this shit for themselves?
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When I think about this I think about a guy I used to lift with who was doing barbell medicine programming and eating at maintenance. It seemed like his lifts never moved anywhere in the year I knew him because he never ate enough to gain, and never did any of the accessories needed to really start putting on the muscle needed to progress to the level he wanted to be at. He would give me shit for doing curls while I was running JnT.
I tried telling him to sign for meets but he always hesitated because he would say he wanted to go to nationals on his first try. Man at this rate you aren't going to national ever. This guy was a forever chubby.
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Thanks for running J&T2.0! Forever chubby is a real thing when people refuse to put on muscle. What the fuck do they think is going to help burn all that fat?
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But to the fat guy who "only cares about strength" doing biceps is below him. As a result he will only look like a fat guy. With probably a weak bench compared to his squat; squat eventually outpacing deadlift
I feel personally attacked by this.
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I felt personally attacked by this whole post tbh
I’m fixing it though I swear!!!
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sorry guys u/bobolequiff u/howie_wowie
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I’m only half serious, I appreciate the insight from a lot of the more accomplished folks on this sub cause it’s stuff like this that just forces you to be brutally honest with yourself. It’s a process - and I think I’m learning that.
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Now they cannot "take advantage of beginner gains" and so they do not even try to reverse course.
I've never understood these people. Does anyone really think that because they fucked around during their beginning of their training career and didn't get significantly bigger and stronger, they missed the boat to gainsville and will never be able to get big and strong? What kind of stupid defeatist bullshit thinking is that?
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It’s probably just a form of excuse-making and un-criticality. They see some people making huge progress, and rather than think about how they too can make progress, they make excuses about how they could have done the same if they only had x or y circumstance. And lo and behold, because they didn’t have x or y circumstance, that progress is forever lost to them. If that’s the case, why try so hard?
And maybe a lot of these people are well-intentioned. But they look at these kinds of things uncritically and underestimate that a lot of it just involves effort.
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Probably a bit of both, and who knows what else. Too many set out for something and quit on the first step; the gym is probably on the top five list.
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Your post has practically scared me of the dangers of complacency, which I think lumps all those types together. Or rather a sense of comfort in what “they” think is best for their goals.
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Oh man... yeah complacency is a great way to put it. Glad to put a bit of a fright into you :)
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Wonderful response. Thanks for sharing dude!
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Thanks for the support man. Yours above is spot on too. The last lines in particular. Everyone should read this twice:
>I think it speaks really well about being honest with yourself and about your goals. After all, you need to know what you're after if you're actually going to achieve it.
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To those 'less aesthetic' types it is like being a "sleeper car"; more capable than it appears
Been there, done that. All I got out of it was endless frustration over people who eventually ended up not believing I could do a thing, right after they watched me do a thing. Being "stronger than you look" is not a healthy qualifier, nor does it get one laid.
Like, even if we assume absolute strength is a turn on, the ability to manifest itself is pretty rare outside of physical labor intensive industries. Outside of that, you get maybe 1-2 attempts, and by that time the woman is either already marrying someone else, or leaving that job soon anyway. And they usually forget about it afterwards.
Given labor intensive jobs, maybe you're more capable, but everyone is capable and also looks good, so its just a bonus.
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That's all great and logical and all, but the documentary "Back to the Future" showed how easy it is to win the woman of your dreams through a single momentous display of physical prowess.
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Weird 90s movies aside, I actually think there is some sex appeal in being strong, because I have a few real life experiences that support that idea, but they're probably not super relevant here due to the interests of time and space.
But I mean, yeah, its possible, but if you're going to contend with a bunch of guys who are also capable and strong and fuckable, you probably need to be like, setting records or something.
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Nah, for some women there's totally sex appeal in being big and/or strong.
What I was going for is that that's the fantasy I always picture these dudes having. Some inane high school movie fight thing that ends with them drowning in the vaginas of onlooking women.
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Defeatists in the weightroom general should have their memberships birth revoked. FTFY, good buddy
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I was going to go with late term abortion too, but thought it might be too harsh; glad you went with it though. Probably best.
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To those 'less aesthetic' types it is like being a "sleeper car"; more capable than it appears
I was a bit guilty of that when I first started but I've been training for a while and I've seen some big dudes being surprisingly weak but I've never seen someone who looked weak being surprisingly strong, these people just don't exist.
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I personally could relate to this article in a few different ways. I've had a similar mindset for the majority of the time I spent in the gym, and that was met with mediocre progress as well. It's time to stop lying to myself when I say that I'm only training for strength.
I think it speaks really well about being honest with yourself and about your goals. After all, you need to know what you're after if you're actually going to achieve it.
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Same here. I thought there was some inherent value to being strong without looking big. Needless to say, my training was highly ineffective. It wasn't until I started putting on some muscle that I finally realized that it is a stupid dichotomy.
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Have you ever watched any of the X vs. Y videos, like oly lifter vs powerbuilder, or bodybuilder vs powerlifter, and all the other variations of it (there is a very neat one that does powerlifter vs bodybuilder vs oly lifter vs crossfitter).
The bodybuilders always tend to do very well at the strength stuff....because they are jacked. All that lean mass is capable of something.
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I definitely started lifting for aesthetic reasons but grew more and more into loving strength training. I sure as hell still care about how I look and now feel a constant back and forth between wanting to eat more and be bigger, and living the comfortable 190lb 6'3 ab life.
Yep I need to eat more...
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"Abs aren't a sign of power, they're a sign of not eating enough." - JF Caron
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Fat guts aren't a sign of power, they're a sign of obesity and premature death.
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There's an area between abs and fat guts.
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Most people that ridicule men for having abs or training for aesthetics aren't in that area lol
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That's pretty much where I'm at. Definitely started because I was a teenager who wanted to get his dick wet.
Now I'm a young adult who wants to get his dick wet AND get stronger
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Just bite the bullet and eat more. I'm around your height but a fair amount heavier right now and yeah some weight around the middle pisses me off, but for the most part aesthetically I look a lot more muscular with only a little loss on the lean side of things.
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Being vain is being pompous about how you look. Working out and watching your diet doesn’t make you vain. Hell I’d go so far as to say that the majority of the people who have a gym membership wish they looked better than they do. Those people, categorically, are not vain.
The meaning of vanity’s been twisted by lazy insecure people looking for a negative label for people who make an effort to help protect their ego. They twisted the meaning of a pre-existing word because there isn’t a negative label for people who make an effort and they were too dumb to know what they were doing
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Right, if you're vain you have an excessively high opinion of your own appearance. If anything most of the people I know who train for aesthetics have too low an opinion of their own appearance and underestimate how much better they look than the general population because they're constantly comparing themselves to elite bodybuilders or fitness models.
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Well put. I don’t know at what point it became shallow and vain for people who lift weights to want to look good. This is purely my own speculation but maybe this is related to the hardcore-ification of mainstream fitness in the last few years.
The culture seemed to have gotten away from hard weight training for a while with a huge cardio and aerobic emphasis in the 80’s and 90’s. Then when lifting became mainstream and cool again (and women now being routinely encouraged to get stronger) it became ALL about getting strong, being hardcore, and your numbers on the SBD. Now so many people who will never be powerlifters are trying to train, eat, and think like a SHW lifter.
I used to lift with some very strong (also fat) powerlifters and a few of them had the attitude that weight on the bar is some sort of noble/holy calling and caring about what you look like is vain and low. I learned a lot from them but eventually my goals shifted to include getting visible abs, caring about my heart health, being more athletic and able to move well, etc. But that attitude that strength is somehow more noble and righteous than training because you want to look good still persists and I see it a lot.
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I don’t know at what point it became shallow and vain for people who lift weights to want to look good.
Based on my own life experience, there have always been small people who act like any attempt to look better is shallow and vain. But, as loud as they are here, I don't know where they hide in real life.
I think sometimes that so much of the negative bullshit surrounding lifting, physicality, exercise, etc that gets on all of our nerves is probably just a product of where we are (Reddit) and the kind of person this place usually attracts. Or maybe it's the internet in general?
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If they exist on the web they probably exist in real life, they'll just never tell you because most people are non-confrontational when you're face to face. I'm the only one I know who trains regularly and when I mention it outside the interwebs, it is often met with low-key disdain.
Kinda weird how the whole "beauty is in the eye of the beholder and everyone is beautiful in its own way" thing has been pushed around but if you fucking dare trying to get better aesthetics outside of yo-yo dieting, you're a brainless vain douchebag. Makes no sense to me but jealousy never made sense anyway.
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I like this.
I think a lot of people have this idea in the back of their head that
"I'm gonna work to get strong so i won't be like those bodybuilders, but i'll end up looking good anyway and be able to say I didn't even care about looking good!"
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I honestly like food more than I like looking good.
I do have aesthetic goals tho. I want to be big as a house. Like the hulk, or an orc, or Mark Henry. I'm already 6'4", so I think this is a reasonable long term goal, I can already loom over people, but I wanna be really muscular and really fat too.
We all gotta have our little projects.
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There's more sorts of aesthetics than just the bodybuilding version of the term. If you're trying for the Eddie Hall aesthetic, that's what looks good to you, then fuck what everyone else thinks looks "good." Eye of the beholder and shit.
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I honestly like food more than I like looking good.
Same here, nevertheless trying to keep it at a somewhat normal level. Ah well, at least my arms and shoulders are starting to look good.
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People who say they're training for strength and don't care about aesthetics tend to be neither good looking nor strong.
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Caveat to this, for me personally, is being vain to the point of obsessiveness. I’m not an elite athlete or pro bb I don’t need to analyze myself daily, take measurements weekly, and panic every morning when my weight is a bit higher or lower than I expected. That’s why I’m transitioning more into strength sports, not to be undisciplined in my eating, but to have objective goals and enjoy life a bit more hopefully.
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Caveat to this, for me personally, is being vain to the point of obsessiveness.
That's a portion of the point I was going for here. Vanity is a thing that is real and when you're actually vain, it generally means you're insufferable. But twisting words that have real meaning into words to mic drop on anybody who makes you feel small is the official passtime of Reddit. To many, many dudes on Reddit, if you look better than somebody, you're vain. More muscular? Vain. Working out just to improve your looks? Vain. Lean? Vain. Not interested in "powerlifting" (a word also misused to the point of inanity)? Vain. Not casual about your lifting? Vain.
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Don't forget to love yourself friend.
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It's a product of the echo chamber. "I train for strength, not to look good" is as much a meme as "eat clen, tren hard." Its the same people spouting this nonsense who say things like "that's too much protein." Or "supplements are worthless." They've found some catch phrases that allow a sense of moral superiority while simultaneously excusing a laziness in approach. Their training might be going nowhere. But that's ok, because they're still better than jocks and meatheads because of their peculiar moral high ground.
Why do break ups drive so many people to the gym? Because they want to look better naked? Why? They want to be more fuckable. Saying "I don't train to look good" directly translates to "I don't want to be fuckable." Which. Let's be real here. Real talk. Kinda sounds like the delusional mutterings of a crazy person.
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I wish I had read this post ten years ago. Thanks u/purplespengler
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I was the "hur dur, I train for strength, durp" kid back in my 20s, and considered a "better physique" as a beneficial side effect. Largely, i still think that way, except now I understand that being better at my sport is going to require looking better at some point, due to wilkes and body fat percentages being (at least casually) linked. It didn't help that a lot of the fitness bros back in the 90s were all "hey man, its more important to look strong than be strong." How about no, dipshit, they're both important because they're not an either/or, but rather more of a symbiosis.
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I guess I should post this into the daily thread or something, but along the same lines, what if somebody is training to get stronger without gaining much (any) weight, like for sports with weight-divisions, to still stay in his division while getting stronger (not particularly better at the sport -- technique etc -- but just stronger)??
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Functional Aesthetics is where it's at.
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I train to become bigger which will make me stronger which will make me bigger which will make me stronger which will make me bigger which will make me stronger which will make me bigger which will make me stronger which will make me bigger which will make me stronger which will make me bigger which will make me stronger which will make me bigger which will make me stronger which will make me bigger
Real talk tho i just wanna be like Ronnie Coleman
Where does getting harder and/or faster fit into this?
When I get bigger I tend to get harder
cries in bulk fat
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Makes it better.
That's what I focus on the two weeks a year when I cut
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Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but don’t nobody wanna lift no heavy-ass weights
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Why did I read the whole thing like it would change?
I don't train for intelligence, just strength and aesthetics.
Exactly.