I teach medieval literature, and so when I decided to get into better shape by lifting weights in early midlife, my references were not terribly contemporary. Medieval writers are always reminding us to keep our eyes on cultivating the soul. “Here is no home, here is but wilderness,” Chaucer once wrote. If we’re just pilgrims passing through this world, what need is there to focus on the body? But, my mind now countered, what if becoming bodily healthy would make me happier and lead to better work?
I went to the gym, initially after a friend’s sudden death, to be strong enough to do the other things that mattered to me in life, from family commitments to professional creativity. But, for men, getting stronger is all too often about competition. The more I hit the gym, the more I felt the need for some pointers. I dipped my toes in the bro-y-sphere of fitness podcasts. After a few weeks of listening, I had covered the basics: protein intake, intermittent fasting, sleep protocol, weights versus cardio ratios, gym frequency, supplements. But I found myself dancing around a certain void: Why did it all feel so empty?
In the medieval poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” an extravagantly large and muscular giant challenges the intrepid knight Gawain to a contest. Gawain, thinking he has the game in hand, lobs the giant’s head off with one swing of an ax. The giant gamely picks up his severed head and calmly dictates the terms of their continued competition. Physical prowess gives way to a minefield of moral quandaries Gawain must navigate. The poem begins with the futility of playing at the game of physical one-upmanship.
I think about Gawain a lot these days while listening to the podcasts of fitness influencers going on about “gains.” Fitness media, particularly the kind aimed at men, encourages us to measure ourselves against other men (if not magical giants with heads that grow back). The simple idea of staying healthy has been surrendered to these looming strongmen peddling dogma on optimization and proteinmaxxing. A handful of influencers has come to define what it means to be — and live healthily as — a man. A lot of it felt pretty unhealthy.
Most of the influencers I encountered greeted me like the Green Knight in that opening scene, heft and chutzpah on display, emotional vulnerability be damned.
I listened to the fitness guru Peter Attia brag about drinking “jet fuel” (synthetic ketones) in an effort to convey intensity. I listened to the podcaster Tim Ferriss extol extreme dieting and fasting tactics. The advice I digested from fitness bros often failed the common-sense test. Take steak: One discussion of ideal char levels on steak on “Huberman Lab” never even mentioned that red meat is a carcinogen — or that charring it heightens its carcinogenic properties. They didn’t talk about steak because it’s healthy, but because men eat steak.
Fatherhood — a key motivator in my deciding to get into shape — is mostly absent from the bro-y fitness world, but Bryan Johnson offered one exception. It wasn’t the example I was looking for. The documentary “Don’t Die” follows Mr. Johnson, a venture capitalist obsessed with anti-aging techniques. It shows him taking blood plasma from his son; the youthful plasma will, he hopes, make him live forever — or, at least, far longer. The pair bonded by counting pills and comparing physiques. The irony was striking: In his pursuit of ultimate longevity, Mr. Johnson appeared less human, increasingly robotic.
If the behaviors fitness influencers are promoting were extreme but effective, that would be one thing. But they are often ineffective and, sometimes, patently unhealthy. That father-son plasma transfusion? Didn’t work. A list of supplements taken by Mr. Johnson, to which I excitedly compared my own intake, gave me no better sleep, no more energy and no greater happiness. All-meat diets? Harmful, with insufficient vitamin and fiber intake and increased risk of chronic illnesses, including cancer and heart disease. The ubiquity of intermittent fasting and hyper-restrictive diets can also lend themselves to disordered eating behaviors — a need to push “clean” eating to its extreme.
It all left me feeling hollow. And so I left the bro-sphere and sought out other sources of inspiration and information.
In aiming for a vision of fitness that avoids overemphasis on masculinity, I gravitated away from influencers and biohackers toward strong artists who had prioritized physical strength in their daily routines. I wanted to talk to people who were capable of harnessing human creative potential to the utmost, but who also kept their bodies in fighting shape in order to fuel such creativity. And I found them.
There is the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who in her book “The Secret to Superhuman Strength” could not talk about fitness without also talking about her private history of romantic relationships and the role exercise played in managing stress and quashing depression. She also wrote about overcoming alcohol dependency. At the core was a vulnerability otherwise entirely missing from mainstream fitness media.
The novelist Laura van den Berg turned to boxing to combat destructive anxiety patterns — two hours a night, she says. She sleeps, writes and lives better. And I spoke with the poet Hanif Abdurraqib about how running radically changed his life. It was about stress relief and managing clinical depression, he said. He logs an immense number of miles each day — and even started helping a friend train for a marathon, matching her long runs up to 20 miles, with no intention of running the marathon himself. In a recent interview with Haruki Murakami, the singer Harry Styles credited Mr. Murakami’s book on running with freeing him “from the idea that music had to be an unhealthy profession and I had to be this tortured soul.” Instead, “being healthy makes you able to be an artist for a long time.”
These artists weren’t going on about perfect blood panels or maximum efficiency or tracking immense protein intake. They cared about feeling alive in their bodies, sleeping well and having the stamina to do meaningful work. Health, for these artists, was the cornerstone of a creative life, the ingredient that made everything else possible. I didn’t need to go back to my days sitting in a smoky Oxford room, holding a shriveling contact lens in one hand as I pored over medieval literature, acknowledging (I thought) a perfect metaphor for the vision of the soul against the failure of the body. I could find a path in which physical health fueled intellectual health.
The artists also committed to helping people rather than besting them, Gawain-style. There might be an element of friendly competition, but they emphasized caring community and inclusion rather than optimization for the sake of optimization, or obsession with a specifically manly brand of might. Rather than follow the voice of one supposed strongman, rattling off advice, I learned to favor a chorus — different approaches, at times discordant and at times harmonious, prodding me toward ever-new realizations.
Those fitness podcasts, for me, now feel antiquated and outdated, like a dusty old poem no one reads. I have left that wilderness behind, intent on finding a new home.
