⚔️ True Fraternity: a building block toward Biblical Manhood

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Happy Saturday - In the last seven weeks since launched More the Man, many of you have shared what you would like to see more of in future issues. We listened.

Starting with this morning’s issue (and even more so next week), you’ll see our focus changing. We’re going to focus on coming alongside men as we journey toward living out Biblical manhood.

What is Biblical manhood? Biblical manhood is living as a man in the modern day according to biblical principles presented perfectly in the life of Jesus Christ. Our prayer for MTM is that it will become a fraternity of men (like you) who share this goal. It won’t be easy but no important journey ever is and what better thing could you do with your life than model it after the perfect Man?

We are excited to learn together, get stronger, smarter, wiser and more useful while challenging and encouraging each other to be “more the man” God has called each of us to be in a way that is unique to each of us. You… … us … better…for God’s glory!

Know guys that you think would benefit from joining us? Get your custom referral link below and invite them to join us and the MTM fraternity - Will

In our quest to become better men, we've explored individual factors that contribute to physical and mental fitness. But there's a crucial element we haven't yet addressed - one that profoundly impacts our overall well-being: our relationships with other men.

Why? Because, like everything in the universe, men were designed to operate within a very specific set of conditions. Try to operate yourself outside those conditions, and performance suffers. As Michael Scott discovered, cars are designed for the road and perform poorly when submerged.

Those conditions include physiological factors like exercise and nutrition, psychological factors like intellectual growth and relationships as well as spiritual factors (which we will explore in upcoming issues.) The point is that peak fitness is the result of investing time and effort in each of these factors.

Today, that means we are going to look at why and how not just relationships but relationships with men make you … better.

Fraternity as a survival strategy

Take a look at ancient cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Bayeux Tapestry, the painting of Washington’s crossing the Delaware and the photograph of the U.S. Marines raising the flag on the island of Iwo Jima. What do they all have in common?

They show us images of men standing shoulder to shoulder to hunt, to fight and to build as a way to protect and provide for their loved ones. In the course of fulfilling these masculine roles, these men formed deep relationships with each other forged in moments of deep meaning and, often, profound suffering.

This capacity for men to bond with such intensity made it possible for them to find the courage they needed to endure deprivation, take risks and face death. They shared a common humanity by shouldering each other’s burden and, in so doing, enjoyed something most men today find elusive: friendship.

Good times are bad for men and masculine relationships

Fast forward to the present: We don’t have to hunt or forage for food everyday, we have sturdy shelter, our children survive to adulthood and (most of us) are not fighting and dying to protect our lands from invaders. All this and we have never been so miserable.

Without these existential needs to serve as the reason for banding together, we’ve let ourselves get lazy socially. For the last few decades (since the end of the USA-USSR “Cold War”), life has been pretty good … so good we’ve become lulled to sleep with entertainment, overcharged with information and diseased with garbage food.

I am not going to bore you with the statistics because you already know the truth: we are dying in mental prisons of our making. Research shows that the loneliness we are suffering takes a toll on your head and on your heart. One report posited that the health impact of loneliness is comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Finding fraternity (without war and economic collapse)

Part of the problem we experience when trying to build relationships with other guys is that we model our approach on what we see with women. In fact, sometimes the women in our lives try to set us up with their friend’s guys. Aside from being wildly awkward (and forbidden in my marriage), that approach tries to superimpose on men female relationship dynamics.

I’ve heard it said that women engage each other face-to-face while men engage shoulder-to-shoulder. Where women are wired to seek intimacy as a goal, men relate to each other in the context of enterprise. That is why we avoid “meeting for coffee” and long phone conversations.

Shoulder-to-Shoulder: Where Fraternity Begins

What does that mean for you? It means the most effective way to find fraternity is to get involved in something. When my first marriage was falling apart, I joined a local jiu jitsu gym and dove in head first (which initially caused significant neck pain but I then got very good at not getting strangled.) I made many good friends while acquiring lots of useful skills and capacities.

Other ideas include joining a men’s bible study, contributing at a local non-profit or even joining a local Toastmasters chapter.

In Australia, a grassroots movement is tackling male isolation head-on. "Men's Sheds" are community spaces where men gather to work on projects, share skills, and most importantly, connect. These modern-day workshops offer a place for men to engage in meaningful activities side-by-side, fostering natural conversations and friendships. The success of Men's Sheds highlights a crucial truth: men often bond best when united by a shared purpose or activity.

The point is that, as with every male fitness factor, you have to invest the time and effort.

I do not know where this newsletter finds you. You might be at the bottom of a very deep, dark well and the thought of joining a group may seem out of reach. That is okay. If that is the case, work on some of the other individual exercises and routines we’ve shared in previous issues. Just make a little progress each day and, step by step, you will gain the strength you need to connect with others.

Remember, we are all lonely travelers looking to meet someone just like you. Men have helped other men endure unimaginable difficulty for thousands of years and we will continue to as long as we continue to stand … shoulder to shoulder.

TAKE ACTION
The Four Rules of Muscularity: Part One of Two

If you are one of those guys that says he avoids lifting weights because he does not want to accidentally end up looking like Arnold (Schwarzenegger), you are probably not an MTM subscriber. We won’t waste time responding to that silly excuse.

What we will do is lay out for you the four principles upon which you can build muscle and acquire the strength and capabilities that come with that muscle. Building muscle is math: inputs  produce outputs. Invest the right inputs and you enjoy the desired outputs.

Rule #1: Overload

One of the very cool and very helpful features of the human body (and mind) is that it becomes stronger in response to stress. But our nervous systems are also designed to ignore stresses below a certain level so that it can focus its attention on unusually large (and threatening) sources of stress.

This means that, if you want your muscles to grow and become stronger, you have to stress them beyond what they experience on a daily basis. The idea is to do just enough to trigger the response. For example, if you can easily (and with good form … see MTM issue #5), squat ten reps with a 45-pound barbell on your back, add a five-pound plate to each side and see how that feels. You can add reps instead of increasing weight but stay within five to ten reps when muscle building is the goal.

Don’t cripple yourself. Add just enough weight or do another one or two reps to achieve the goal of fatiguing your muscles. That will send a signal to your hormonal system to get your testosterone working to build muscle. (See MTM issues #2, #4 and #6 for more about testosterone.)

Rule #2: Protein Timing and Ratio

Get protein into your stomach within 30 minutes of weight training. Your digestive tract is able to more efficiently assimilate protein in this window. That is why you will see guys bring shaker bottles with them to the gym and why gyms sell protein drinks. Powdered whey protein mixed with water is a good way to go.

How much daily protein you consume makes the difference in how much muscle you add to your frame. If you want to bulk up (i.e. get jacked), you should consume one gram of protein per pound of body weight. If you want a more athletic (sculpted not bulky), shoot for a half-a-gram to three-quarters-of-a-gram per pound body weight daily.

These ratios assume you are weight training at least three times weekly and training to overload. We will look at specific liftings and plans in future issues but the powerlifting 5x5 program is a simple, effective place to start.

We will cover rules three and four in our next issue so stay tuned!

📣 NEWS FROM AROUND THE WEB 📣 

Note that our providing these links does not constitute an endorsement of the writer’s or publisher’s perspective. We try to filter out propaganda but sometimes good information is laced with bias. As with everything you read and watch, process with a critical perspective.

Supplementation

1. When you exercise, you sweat. When you sweat, you lose both water and minerals (like sodium, potassium and calcium) your body uses to create electricity. These minerals are called “electrolytes” and any man serious about optimizing his fitness needs to know who to replenish them. Here is a comprehensive guide to learning more about electrolytes and where you can find them. Courtesy Cleveland Clinic.

2. Fitness supplement brands promote branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) leucine, isoleucine and valine, for their muscle building and post-training recovery benefits. But should you invest in stand-alone BCAA supplements? Read this research review and save yourself some money. Courtesy Healthline.

Books and Gear

1. Originals (Adam Grant, 2017): The human drive to create is an expression of the Creator’s image and, as a result, His creative disposition in us. You may not consider yourself a “creative” but the truth is we all have creative capacity. Grant surveys history’s great creators to bring back lessons we can apply to cultivate our creativity.

2. Lift straps are strips of braided nylon or leather strips weight lifters sometimes use to enhance their grip strength when deadlifting. As a general rule, MTM advises against using devices like these as they 1) prevent you from acquiring grip strength, 2) can set you up for injury as a result of lifting amounts of weight for which your body is not prepared and 3) they are a waste of your training gear budget. That said, you should know about them and make a decision for yourself. Check out these wraps as an example of what is available.

Thanks for joining us for our seventh issue and stay tuned for MTM issue eight next Saturday morning.

If you found value in what we shared, please share More The Man with family and friends and help us build a community of exceptional men that includes YOU.

Questions about anything you read or suggestions for future topics? Send a note to Jeremy.

Sponsorship or advertising questions? Send a note to Will.