She’s actually asking a pretty reasonable question for your average lifter. Doing high rep anything sucks. High rep squats and deads especially. So, a reasonable question, from a typical trainee, would be, “how much of me not wanting to lift, is laziness, and how much is a genuine signal from my body that I need to stop”?
Underrecovery is a factor for a lot of people, so I’d address that first, but there are a LOT of people who just don’t train hard enough, and so, normally, I’d attribute a trainee’s slow progress to a lack of intensity. The tricky thing here is that Anna really does know how to train hard, and to train when she feels like crap. She’s a lot tougher than she gives herself credit for.
It’s like how Adderall will make somebody with ADHD calm and focused, and it’ll make other people feel like they’ve injected meth - Anna is currently experiencing the opposite of what we do when intensity is applied. She’s also quite intelligent, so a part of her knows that asking that question is seeking approval to add unnecessary work, but it’s worth talking about.
Appreciate the kind words dude, and glad you dug it. Some folks are discussing it over on reddit, and there’s the typical amount that don’t wanna like the message and are running it in a weird direction: it’s always nice to see someone that “gets it” appreciate it. We’re taught to love ourselves just the way we are, but I can’t imagine anyone that ever achieved anything awesome ever was like that…at least, not at the start. Narcissism has a place when you’re actually WORTH the self love, haha.
And dude, I love being able to give back, especially when I get to see the results be so significant. For every 10 dudes that wanna come on here, asking about something they already made up their mind on and argue about it for 500 posts, there are dudes like you that graciously accept advice, apply the stuff that makes sense, and get crazy results. It’s absolutely worth it.
Took a quick look at the reddit thread: saw a couple people say things along of the lines of “you’re making self loathing sound good, this is why it’s bad”, and their explanation is the definition of self-pity. It seems to be less of something you agree or disagree with and more of something you see or don’t see.
I read the T3hPwnisher’s blog and I wonder if a more appropriate phrase would be “unsatisfied with oneself” rather than “self loathing”.
But, inevitably, I’m sure people would find reasons why “unsatisfied with oneself” is bad and give extreme examples showing why it’s bad, and in doing so fail to remember that everything is bad when taken to the extreme…
The definition of “loath” is ‘unwilling’, or ‘reluctant’, so it’s mostly just a perversion of a term. “I’m reluctant/unwilling to accept this version of myself” is what’s being talked about. Of course, you know that, I’m just throwing it out there for anyone harping on the term.
I guess that’s what I was questioning. If she’s talking purely about lifting, then there’s mechanical ways to figure it out. I think it’s ultimately it’s highly personal and dependent on what you’ve experienced.
Let’s take the power cleans I did today for example. My thighs didn’t actually feel painful in as “OW I STUBBED MY TOE” kind of way but rather, “… Something feels very wrong here, I wonder if I should stop”. I rarely feel that way and it felt uncomfortable. On top of my I noticed that I was losing my ability to use my upper body to slow the bar down as I caught it, thus putting more strain on my forearms and letting the bar impact my thighs harder.
I am glad that I stopped at 20 reps, exactly one rep after my head started saying “you should stop”.
Contrast that to how I feel on the third set of those giant sets I’ve been doing. I feel physically exhausted and I keep failing to complete the bodyweight movements. I know exactly what I’m doing here and the pain are stuff I’ve experienced before. I will be very upset if I end up not doing the fourth set because I’ve been here before, lived through it, and saw myself improve a month later.
In other words- you experience shit and then learn from them.
I was thinking of her question on a more general level- how crappy would things have to get before you stop caring/call it quits.
To which my answer is the same no matter who you are- you don’t stop until you die because you have no idea where you will be 10 years from now if you never stop actually trying to do something.
I suppose in a similar vein to what you and T3Pwnisher are talking about- I believe self-pity is the worst thing you can ever do to yourself. I genuinely hated myself after every incident in which I fell into self-pity.
Actually, I interpreted self-loathing as meaning “hating oneself”. It’s interesting that I do interpret “loath” the way you put it, but “self-loathing” is interpreted as far more extreme.
Fantastic discussion, and glad to share it with these minds. Concur on self-pity as well. Nietzsche wrote that pity was the worst of man’s sins, and, in turn, self-pity would be absolutely egregious. When facing an impossible adversary, would you rather passively wait to be slaughtered or at least go out on your feet, charging forward, stupidly, against impossible odds? At least you’ll have a spot in Valhalla in the case of the latter.
@T3hPwnisher I’m still not exactly sure what self loathing cactus is. I’m certainly very unsatisfied with myself but Idk of how I feel is self pity or loathing (leaning towards self pity)
I’m going to push an idea out there that I haven’t had chance to really consider, but has been floating around my head since reading @T3hPwnisher blog this morning. Maybe the difference between self loathing and self pity is self esteem. A self pitier and a self loather may feel similarly about their current state, but the former believes it is an intrinsic and immuteable part of who they are, that they aren’t worth more. The self loather recognises that they can be better than they are and therefore that they can be worth more.
This is far from a fully fleshed out idea, so feel free to disregard. Apologies to @flappinit for cluttering up his log.
I’ll further the derailing, and second the apologies then to @flappinit.
I think self-pity is okay.
Caveat: it has to end, and soon.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently bad about, for a moment, to feel bad for oneself. However, this is conceivably a bit of a different take on what is “self-pity” and what is “self-loathing” as it was framed in the blog post (I’ve read it).
What I mean is, if a person has experienced/experiencing something — permanent or not — that’d make another decent human being go “oh, shit, that sucks” when first hearing about it then momentarily feeling sorry for oneself might be therapeutic. If perpetuated indefinitely, it becomes detrimental.
Yeah, I suppose we can’t help but feel bad for ourselves every once in a while, but if we run with @dagill2’s theory that self loathing minus self esteem equals self pity, then the feeling sorry for yourself has to have a plan to move forward. It may not initially, especially in extreme cases like, say, the loss of a child, but even then, as you said, staying in the pity stage can only hurt you after a while.
In the context of lifting though, I don’t think self pity is ever useful.
Agreed, self-pity in the context of lifting isn’t something I get. Maybe injury, but for us recreational lifters that should maybe be a momentary downer and might make cookie cutter programs less palatable but compared to someone who has a competitive season it’s comparatively nothing. Not that constant pain isn’t an energy drain.
This makes so much sense. I just read pwn’s blog post and that definitely answered some questions I had about it
I also don’t think the two are mutually exclusive either. For example
I have immense, probably counter productive self pity for the covid shutdowns and not being able to workout with a barbell; however, I didn’t give up. I ordered Kbs, and progressive overload with different movements
The self pity was you feeling sorry, but it was the self loathing that made you do something about it. You didn’t order KB’s and figure out a new program out of self-pity, IMO.
Perhaps the difference then is that the self pitier sees the situation they are in as who they are, another expression of the victim complex. The self leather sees the situation they are in as just that: a situation they are in, and that they can remove themselves from through force of will. Possibly this is just another angle on discussions on victim mentality.
Self pity and self loathing —I get the difference. But motivation also springs from positive places.
Truly, I believe most many athletes love their sport and participate because they enjoy the process of getting better the success and the empowerment that comes from making what was once impossible
Possible.