Train Like A Hero!
On some level, we’v
e all imagined ourselves as heroes at one time or another. We imagine ourselves having super powers, rescuing a damsel in distress or saving the world from certain disaster, all while facing incredible circumstances and defeating our evil arch nemesis.
Joseph Campbell, one of the great mythological scholars of our time, taught us that the tale of each hero follows a certain narrative. Each hero starts his journey on a quest to conquer the impossible. Along the way he will encounter violent resistance, he’ll be faced with a moral dilemma that tests his strength and convictions, and eventually he triumphs in spite of it all.
The hero narrative and the tale of the bodybuilder have a lot in common. They both begin with an idea or a call to arms. Along the way they both face nearly impossible odds, encounter merciless resistance, and – for those select few with the right amount of persistence and luck – they defeat the enemy and become immortal. Heroes have similar defining characteristics (things we’re all capable of once we unlock their mystery), but in order for us to train like a hero, we need to find out exactly what those characteristics are.
First and foremost, a hero must be fearless. At age twe
nty-one, a young man warrior took over as the king of Macedonia following the assassination of his father Phillip. His seat on the throne wasn’t quiet for long as he faced immediate threats from foreign powers looking to usurp the young ruler.
After quickly crushing all those who dared to oppose him with swift military force the young king regrouped and set his sights on overthrowing the Persian Empire, an empire that held the largest standing army the world had ever known. The fact that he and his men were severely outnumbered was no deterrent to the young, fearless, warrior king who would go onto defeat the Persians and establish himself as one the greatest warlords the world has ever known – Alexander the Great.
In order for us to become a hero we’ll need to be fearless. We will have to stare down a world that tells us we can’t and not be scared to fail. To be a hero means failure is always an option, fear is not.
Although the hero must be fearless, the opposition he faces along his path to immortality will be equally fearless. In order for the hero to triumph over resistance and in the face of opposition he needs to have an unrelenting drive that will not allow him to ever lose sight of his purpose.
On July 12, 1975, a boy was born at a hospital in Brooklyn, New York. By the age of six the boy’s home life began to disintegrate, an unfortunate situation that resulted in the boy being placed in foster care and becoming a ward of the state. He would spend the next decade of his life in transition, being moved in and out of multiple youth facilities, never having the chance to experience the loving home environment that all children deserve.
Despite the challenges he faced from the outside world, inside he was fueled by a relentless drive to develop what he believed to be his true self – a professional bodybuilder. At the 2007 NPC Team Universe, after a lifetime of heartache, heartbreak, and unfulfilled promises, the relentless drive that carried a broken spirit through hell and back finally propelled him to the top of the Heavyweight class and secured his IFBB Pro card.
Now, eight professional victories later, including a win at the 2009 Arnold Classic and four top-five finishes at the Mr. Olympia, Kai Greene is well on his was to immortalizing himself as one of the greatest physiques in bodybuilding history.
A hero is unrelenting in his desire to accomplish his goals. He knows that along the way he will encounter great resistance from opposing forces who want nothing more than to push him off course and drag him back to hell, but he never loses focus on the end point.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.” In order for us to fulfill our potential we must be willing to endure when others are not. In order for us to become immortal, we must be driven to succeed at all costs.
The final piece in learnin
g how to train like a hero is embracing something that we’ve all come to know – sacrifice. In order for a hero to become immortalized, and for us to achieve our goals, we have to be willing to pay the cost owed to the gods.
The hero knows that there is nothing worth achieving in his life that doesn’t require sacrifice – that in order for him to become immortal he must pay his debt. At the very moment we pick up our first weight we become indebted to the iron goddess. In exchange for a physique of greatness she demands; blood, sweat, tears, isolation, and total surrender to the life she has chosen for us. The bodybuilder’s marriage to his iron mistress will be wrought with complexities in their lifetime love-hate relationship. On one hand we vow to love, honor, and cherish her till death do us part. While on the other we understand that accepting her hand means we must sacrifice the person we were for the person we will come to be.
She will push us to the edge of the proverbial cliff mentally, physically, and emotionally, but just when it seems that we can’t be pushed any farther, as we dangle from that cliff’s edge ready to let go and put an end to the misery, she pulls us back in. All she really wanted was to test our faith in her, to see how much we were willing to sacrifice – and the real bodybuilder, just like the hero, passes the test every time because they understand that this is the path for the immortals.
