Skip to main content

The Lifter's Bushido


     While reading Nick Horton’s good blog “The Iron Samurai” the other day[1], I came across this quote by the samurai Yamaoku Tesshu: “In order to learn about the Way, forget about self and awaken to the truth… Exerting self is a mistake… We should not say “myself” — in truth there is no such thing… When there is no thought of self, true Bushido develops.”
the samurai, and Zen master, Yamaoku Tesshu

     The essence of Bushido is summed up in the last sentence.
     When there is no thought of self, true Bushido develops.
     Bushido—for those of you who are unaware—is often translated as “the way of the warrior” or, a more literal definition, “the samurai’s way.”  It is the way of one who practices Budo.  (Budo means “martial path”.)
     I have often thought of lifting as a form of Budo, and my gym as the dojo.  (This is one reason that I enjoy lifting at home, in my garage dungeon gym.  It is not commercial, and, therefore, becomes more of a dojo than anything commercialized.  The furthest thing from a dojo, for instance, would be Planet Fitness.)
     Lifting as Budo becomes even more true when performing only one or two exercises at each workout for multiple sets each.  A lot of lifters who train in both martial arts and Olympic lifting understand this the best—martial arts training (particularly the Japanese martial arts, which I’m partial to) and Olympic lifting allow one to lose thought of self—what my sensei would refer to as “mushin”—and, thus, attain true Bushido.
     I don’t think this can really be explained adequately in a blog post—or in any writing, for that matter—so I’m not going to even try to do so.  As my sensei was also fond of saying throughout the course of a training session: “Fight without fighting and think without thinking.”  He never attempted to explain this to anyone.  If you didn’t “get it”, or if it didn’t dawn on you at some point during your Budo practice, I doubt he thought there would be much point.
     The only way for any of us to develop true Bushido, and experience this directly, is to train.  Training is the path.  The path is the goal.
     When there is no thought of self, true Bushido develops.



[1] I read his blog once every two weeks or so—I would read it more but, to be honest, I’m afraid I simply don’t peruse the internet enough, which I think is a better trade-off than perusing it too damn much
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Feel free to leave us some feedback on the article or any topics you would like us to cover in the future! Much Appreciated!

Popular posts from this blog

Marvin Eder’s Mass-Building Methods

  The Many and Varied Mass-Building Methods of Power Bodybuilding’s G.O.A.T. Eder as he appeared in my article "Full Body Workouts" for IronMan  magazine.      In many ways, the essay you are now reading is the one that has had the “longest time coming.”  I have no clue why it has taken me this long to write an article specifically on Marvin Eder, especially considering the fact that I have long considered him the greatest bodybuilder cum strength athlete of all friggin’ time .  In fact, over 20 years ago, I wrote this in the pages of IronMan magazine: In my opinion, the greatest all-around bodybuilder, powerlifter and strength athlete ever to walk the planet, Eder had 19-inch arms at a bodyweight of 198. He could bench 510, squat 550 for 10 reps and do a barbell press with 365. He was reported to have achieved the amazing feat of cranking out 1,000 dips in only 17 minutes. Imagine doing a dip a second for 17 minutes. As Gene Mozee once put ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Mighty, Massive Arms of Franco Columbu

  The Arm Training Secrets of an Old-School Bodybuilding Legend   Columbu in his heyday      “The average person who wants to see how well built or strong you are will inevitably say, ‘Make a muscle.’   Such folks aren’t interested in your lat spread, huge pecs, or rippling abdominals.   They want to see you roll up your sleeve and display a bulging biceps.   It’s the main attribute that sets you apart from the average man or athlete and identifies you as a muscle man!” ~Franco Columbu [1]        As I was searching for an article of mine in an old Iron Man magazine, rummaging through my many issues, I happen to come across the article “Franco Columbu’s Mighty, Massive Arms” by Gene Mozee.   It was in his regular feature “Mass from the Past” from the ‘90s that always outlined the training regimens of many of the “old-school” bodybuilders from the ‘70s or before.   Truth is, they were invariably just...
1 comment
Read more

Classic Mass - the 6x6 Routine

Build Muscle the Classic Way with an Old-School Favorite      I’m going to stop writing that I’m going to stop writing about a subject, any subject.  For one, I never know quite where my writing is going to take me.  That’s correct.  I don’t really feel as if I write.  It’s more as if writing just happens through me. I sit down at my laptop in the morning, my heavy cream-laden coffee steaming next to me, with every intention of writing on a certain subject.  Only to find that it morphs into something completely different, sometimes not even remotely in the same orbit as my initial idea(s).  For another, quite practical reason, I never know what kind of questions my recently written articles are going to generate, often prompting another essay on a subject I thought I was finished with.      I mention the above because at the end of my recent Old-School Muscle-Building Once More , I wrote that I was going t...
2 comments
Read more