What is physical culture?
For me it’s a lifestyle of health, strength, and capability. Where you have energy to do the things you want to do, have a positive can do attitude, and enjoy overall good health and pain-free living. It’s a life where you prioritize building health and wellness so you can do everything else better.
A system of thought about building yourself up
The philosophy of physical culture is that you can improve yourself. Not just your physical, but your mental and spiritual as well.
A physical culturalist believes that from the rigors of training your body, and disciplining your mind to focus on what you’re doing, you can transform yourself from sickness to health, from chump to champ, and from poor to wealthy.
The physical culturalist thinks positive and powerful thoughts and believes in the Greek adage a sound mind in a sound body.
There is no victim mentality in a proper physical culturalist. We take what we got in terms of genetic and environmental potential and work with it, using our minds to transform into something better than what we are.
Take 100% responsibility for what happens, good or bad.
WMF Training philosophy
Activity forms the backbone of existence. “Running water never grows stale.” The training philosophy says “move and do stuff–it doesn’t matter what, but walking is a place to start.”
Walking. A good long walk will purify the bloodstream and give you ideas for improving your life. 30 minutes daily brisk walking is a standard for preventing the #1 cause of death, heart attack. 3 to 3.5 miles per hour pace.
Get consistent with the basics of walking, fresh air, sunshine, and 7-9 hours of sleep. In addition to diet, this forms your foundation.
Don’t look for shinier, newer, better, until your foundation is sorted out.
Frameworks and constraints
It’s important to have frameworks and constraints to make decision-making easier. Here are some examples of frameworks.
- 2-3 movement based strength/weight training sessions a week
- 2-3 endurance sessions a week
- Morning routine (joint mobility for example)
- Evening routine (reading inspiring stuff)
- Daily walking
Here are some examples of constraints:
- 1 cup of coffee per day
- 4 drinks per week
- 1 day for eating dessert
- Bedtime at 9:30
- Fasting one day per week for 24 hours
You have to lay out some rules to follow. Principles. Like a budget. Keep it simple.
What you’re really doing is budgeting your nerve energy. You only have so much of it and you can do things that build it up and things that destroy it.
Sleep is the ultimate recovery agent.
All this stuff is explained in detail in my training program.
Movement-based training
The simplest way to set up your training is to train specific movements and find exercises that target that movement pattern. Obvious examples:
- Squats
- Deadlifts
- Press overhead
- Bench press/push up
- Rowing
- Pull ups
- Carrying
One workout does not have to target everything. But over the course of a week you should hit most of these movements. You don’t need super heavy weights, either. Many people get plenty strong just doing bodyweight exercise.
Instead of focusing on the muscles, focus on performing high quality movements with excellent concentration and pain free movement.
Flexibility and mobility
Staying flexible is pretty awesome. It just makes you feel good. While you watch other people struggle and stiffen up, you’re nimble and feel great.
There are a lot of ways to stretch. Stretching where you just chill out, stretching where you flex and relax your muscles to force your nervous system to relax, dynamic stretching, and so on. Then there are things like joint mobility and baby crawling.
WMF diet philosophy
In Ben Franklin’s autobiography, he listed temperance (eat not to dullness, drink not to elevation) as the most important trait to develop because so many other positive traits develop as a result of temperance.
Something to contemplate. Ben Franklin was a pretty impressive figure.
Eat a lot more plants and less meat. I follow the Bragg’s, John Tilden, and Bernarr MacFadden when it comes to diet. They keep it simple.
The quickest way to abuse and debase your body is by what you put into your mouth.
One of the biggest sins is overeating. Forcing your body to digest and do stuff with all this food matter.
A primary cause for this sin is lack of self-control and not chewing your food thoroughly. No one wants to hear this because we all like to eat, but it’s true.
John Tilden’s Rules for eating
John Tilden came up with some rules for eating that are good to be aware of:
John Tilden Eating Rule #1
Never eat unless comfortable in mind and body from the previous meal or meal time.
John Tilden Eating Rule #2
Never eat without desire and keen relish for the plainest, simple food; and not even then if to do so would break the first rule.
John Tilden Eating Rule #3
Avoid overeating. The best way to do this is by following the fourth rule.
John Tilden Eating Rule #4
Thoroughly masticate and insalivate, especially starchy foods. Chew your food. (Some people inhale it.)
What to eat what not to eat?
One of the most influential bits of diet advice I’ve read is to follow the CAS-free diet. I got this from Neo-Tech. It’s just real simple. No Caffeine, Alcohol, or Sugar.
Now, I’m not Caffeine, Alcohol, and Sugar free. But, I limit and watch all these substances. It’s good to have a heightened awareness of your intake of these drugs, and perhaps other drugs you might be using, whether marijuana or Adderall.
Basically, I look at the ingredients of things and look for stuff that’s been added. Brown rice syrup, for example. I don’t like that stuff. I think it gums you up. Whether it does or not, you’re better off without it. Same goes for soda and all sorts of other packaged foods. For the most part, I avoid them all.
So primarily it’s organic and raw as much as possible vegetables, meat, beans, rice, and fruit. Then the snack foods creep in. Some weeks I’m better than others. Snack foods that get me are chocolate and baked goods (my wife makes muffins). Because the baked goods are made at home, they are generally healthier and made with good, high quality ingredients.
But see the points above about eating. Overeating is one of the big things you have to watch for. You combat that by chewing your food. If you can start thoroughly chewing your food, you’re on your way.
The daily salad
I owe initial credit to John Tilden for getting me into the “Tilden” salad. I’ve since started calling it the Qualler salad because I’ve built upon it and made it my own. Basically, you buy high quality organic lettuce (like a spring mix) and then you chop up herbs and raw vegetables and put it on top. Here’s a quick example:
All that stuff gets put on top of the salad (celery, radishes, sage, tomatoes, broccoli) and then I drizzle a lemon and olive oil on it.
Reduce what you shouldn’t eat, accentuate what you should
Diet is a place where most people struggle and it’s evident in our health care system and by just looking around. You might have grown up under a poor diet situation and adopted bad eating habits. Those need to be changed.
How you change them is a matter of getting rid of something and taking on something else. Slow and steady win the race.
Replace sugary soda with coffee, no sugar. Learn to appreciate basic tastes by eliminating processed food with aggressive seasoning.
A big first step is to start cooking more of your own food. This is the game changer. Embrace your time in the kitchen.
WMF mental philosophy
“You can jog five miles a day, eat only natural foods, take the limit of vitamins and minerals—and spend your days agitated, resentful, fearful and wondering why you are not enjoying good health.”
The Superbeings – John Randolph Price
The idea of mental training is you want to use and direct your thoughts. We can control our thoughts, but mostly we don’t.
A key aspect of controlling your thoughts is to develop a vision and a picture for your life, and what part health and strength plays into that.
You might also have a negative vision, something you hold in your mind that reminds you of what you don’t want to become. You remember your alcoholic dad when you think about having a drink. The “drink thought” loses power.
Where you’re headed here in mental training is to get rid of negative and limiting thoughts and build up positive growth thoughts.
You’re developing the picture of your life that you want to create and becoming more conscious and aware of where you are currently.
Developing the picture of your life–the vision–is the most important step. Something that fires you up. Once you have something to live for then the poor choices you’re making have less and less appeal.
The goal is not to fight to change yourself. The goal is to change yourself in your mind so things like eating right and taking proper care of your body come naturally.
The total package
The goal is to take where you are and get better. Get rid of habits that are holding you back. Change things that aren’t working well for you. Picture the life you want to live instead of getting caught up in the rat race.
Physical culture work can bring a purity and an awareness to your life that can help you in all other areas.
As Chris Caracci said in one of his Navy Seal tapes (yes, my originals were VHS) – “You make yourself a better person, you make the world a better place.”
And now for the proverbial Ass Swat – Let’s get moving! Check out the Products Page and get started.