Ask Live Hard: Why ‘nice’ is not enough

Sun, 02 Nov 2014 11:57:42 +0000

[Editor’s note: So I’ve started getting enough actual questions to think that answering them would be a good idea. Ask Live Hard is going to be a new semi-regular feature. Got a question? Ask me directly @joelsnape or via the contact form.]

Dear Live Hard,

I think I’m a nice guy, but it doesn’t seem to be doing me any good. Do I have to start behaving like an asshole to get ahead in life or with women? Is it true that nice guys finish last?

Marshall, email

Ah, this question. Let’s start with the ‘women’ part, because that really seems to be the thing everyone’s talking about when they bemoan their ‘nice guy’ status. But rest assured, the rest is related.

Here’s the thing: by saying that you’re ‘nice’, all you really mean is that you’ve reached the minimum acceptable standard of behaviour for living in 21st century society. That’s an achievement of sorts – a lot of people can’t even manage that – but to expect it to make you some sort of saint-figure batting away Tinder requests like Neo stopping bullets in the Matrix is, at the very least, insanely deluded. As far as I can tell (I’m not in the best position to comment), most women are constantly being asked out, hit on, catcalled, e-harassed and generally pestered on a scale it’s difficult for men to comprehend. Are they supposed to give every suitor whose LinkedIn profile reads ‘Polite; not an obvious murderer’ the time of day? They’d never have time for anything else.

On the flipside, perhaps you’ve seen men succeed with women by behaving like outrageous arseholes. This is certainly possible: the science of creepy-level NLP, cold-reading and crowd psychology has certainly come along way in recent years, and some of it definitely works – and, to look at it even more depressingly, some of the things that genuine, untrained, horrible arseholes do will, for complicated reasons, appeal to some women. The problem is that this is no way to actually live: relationships are supposed to be about taking on the world together, not winning some sort of zero-sum power struggle, and by thinking about them in an adversarial way you’re actually making your own life worse, not just the unlucky woman you manage to attract.

So here’s my actual advice. Bank the ‘niceness’ – hang onto that, but remember that it doesn’t make you any better than a waiter or mobile phone salesperson – and start to work on becoming more interesting. Do things with your life: things that inspire you, or challenge you, or scare you, or improve other people’s lives. Work on improving yourself, as a person: your work ethic, your passion, your satisfaction with who you are – not stupid little tricks that you can use in a bar. Once you’re happier with yourself, this stuff won’t be a problem. Nice guys finish wherever they finish: but interesting guys will always beat them.

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Ask Live Hard: how do you get motivated?

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 19:05:56 +0000

How do I get motivated to train at home? I’ve got some dumbbells, a barbell, an EZ bar and a pullup bar.

David, via Twitter

Okay, here’s a scenario: imagine you’ve been told that you’re going to have to self-perform a five-minute medical procedure twice a day, every day, for the rest of your life – because if you don’t, quite an important part of you is going to rot away. That would be awful, right? Well, if you haven’t heard this one before, I’ve got bad news for you: that’s exactly what brushing your teeth is about.

So the truth is: you really don’t need motivation. You need to think about training like brushing your teeth: a task that gets done, because you know it will drastically improve your quality of life, now and in the future. Similarly, there are basically two reasons most people want to start training:

a) Try to stay as healthy as you can for as long as you can, in order to play with hypothetical grandkids and be able to get off the toilet unassisted until you die. If this is what you want you don’t have to train all that hard.

b) Get jacked right now, so that you look good in well-fitted clothes and are more capable of physical feats of derring-do (beating up muggers, sprinting across town when you’re late, various sports, helping people move house).

You can, of course, train for both of these goals at once: that’s why I do. They aren’t mutually exclusive. But it’s useful to realise that there’s a distinction between them.

If you want the first one, I can’t write you a workout that’s much better than Dan John’s Costa Rica plan. Just do this two or three times a week, in your house, and start walking/taking the stairs more than you do now. That alone should strengthen your bones, keep your bodyfat down, work on the major muscular imbalances caused by modern living, and vastly reduce your chances of getting a lot of terrible ailments. It’s easy, and you don’t have to get hyped to do it. Just think of it as something that has to be done, like brushing your teeth and paying into a pension plan. It will work.

If you want the second one, you need to work a bit harder, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Just remember: as long as you recover properly, your body will adapt to what you make it do. What should you make it do? Probably this: compound, full-body movements like squats, press-ups, planks, dips and pullups. If you’ve got weights, push-press, overhead press and some sort of bent row/one-armed row are a good idea. Now, the real secret:

Do all these in whatever way makes you most hyped.

Personally, I spent a good six months getting totally ripped doing little other than the Bas Rutten MMA workout CD, where a giant Dutch kickboxer yells at you to do pressups. I used to do barbell complexes while I watched UFC fights, and I’ll attack a deck of cards workout for no good reason other than it existing. I hate tempo training, but that’s just me: lots of people I know love it, and are in better shape than me because of it. As long as you’re actually doing a sensible mixture of legitimate moves, a shit-ton of intensity will trump almost any training programme you can find on the internet. You don’t need this to become healthier or more efficient as a person, but if you want to look like Wolverine it helps to think like him. Easy.

So there you go: either do a nice, easy, life-extending workout…or put on Rocky IV and do a load of press-ups. Prepare for playing notional sports with grandchildren that don’t exist yet – or get a back like a magnificent viking for the next beach season. Or: do both. Preferably do both. Live Hard!

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Ask Live Hard – Live Hard

Ask Live Hard: Why ‘nice’ is not enough

Ask Live Hard: how do you get motivated?