Bad posture suggests to the world that a man is tired, timid, demoralized, overly comfortable on the couch, insufficiently eager to make a mark on the world, or just not concerned about developing personal dignity.
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That may sound harsh. The good news is that good posture can be attained and carries the exact opposite effects.
Good posture suggests that a man is a force to be reckoned with.
I sympathize with those who want better posture but have difficulty. Modern life (desk jobs, smartphones, etc) constantly draws our shoulders and head forward, whether we like it or not.
The man who would stand up straight must overcome these.
How does one do this?
1) It starts with getting in shape. Standing tall will be significantly easier if you have better energy and less weight to haul around.
2) More specifically, we need to strengthen the posterior chain in the gym. Because modern life pulls us forward, we need to strengthen those muscles that pull us back.
Specific exercises in the gym might include deadlifts, leg curls, glute thrusts, back extensions, and others.
3) When you're at home, facepulls are exceptionally helpful. Simply acquire a resistance band ($10) and rig it in a door frame. These help you understand the importance of scapular placement.
4) Chintucks will help strength the neck muscles that keep the head from falling forward.
5) We need to stand up more frequently. Break long periods of sitting by simply standing up every 15-30 minutes. It will be helpful to squeeze the glutes when you stand.
No dead butt syndrome!
6) Walking does wonders. I aim for 4 miles a day. Enough said.
7) Finally, I find it helps to look at pictures of dignified, upright, strong men. Draw strength of the examples of Chads. Have a picture in your mind of what you're aiming for.
Ultimately, the choice is ours: Will we look like bugmen or like men of consequence?
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October 10, 732—Charles Martel and an army of Franks halt and turn back the Umayyad invasion at the Battle of Tours.
Isidore of Beja on the Frankish infantry:
“Firmly they stood, one close to another, forming as it were a bulwark of ice.”
Denis the Chronicler on the leader of the Franks:
"He fought as fiercely as the hungry wolf falls upon the stag. By the grace of Our Lord, he wrought a great slaughter on the enemies of Christian faith. Then was he first called 'Martel,' for as a hammer of iron ... even so he dashed and smote in the battle all his enemies."
“The Spanish Muslims were fully aware of who Charles Martel was and what he had done to their aspirations. Indeed, Muslims in Spain had learned from their defeat that the Franks were not a sedentary people served by mercenary garrison troops, nor were they a barbarian horde. They, too, were empire builders, and the Frankish host was made up of very well trained citizen volunteers who possessed arms, armor, and tactics superior to those of the Muslims. Indeed, when the Muslims tried to invade Gaul again in 735, Charles Martel and his Frank gave them another beating, so severe that Muslim forces never ventured very far north again. Forty years later, Martel's grandson joined the long process of driving them from Spain.”
Stark also highlights a good lesson to be drawn from the battle.
“Late in the afternoon, as the Arab chronicler reported, many Muslims became ‘fearful for the safety of the spoil which they had stored in their tents, and a false cry arose in their ranks that some of the enemy were plundering the camp; whereupon several squadrons of the Muslim horseman rode off to protect their tents.’ To other units appeared to be a retreat, and it soon became one, during which the Franks unleashed their own heavily armored cavalry to inflict severe casualties on the fleeing Muslims; at least 10,000 of them died that afternoon.”
On September 8, 1157, the third son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine was born: Richard the Lionheart. One of the all-timers.
“Richard was a complex character," wrote Rodney Stark. "As a soldier he was little short of mad, incredibly reckless and foolhardy, but as a commander he was intelligent, cautious, and calculating. He would risk his own life with complete nonchalance, but nothing could persuade him to endanger his troops more than was absolutely necessary. Troops adore such a commander.”
That gap in the Pyrenees is called Roland’s Breach—legend has it that Charlemagne’s most famous knight cut the rock away in the final moments of his life. 🧵
Roland was the medieval Achilles and the last survivor of Charlemagne’s rearguard at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, where they were treacherously ambushed. As the end neared, he dreaded the seeming inevitability that his sword Durendal would fall into Saracen hands.
He could not allow such a thing to happen.
This was no ordinary sword—made in Heaven and given by an angel to Charlemagne, who then gave it to his nephew and champion. So Roland tried to break the sword by striking against the Pyrenees.
You know St George killed a dragon, but do you know what the dragon was about?
It wasn’t just a random mythological creature, much less one of those nice dragons who will carry riders on his back. It was a venom-spewing devourer of children.🧵
Long before George arrived, the men of Silene decided to do something about the fearsome beast in their country, so they assembled and marched off. But when they were face to face with the monster their hearts gave out, the Golden Legend reports. They fled.
And the cost of their cowardice would be steep. The narrative continues: "And when he came nigh the city he envenomed the people with his breath, and therefore the people of the city gave to him every day two sheep for to feed him, because he should do no harm to the people.”
One of the unsung heroes of the third Crusade was a priest who dove from the battlements of the Jaffa into the sea and swam to Richard the Lionheart’s galley with a cry for help.🧵
Richard had been in Acre making preparations to return to England to deal with the urgent business there (traitors trying to take his kingdom). The Crusade was over, he thought, a brilliant but doomed campaign which he planned to return to after taking back his own kingdom.
Then he heard about Saladin’s surprise attack against Jaffa.
He sailed back to Jaffa and arrived thinking that it was too late; Saracen banners had been raised and the city appeared to have been taken.
A pattern you recognize when reading history is that we can count on being outnumbered. The enemy is so often legion.
One of the greatest mechanisms for maximizing this numerical superiority was the janissary program of the Ottoman Turks. 🧵
This thread will get dark, but a note of hope emerges at the end (as always).
Turkish for “new soldier,” janissaries were elite infantrymen unleashed against the enemies of the Ottomans, like the Christian people of the Balkans.
What made the corps truly devastating was the origin of these soldiers: they were taken from Christian families as boys, indoctrinated in Ottoman ways, and then turned loose against their own people!