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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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!
Just how dark were the Dark Ages?
Were they hopelessly backwards and barbaric—as we've been led to believe—or were they a time of surprising innovation?🧵
To clarify, I’m talking about the actual Dark Ages, from about the Fall of the Western Roman Empire to the 11th century, or so. I am not talking about the Middle Ages, which are sometimes called "dark" but which obviously weren’t dark.
Intellectuals like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Gibbon are on the record as saying that the Dark Ages are defined by barbarism and backwardness, and their claims have gladly seized upon by public school teachers and pop culture-makers.
On September 12, 1683, one of the greatest cavalry charges in history took place at Kahlenberg Hill, overlooking Vienna, where Jan III Sobieski and his winged hussars saved Christendom from disaster. 🧵
Just a few days back, the Viennese fired distress rockets into the night sky to let any friends who might be out there know that they needed help—now or never. The city had been under siege for almost two months by the Ottoman Turks.
The Turks had already blasted multiple breaches in the walls and the Austrians only barely repulsed them. They couldn't hold out much longer.