The Temple
Receipts.
Seven years in the gym. Alone, by choice, by necessity, and eventually by design. Here is what that looks like in numbers — and what it actually means for a human being living in the 20xx timeline.
Seven years, solo
The gym has been my outlet for over seven years at this point. As a self-taught and deeply introverted person, I never made much progress when training with another person — purely because of incompatible strength levels, different training styles, and the quiet friction that comes from not being in sync with someone else's energy. So I gave myself permission to lock into what I call transcendencing — the Ragnarok Online path of levelling up your own class, one rep at a time. Teaching myself everything from the basics all the way to the more specialised movements that make my training genuinely mine.
The receipts from that journey sit below. Not posted to impress. Posted because numbers are honest and I want to be honest about where I am.
The all-time world record conventional deadlift sits at 510 kg — set by Iceland's Hafþór Björnsson in 2025. At 60 kg bodyweight, elite raw powerlifters in that weight class pull in the 200–230 kg range at competition level. A 140 kg pull at ~61 kg bodyweight is approximately 2.3× my own body weight — a legitimate milestone for a natural, self-taught, non-competing lifter. The world record isn't the goal. The year-on-year progress is.
Why it matters in the 20xx timeline
I find it fundamental in this era we live in to incorporate some form of physical training — as an act of self-respect, discipline, and longevity. To live in the most modern time in human history and remain mentally unaware that your physical body directly dictates your capacity to enjoy life as a whole — that is a mistake. Without a healthy body, life becomes increasingly difficult to navigate, because you are gradually limiting your own capacity to move and breathe freely.
And beyond the personal — it feels like a profound disrespect to your ancestors to not use what they fought for. The big picture here is this: you are reading this right now in 20xx, which means you are the direct surviving descendant of thousands of years of human evolution. Every single person in your bloodline before you survived long enough to produce the next generation. You are the result of that chain. Act accordingly.
Do not limit your capacity to move. Physically challenge yourself to do something that makes you uncomfortable. The harder the task, generally the greater the reward from surviving it. That is not a motivational poster. That is the oldest feedback loop in human biology.
The confidence byproduct
With each year and each session I attend alone, I feel a greater sense of confidence — not because I look a certain way, but because I know what I need to do to get stronger. The byproduct is that my posture and overall physical condition continues to improve with age, not despite it.
We carry this strange cultural belief that as we get older, we inevitably become physically and mentally weaker. That age is a sentence. That is simply not true — and we arrive at that belief partly because we forget that we are human beings with an extraordinary capacity to adapt, and partly because we stop asking our bodies to do hard things. The moment you stop challenging yourself, the decline begins. Not because of age. Because of atrophy.
Goggins and the callused mind
David Goggins — born February 17, 1975. Age 51 in 2026.
Former Navy SEAL, ultramarathon runner, and one of the most physically demanding humans alive. He started his transformation at 297 pounds — a weight so far from his goals that most people would have accepted it as their permanent state. He lost 106 pounds in three months to qualify for SEAL training. He went on to complete over 70 ultramarathons of 100 miles or more, set a world record of 4,030 pull-ups in 17 hours, and at 51 years old still runs, trains, and operates at a level that embarrasses people half his age.
He was not born with extraordinary gifts. He had learning disabilities, grew up in poverty, and lived with the long-term effects of an abusive childhood. What he built was entirely forged.
The concept he describes as callusing the mind — from his book Can't Hurt Me — is the idea that you build mental resilience the exact same way physical training builds calluses on your hands. By scheduling discomfort. By doing the uncomfortable thing repeatedly until the discomfort loses its power over you. Once you become accustomed to it, it does not control you. You control it.
That is the make-or-break difference toward longevity. Not genetics. Not circumstances. The daily decision to make yourself uncomfortable on purpose.
The close
I write this with full humility — I am not the strongest person in any gym I enter. I am not competing. I am not trying to convince anyone that my way is the right way. I write this because I want to see the greater good rather than become rotten with the pre-programmed complacency that this era actively promotes.
The fact that I have built this alone, over seven years, is its own form of testimony. It says something about self-worth. About showing up when nobody is watching or counting. About the kind of discipline that does not need an audience.
So here is the close, and I mean it plainly: please, at minimum, physically take care of yourself. Because at least then, the rest has a chance of coming.