Is It BAD To Train Just For Looks?

training for health I'm not even going to say it everyone approves training for health duh now you get to vanity do everyone approve oo it's different it's different right guys it's different because you go hey like is it cool for people to train in the gym just purely to try to like look better for themselves a lot of people will be like of course some people be like yeah I guess it maybe depends on how they approach it you can get too much some people will be like honestly it's kind of shallow hey folks Dr

Mike here for RP strength I've been a professor of Sport and exercise science for some time with competitive bodybuilder competitive Brazilian jitu Grappler and today I have to talk to you about something incredibly important yes whatever it is you're doing now is not nearly as important I don't really care if you're currently saving the world this is more important Vanity Vanity my favorite sin to quote alpacino playing the devil in The Devil's Advocate Scott the video guy movie review that's good shit you like it back in the day there were some you feel me there

were some titties in that shit too I don't remember that demon titties demon titties get the biggest green check mark from me you could ever fucking imagine the just below or right pretty close to goth titties it's kind of same same thing if you think about it anyway what the hell are we talking about Vanity Vanity is there something wrong with vanity where is Vanity that is loving how you look and looking at yourself often uh you know like Michael Hearn is it a good reason to train or is it a bad reason to train

because a lot of people say it's a bad reason to train some people who are vain will say shut up they'll cry and they'll do bicep curls in the mirror but uh let's take a look at it and give it a little bit of thought so we can maybe conclude something a little bit more grounded than just having a lot of feelings to me training for vanity means a few things so let's get some definitions in here really quick training for vanity means one of two things for me one it's maybe you don't love how

you look right now and you're training to try to look better and you don't like how you look there's another form of training for vanity which is you like how you look but you think you could look even better imagine talking to someone who considers himself incredibly ugly putting on cakes and cakes and layers and layers of makeup you could if you had a proclivity to say awkward things to people be like hey are you putting on makeup because you think you're ugly and if they were very prone to taking criticism well and very introspective

they could be like honestly you know what yes yes I do not love High I look and I put on contouring makeup to look like someone else to look like someone that I feel confident presenting to the World on the other hand you could catch a supermodel in her dressing room well Scott I got to rephrase that don't I I'm not catching her literally you just happen to be there a visitor she's like you can come in while I put on my makeup and while she's putting on her makeup you're like so you're putting on

makeup cuz you think you look terrible and you don't want to face the world without makeup but she probably laugh and be like no I think I look pretty goddamn good without makeup maybe some of the best in the world but with makeup I look like a little bit more of how I want to look accentuated look and so I'm not putting it to hide I have great self-esteem and high look I just want a little bit of enhancement both of those are sort of vanity driven behaviors but one comes from a place of Something's

quite quite missing and the other comes from a place of abundance but abundance is cool but more abundance is cooler so either way you endend up training because you want to look better and training because you want to look better just for the look like Will Smith and cigars that dates me I'm sure that reference if you want to look better and that's your number one reason for training technically speaking you are training for vanity now you may be thinking at this point Dr Mike that's nice and all but I'm sorry is there other ways

or reasons for training I thought vanity was the only thing I can think of at least a few other reasons to go to the gym and pump iron other than making Arnold noises which I yes add to the following list there's vanity and that's it JK there's Health you can train for health many different types of Health are affected very ah how do I say this Panacea like by training training is incredibly good for almost all Health Systems but especially good for muscular skeletal Health it'll strengthen your bones it give you bigger muscles which is

awesome and affects other systems in a ton of different ways there's cardiometabolic Health if you train with weights you get an acute effect that's incredibly good for your blood work your blood sugars go down your inflammation goes down all that other stuff but the long-term effect of are creating a lot of muscle tissue makes you really anti-diabetic it's incredibly good for cardiometabolic health which is really really awesome and of course especially if you're pretty untrained training hard and taking some higher rep counts and shorter rest breaks can also be incredibly good for just cardiac health

in general any amount of training is but this would be really really a lot and of course Also let's not forget a lot of people train for psycholog iCal health I mean hard training of any kind definitely resistance training inside of a gym has been shown to be just unequivocally amazing for psychological health for very many people and the power of exercise has been ranked up there with therapy and anti-depressants in its effect on let's say mood disorders and I don't mean to say that it's better than therapy or anti-depressant drugs although in some cases

it can be I just mean it's up there and like that you know uh you had a book of all the biggest dinosaurs and maybe it's the top 10 biggest dinosaurs and they're all huge not all of them are the biggest but all of them are the top 10 it's in that top 10 uh best things to treat psychological problems with especially not when there's super super insane disorders but when you're just struggling a little bit exercise weight training can be incredibly good for psychology and many of you no doubt have your own stories about

how that helped you it helps me every day and then you can train for strength okay powerlifters don't go technically in there for vanity that's for the curls after the program but you can train to be stronger which is a dope uh reason to train you can train for um Fitness for Life kind of stuff so if you train with weights something like hiking will become much easier to you than otherwise was and so not only do you get all these maybe cool other effects but you also are able to do your hobbies much better

um playing with kids and stuff like that unloading your groceries Etc taking care of others in your household I mean like that's a big deal if you train with weights that makes you better at those things so that's awesome you can also be training your Fitness in the gym for sport so if you look a D1 athletes in a weight room you'd be like are they training for strength you're like this sort of it's part of their training so it's vanity like that's about supposed to be vanity I think they're pretty good shape already like

so is it like for life like no it's actually just they want to get better at sports they train volleyball players in the weight rooms they get better volleyball football players to get better football so that's another really good reason to train and of course there is a training for injury risk reduction a lot of folks that are older should be training with weights regularly we have some videos on this channel already how they should go about that but one of the big upsides is if you train with weights you increase your body's resilience to

injury I mean if you're a much older person let's say 85 years old but you could do five reps of deep squats with a 45b bar on your back notice this an unloaded bar okay five reps of that super deep that means your Mobility is there and you have 45 pounds excess strength to get up off the ground off a deep position that is insanely enhancing for Mobility but also because you're so resilient that you don't get hurt with 45 lbs guys 45 lbs of groceries it's a lot of fucking groceries right 45b B back

packet the hell you putting in there other than weights if you're an older individual and you can squat 45 lbs for five reps all the way down you're building so much joint and connective tissue and muscular resilience your probability for getting hurt stepping off a curb wrong or anything it just Falls precipitously so here's the cool thing when you train with weights in the gym you can hit multiple of these boxes the way I'm listing them one at a time is more to convey to you that the primary motivator the primary reason why people tell

themselves they're going to the gym usually isn't all of these it's just one or two and then the rest of them they're like well I guess I also get this effect you know like if you get jacked enough in the gym just for vanity and someone's like hey do you want to like go on a hike like a hiking is very much easy for you at that point because you're so jacked and lean it's just not challenging but you were never really training to get better at life stuff you were training just for vanity and

maybe also for strength Etc so of all these reasons to train I'll say this if is not controversial to almost anyone to train for really any of these except for vanity random person on the street you come up to them like hey people go into the waight room to train for injury risk reduction to make them safer do you think that's like a pretty good use of time and good motivation they're like I mean it's amazing I love it I should be in the gym you know I feeling guilty giv this interview right now okay

awesome next person what do you think about training for sport do you think athletes should be going to the gym to get better for sports like if they strength conditioning coaches is a good idea they'll be like I don't understand the question of course is this a trick question I don't get it you ask them about Fitness for Life like is it okay to train in the gym for people motivation wise do you approve of it if it like makes them better at their lives interacting with their children Hobbies Etc they're like again like I

don't understand the question this must be a true question of course it's okay duh is it a cool for for strength training in the gym they're like again I thought that's what the gym was for okay great training for health I'm not even going to say it everyone approves training for health duh now you get to vanity just everyone approve oo it's different it's different right guys it's different because you go hey like uh is it cool for people to train in the gym just purely to try to like look better for themselves a lot

of people be like of course some people be like yeah I guess depends on how they approach it you can get too much some people be like honestly it's kind of shallow and if you need the gym to make you look good to feel good about yourself like you need to do some inner work therapy um or just like examine your life maybe re architecting how you're seeing yourself practicing better habits cuz like the gym is not going to replace some shit that's stuck up here so we get all kinds of different views we really

really do now let's approach us as objectively as we can like we try to do on this channel for almost everything we're going to look at downsides of training for vanity potential downsides and then we're going to look at upsides and then we're going to kind of integrate the two and see what are the recommendation so what can be some of the downsides if your primary motivation to train the reason you go to the gym is Vanity I can think of a few first you start to become obsessed with it and it takes up more

time than you'd like to spare in your life like your family calls you Thursday and they're like hey Friday 4 pm family game night we've been doing it for 30 years like you saying your brother has kids and he's bringing his kids to it now it's like this beautiful thing you've done your family every fucking Friday night except for two nights your entire life and you're like yeah yeah totally um o actually I'll probably be a little late maybe like an hour hour and a half that's like half of game night cuz I got to

finish training legs now like if you're trying to get like uh career in bodybuilding you're trying to get a pro card if you're trying to if you're a personal trainer as part of your job to invest this heavily in yourself those are all sort of understood and you know might not want a new game night but like look it's a special thing and it's a special lag workout I don't know some some you could justify it but the justification is like you know your mom is like hey listen um we're going to miss you a

lot on the first part of game night you know this is you're missing it for a good reason I guess like trust you and you're like well yeah and she's like what is it out of curiosity you're like Mom you know what quad sweep is she's like no you're like yeah well okay I'll send you a couple pictures see like Milo sarv he has like the quads to sweep out but Kevin lron is kind of just go down it's good both are good look but I want my I want mine to sweep and she's like

okay well like well that's what I'm doing on Friday she's like okay okay holy shit you're nuking a family tradition cuz you want one half an inch of your quad to go poof like that and you're like B thinking about it that kind of sounds insane and I don't want to Nuke my beautiful memories with my whole family for this fucking quad sweep shit that's getting kind of awkward so it can get problematic now if you deeply true in your heart want quad site more than you want to hang out with your family hey join

the club JK but it's a thing and then it's cool but sometimes people end up getting so obsessed that they're like I don't even like making these trade-offs I just feel like I have to do it because I'm so invested and I so want this thing and it's ruining my life that sucks here's another way vanity can be not so great yeah it's just Gym training but bullshit it almost never is you get enough into the vanity game and it starts to seep over into diet Obsession and your family's like game night we're ordering pizza

usually like mushroom and uh and olive oil or mushroom and olive oil good God mushrooms and olives right and you're like yeah I'm going to bring my own like meal and a tupperware and they're like okay no big deal weird and they're like are you cool with eating like this you're like no I hate it but I got to look good and they're like why and you're like I just have to do it I hate how I look and you start crying so like getting into the diet game because a lot of people get into

weight training because they want to look a little different the weights hit and they start looking different they go holy fuck I I want more of this and then they go into diet and then the next one is it seeps into lifestyle so what you started with just training then seeped into diet took away more enjoyment from your life than you were prepared for or interested in that's why it's a downside again if you're interested in the trade-off it's not a downside now you're thinking about your diet and your sleep and your stress levels now

it's an obsession and you're hardly living life you've become a machine you've become kind of a slave to your physiques demands and you used to have all these arrows in your life that pointed to family and friends and fun and career and fitness and hobbies and now all the arrows just kind of point to like your abs you're like all right here's my life you meet someone on a date and they're like so what are you all about what's your thing you're like uh my my abs and they're like okay so career Etc you're like

nope I actually like literally did not stutter it's just my physique it's all I have it's all I care about and she's like I'm I'm gonna get I'm gonna get going now yeah I and I don't care because I have my abs don't take my abs with you when you leave see you k k Kayla she's like Carol still got my abs that gets strange again if you like your abs as much as smeagle likes the ring fuck it but you may be in a position where you're like I'm putting a lot of effort into

this because I've have this obsessive tendency to want to look perfect and I actually realize that I'm not having a good time anymore then it's a trade-off then it's a problem another thing is here's a downside the whole process psychologically can become negative let me explain how there are many ways this can happen but here is a pretty popular one popular common one people don't just sign up for it knowingly the psychological Dynamic becomes not running towards a great physique like right now to be totally honest with you guys in my prep I'm in the

middle of prep right now every week my physique is changing for the better in really cool ways and I'm just like super excited about it I just can't wait to see what new shit I uncover what more craftsmanship I can do so it's all positives for me it's like win or take all like oo I love it more the best but I have been other times in my life and definitely a lot of people get into this sort of spiral where they're not running towards artistic physique that they're building they're running away from not looking

like they want they hate their love handles they hate how their abs are shaped they hate their small arms and they end up mostly they just running away from their demons they're training not to perfect something not to go towards a positive they're training to try to get away from a negative and one of the big problems with training to get away from a negative is that you feel less bad as you leave the negative and you get further away from it but you don't feel any better if you're training for something positive you feel

actively better getting close to it it's um kind of like it's the difference between trying to get away from a fire that's burning you step far back enough and you're like it's a huge raging house fire you're not like comfortable you're just not burning anymore and you're like all right now it's just kind of cold at night yay that's running away from the negative going to the positive is like you walk through a hallway a long hallway in like some kind of conference center and the hallway goes to the garage the early part of the

hallway when you're walking through the garage is still kind of cold but as you get closer to the conference center in the super long hallway from the garage it gets warmer and warmer and you're like this feels better and better I love this and at the end there's like a little couch you wait for your friends to get in to go to the conference I don't know that actually broke down sit on the couch you're like oh this is great I love the heat in here it's perfect the air is great you the experience of

walking from a huge burning house to safety is a little different than the one walking from a garage to a very nice well aond conditioned well heated room one of those gets less bad over time one of those gets better over time more good over time and generally speaking when things get less bad as soon as they get less bad enough your motivation and purpose to continue to do them falls off like once you get far enough from the house fire that it's not killing you and it's not burning you you don't like have anywhere

else to go you just kind of turn around and go fuck can't believe that shit happened and got to have insurance but when you're going through that hallway that gets nicer and cler uh nicer and nicer climate wise as you go you're like more motivated the more you go so if you have a positive outlook on your physique you're a Creator you're an artist The More Beautiful your physique becomes the more jazzed you are to be there the more you're having fun and the more fun you're having every other week but if you're running away

from a terrible physique powered by hatred of your old self current self then you're just having like less of a bad time and more of a neutral time as you get better and better looking and then like I don't know man people don't tend to like work really hard or find a lot of deep meaning or reflect on how awesome of a journey was when the journey was like running away from uh you know shit that was bad to become neutral again like that's kind of lame and I would not call that a net positive

I'd say that's kind of a net negative if your psychology turns into that really getting away from the bad side and not going to the good side this can become a bit problematic because you end up kind of thinking you're running away from what you think is a bad physique and it can be already you could be in a physique months or years later which is compared to your original physique and the physiques of almost others quite amazing but it's never enough for you because it's you're view of what your physique should look like has

updated every time and you've never soaked in the warmth of wow I really am looking good I've seen this happen to folks it's really unfortunate to watch because at the end of the day they're like hey dude you're looking great they're like yeah I don't know man I think I had a little bit more fat to lose and you're like are you being like uh polite koi uh what are you doing and they're like no like honestly think like I don't know man I'm like I'm not really jazzed about this physique and you're like okay

wow all right well you look better on everyone in the gym and me included so fuck you for that one but on a serious note it's like this person isn't having any fun because it's never enough on the other hand if you have a positive outlook it was enough yesterday but you want more just for shits and giggles because this is really really a fun ride if you are in that negative mind space and there's never a good physique for you and you don't ever feel remotely happy about your physique it's all just problem points

and as you build your physique better and better the stake of the problem points becomes like even even more intense it's kind of like when you were first improving your physique it felt like a six-year-old getting better at finger painting but now that you're improving an already awesome physique you feel the pressure of someone working on designing a fighter engine and like any one a 1,000th of a millimeter 1,000th of a centimeter wrong position of the fan blades makes the thing blow up and so kind of like it's even more pressure than it was before

even though the thing you're making is objectively 10,000 times more impressive and beautiful you don't stop to like it and enjoy it because you're like oh God I can't get this engine to blow up I have to be perfect I got to my abs I have to hit I work on my posing and I only have like this bicep vein really in certain lighting I want to get it to where it's an all lighting that Obsession that negativity can creep up on you and you know like that's kind of the dark side of vanity right

there it's kind of it's kind of sucks it sucks up everything in your life uh or more and more things in your life pushes out more and more things in your life and the the the thing that's left over is a lot of negativity and running away from problems like that fuck that that is awful it can get worse don't worry there are other worse things about vanity you might attach too much of your self-identity to it you become just a person who does Fitness you used to be a person that did a lot of

things and thought of themselves in really eclectic ways and if you are feeling your look and you're clearly obsessed with it in a good way it just comes off as vain to other people and if you like it okay fine no worries but if you aren't feeling your look and you attach a ton of identity to how you look uh this happens all the time it's just really sad because then your identity is a negative identity uh your identity is tied to physique but you don't like your physique you guys see where I'm going with

that it's kind of like so your life is kind of like tied to something that sucks you're like yeah I guess if you put it that way yeah you having any fun like no no but but I have to fix this problem with my body right it gets a little outrageous and one of the worst things that can happen with this journey and this is the last sort of downside I can think of off the top of my head with vanity is you start to make serious trade-offs in your life that are sort of not

reversible and sort of you can pay high costs with one of them would be something like taking serious enhancements anabolic steroids various fat burners growth hormones um this is especially bad when you do them compulsively with no plan uh to monitor or attend to health and so you're just kind of like taking drugs because they make you look better for some short time and people are like oh like when do you come off and you're like come off I don't like how this looks and I'm not coming off they're like okay you know this is

poison right like yeah YOLO and to reply to the YOLO folks YOLO has absolutely zero implied connotation for what it means for your life and I'll explain how you can say YOLO you only live once and justify really risky Behavior with a short time Horizon cuz listen you only live once right but you can understand this to be different if you truly only live once don't you want to milk out your life as long as possible and have as many good experiences and risk early death as little as possible like if someone gave you a

chance to play a video game you absolutely loved do you want to play it for 30 seconds or like I don't know 71 years it uh bit of a difference there so YOLO can also mean that you are super careful with it but the problem is a lot of people who are driven by extreme vanity who let themselves get caught up in the game they start using enhancements and you know trends that use uh trends that use teens Scott we got a new video title trends like I don't even want to use these teens uh

you know teens that use Trend all that other stuff it's really really bad news and some people get really uh nasty where they use more and more enhancements more and more drugs over time it kind of becomes a bottomless pit of like I just use more because it makes me look better but there's side effects there's health effects crazy psychological effects and what I like to call this is a a race with neither a Finish Line nor any fans nobody gives a shit that you're doing this only you but you're not even a fan of

yourself in your own head because you hate your body and you're racing you know against your own biological clock really if you're taking all these enhancements but there's not really a Finish Line because you have never put a Line in the Sand to say this is the physique I want and when I achieve it I'll allow myself to feel happy that never happened so toxic vanity can be a motherfucker man and it's definitely thing so when people on the street you interview them and they're like hey is it okay to train for Health they're like

yeah of course is it okay to train for vanity they might be like part of the reason say is just stupid outdated morality that they are wrong about but a part of it is like legit there's stuff there that vanity can be kind of toxic so that all being said get the bad stuff out of the way what are the upsides of training for vanity what they're upsides yeah there sure shit are there's a good reason why a lot of people train for vanity and the vast majority of them both have a good experience of

it and have really no complaints about it whatsoever let's talk about a few reasons I think you can count at least four first liking how you look in your own body in your own skin is not a Birthright for all I don't really believe in such a concept um but damn it's close damn it's close and to be factious for comedic purposes but there's a grain of Truth here I'd like for you to try to absorb why do people who are born very attractive with awesome bodies you guys do like 15-year-old kid in your freshman

class that fucking abs for no reason or Jessica that stupid bitch that had the perfect body from age whatever the fuck and she was always popular and she went to college and he was popular and she was 27 years old and had two kids and then she's 29 years old and she decided to just turn pro in bikini for shits and giggles after six months of training you've been at this for forever so these folks that were born attractive or born destined for attractiveness do they even get a say in is Vanity cool to train

for for those of us who have imp perfect physiques and want to improve it's like shut up you know I'm trying to get mine you were born into this shit you always liked your body everyone always liked your body why can't I get in the gym and train for some fucking vanity you were born with vanity can you imagine people who were born into wealth Like You Know Rich parents Rich grandparents you know investment funds you can't even like you don't have the authority as a as a kid or even as an adult to demolish

like every year you just get crapped out 200k you just like that's what you get every year to live your life or it even deposits weekly into your account you know true generational wealth that has been well invested you imagine one of those folks who gets 200k a year just to exist the rest of life looking at someone who's like working really hard and trying to build a company for themselves so they can get some money for them and their families and be like geez like that person's really money driven what the fuck you better

shut your mouth are you crazy why don't you give up your trust fund and then talk about money driven right so it's not a Birthright for all of us to look good in our bodies and feel good in our B but damn it's close and I don't care what Attractive people think about it I care what the rest of us you see what the face I'm dealing with kindergarteners cry the very sight of my face as well they should um it's there's something to it man I'm trying to get my body I'm trying to get

the body I like and don't you dare stop me and that is a good reason and if you don't think it's a good reason if you have a not cool body I respect your buddhistic integrity and your ability to just be cool with whatever but if you do have a good body I don't want to hear your opinion about it because you are like a rich person telling poor hardworking people to stop working hard because they're obsessed with money you already got that shit next vanity has a huge upside because when you love the process

of training and you realize the process of training enhances your look and you love your look more and more and more you can easily get this vanity as the trigger to get you to fall in love with the training process for its own accord and it makes adherence and consistency essentially non-issues and thus because you're in the gym for vanity let's say you're a 45-year-old dad of three your wife works you work and you've picked up this hobby recently gotten a little bit obsessed in a good way with your body and now you're training and

you know like you're looking better cool wifey's not complaining but also you're healthier your bones are stronger you're capable of daily tasks and you're less likely to get hurt I mean an 45 and that shit is like like panaceas the ultimate medicine for everything and so can you imagine like you know you get your checkup as a 45 year old and the doctor is like this is the best shape I've ever seen anyone at 45 and I have all your charts from before this is the best shape you've been in your entire life and and

can imagine if you were like yeah I mean I I really am pretty interested in how I look and I really love looking like this and the doctor's like oh well we don't want you do this for vanity bill that's not good you better stop you better you better rearchitecturing want like Doc a doctor would never say this whatever it is that's getting you to do good health behaviors they just want to leave that the fuck alone like hey you look great amazing keep hitting the gym and eating well and they're like their problem is

solved so if you have so many people that would get so much out of vanity that they love the training process like that's what keeps most people in the gym I think is because the gym makes them look cool and of all the entire subpopulations of the modern world people that go to the gym super often I mean they have chronic injury and disease rates that are some teeny tiny fraction of the of people so Hey listen if vanity can power that process and not be toxic amazing sign us up so it's a huge huge

benefit to be able to get you to fall in love with training at the extreme of falling in love with training your body can become your art project that's what it is for me uh really the only reason I train at this point is like to make some my last piece of freaky uh bodybuilding art and it's incredibly enveloping and Incredibly rewarding and like it's really cool to live inside your own art project it's not for everyone it's not for everyone at all times but it can be a really neat thing it's just kind of

a cool spiritual journey you know uh artists make you know their clay pots artists make their uh you know wax uh sculptures artists make their paintings and like they look at it and go wow I really made something beautiful physique athletes they are their own art and they walk around in it and man like as far as things you can dedicate a few years of your life to here and there over the course of a long beautiful lifespan that's pretty dope you know it's something really special especially if you get great pictures and videos out

of it you can always look at it later I would say this is a big upside and lastly and this is probably one of the biggest upsides of training for vanity is it can really heal your soul what do I mean by that for those of us who had issues with our bodies and our self-efficacy and self-esteem based on how we looked or who have them still currently these issues can be healed by looking better because they're caused by looking worse and if you stay objective and stay positive the better you look the better you

feel and that can eliminate some pretty deep scars not right away it can take months and it can take years but if you spend years looking way better than your older self and improving that whole time it can heal deep wounds that aren't like you know PTSD style wounds but nonetheless nuisances like if your last experience with physique was when you were 13 and took your shirt off after gym class and locker room and everyone laughed at you cuz you had titties and you were a dude not going to say that wasn't me but it

was like half of us right if that's your experience getting into really good shape in your late 20s and being the person at the beach with abs and everyone asking you how the hell you look like this that happens a few times a few dozen times to you you go on trips you go on vacations you go to work you go blah blah blah and everywhere people are talking about you and your body how amazing it is because if you have a good physique people just bring it up especially if you're like shirtless on a

picnic with friends they're like dude what the hell how many abs do you have hearing enough of that good stuff being the center of attention in a good way versus bad way it really fills your psyche with way more positive than negative and then you can look back at that seventh grade or eighth grade experience that wasn't so great for you and really as a kid you can get pretty hurt by people saying unkind things about your body it used to hurt you and it kind of was a sore spot at least in your memory

for a while but now people are like do you have any issues with your body any bad memories you're like no I guess back in 7 grade I felt weird about it but like I don't know five years of having sculpted abs and chiseled shoulders I kind of soaked up the attention and my own love for myself in the mirror and the Sun so much I kind of just feel like I naturally look great and I love my body and that's really how I feel about it so you know it's real tough to go from

your last memory as people making fun of you for your physique and you agreeing with them that you didn't like your physique to like healing that inner child bullshit without actually becoming someone who has the physique that you now approve of it's much easier if you become the thing it's like if you were a victim of violence at some point in your life uh getting over that is possible without becoming capable yourself but if you eventually become like a super martial artist or a SWAT team officer that's a pretty good way to heal from feeling

like a victim because you haven't felt like a victim in a real long time and making a victim out of you is really uphill battle so no you don't have to become a SWAT team officer if you got bullied when you were younger but I'll tell you this being on SWAT team for for 10 years sure shit heals a lot of bullying that it would be much more difficult to heal by itself so if you grew up in a way that you didn't have the body you wanted and it really hurt you in a certain

way those scars can be deep and Lasting and making sure that you look great and really having a positive journey through that can really heal a bunch of them I know it did for me and I know it does for a lot of other real people so to wrap this up should you train for vanity absolutely other reasons like strength and health are totally cool too but vanity is awesome as long as you keep your relationship with your training your relationship with your body and your relationship with your psyche healthy and sustainable over the long

term if it's positive and healthy and it's sustainable vanity is fucking dope if it's negative you deal with a negative vanity by itself isn't bad there's just bad versions of it anyway let me know what you guys think about that comment like subscribe algorithm things uh I've been Dr Mike see you next time a [Music]