“A guy who came to Fight Club for the first time, he was a wad of cookie dough. After a few weeks, he was carved out of wood.” – Fight Club
The Boy and Pugsley square off in a Beta version of Fight Club. Bigfoot is in the background as an observer.
I have a fight club in my basement.
Not an officially sanctioned, Tyler Durden® approved Fight Club. Just a small fight club, mainly involving me, The Boy, Pugsley, and (sometimes) The Mrs.
What is this tiny fight club? Well, it’s wrestling.
Wrestling season ended for The Boy a little sooner than he’d planned – he’s in high school and would rather have gone on from districts. We talked about it, and he was ready to commit to working harder for the coming year – and I read somewhere that “working hard” was correlated with “success.” Sounds like crazy voodoo to me.
But sometimes a hard loss will do that to you much more effectively than a win – when I wrestled, I learned something from each match I lost. Some wins? I didn’t learn a thing. And losing can either break you or motivate you. The Boy sounded motivated.
Given The Boy’s commitment, we immediately started practicing for the next year. Since Pugsley wanted to join us, we threw him in for good measure – he’s five years younger and a bit smaller than The Boy. I will note that The Mrs. has been after me for about two years to take a more rigorous and structured approach to coaching The Boy and Pugsley in wrestling. My excuse was that I didn’t want to interfere with their actual wrestling coaches and the work that they were doing with my kids – what if I taught them moves differently than the coach liked? Yeah, a lame reason, but it was my reason.
But after this year for The Boy, he was ready. He only has so many days left of wrestling, and he committed that he’d work with me to make the most of them. Fair enough, I’d commit to him to work hundreds of hours with him to help him be better. So we started practice. But before we started practice? I started reading, studying, and preparing to coach.
I prepared to start Tiny Fight Club (no, this wasn’t a restart of my failed Midget Hammer Fighting League):
Copyright © 1999 by 20th Century Fox, via Wikimedia.
What sort of things should I teach them? In what order? Wrestling is easily the oldest sport known to humanity – men were wrestling each other when we still hadn’t figured out how to knock two rocks together to make a “clunk” sound and way before they’d invented the Nintendo® Switch™.
Why did we wrestle in the murky depths of history? To impress the ladies, sure. Also, because it’s fun. Most importantly, as Jordan Peterson would say, this combat allows us to create a hierarchy, and having that hierarchy is important, as I describe in my perfectly awesome post about Peterson’s book (LINK).
But something more happened. I became engrossed in study about how to coach and what to coach. And Pugsley still had one more tournament left . . . so we had exactly three practices until he would finish out his kid’s wrestling season.
Like The Boy, Pugsley had been, well, stalled in his progress if not taking a few steps backward this year. He just wasn’t getting much better. But we had those three practices. And with them, and in drilling he felt more confident than ever.
The good thing about that last tournament? There were only two people in his bracket. One was Dirk. Pugsley had never even taken Dirk down (where you gain control over your opponent) in the last three years. The other wrestler, Ezekiel, well, Pugsley hadn’t beaten Zeke in two years. Literally he had wrestled these two other boys a dozen times or so in the previous two years and hadn’t beaten either one of them. What was three hours of practice?
In the very first match in his weight, Dirk pinned Ezekiel. Quickly. As was usual. Dirk routinely took first place.
Dirk’s second match was against Pugsley. Pugsley immediately (and with confidence) went out and gained control and got the take down! He was up 2-0. Dirk was in such difficulty (and pain!) he’d done anything he could to get off the mat. Pugsley dominated him for most of the period, then got in a pretty bad position, and then got pinned. But he came off the mat with confidence – he knew what I had coached him in worked – he had been amazing against an opponent he’d never even scored on. The next match he pinned Ezekiel in the first period. Zeke was not pleased – the creampuff he always beat had grown fangs. And Pugsley was sold on our practices.
On the way home he talked about wanting to be a national collegiate wrestling champion. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb would say, I now had “Skin in the Game” and so did my boys. And it matters.
(The following link doesn’t get me any money as of the time of this writing, but at some point I might monetize it. It’s Taleb. Buy the book, anyway.)
I am thinking about reviewing this book, but reviewing Taleb might prove to be difficult in this blog – it might require five or more posts. We’ll see. Buy it, anyway, and read it.
In the process of working through wrestling with The Boy and Pugsley – I found something interesting (outside of the bruises randomly outcropping on my biceps, forearms, and chest). I felt more energized than I’d felt in ages. The very act of working with The Boy and Pugsley to make them stronger and more skilled improved my attitude about . . . everything. My daily cardio workouts became sharper (and I studied wrestling moves during them). And my muscles started to grow as I kept up with the boys when we lifted after fight club.
But I also had another epiphany.
The combat serves many purposes: It builds confidence. It teaches to never give up. By example, it shows that hard work pays off in success. It bonds fathers to sons. It builds discipline (Pugsley’s respect for me has gone up 372% and his pre-teen surliness has utterly disappeared). These are all traits that will lead (along with intelligence and Stoic virtue (LINK)) to much greater than average social and economic success.
And I’m in much better shape, and I’m learning how to teach The Boy (no, you have to rotate more than 180˚) and Pugsley (no, you have to throw your head through while you get your hips under your shoulders) and The Mrs. (dear, could you make us all some nice sandwiches). I kid. The Mrs. oversees our deadly serious play. When The Boy complained that Pugsley smelled like sour milk, The Mrs. awarded The Boy a penalty point for “Involuntary Lactation.” That caused us all to laugh.
But the epiphany is that the combat pays off down the road in the ultimate Skin in the Game moment: this work is a precursor to reproduction . . . what?
Yes. Being a high status man increases reproduction possibilities. Being a high status woman doesn’t.
Huh?
How does that work??? Check this tweet out:
https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/973473559933747206/photo/1
I would say that being a high-powered female attorney actually lowers reproduction access for women. The most fertile years for women are in their 20’s – after that, it lowers drastically. By the age of 40? Forget it.
But high status guys? The guys back in the cavemen days that were winning the wrestling matches? They got a chance to reproduce. And 8,000 years ago, science says that only one guy versus 17 women reproduced (LINK). The odds are better now, one guy will get to reproduce for every out 3.3 women that to reproduce. 3.3 to one? Are you kidding me? Nope. High-status guys, only the top third, get to reproduce. I guess that choosy girls all choose the same men.
High status men.
Competition – physical competition is hardwired into the brains and souls of boys. And old men, like me. That’s why I felt so good – I was throwing myself into physical combat for the first time in years, and relishing it. Winning (and coaching well) provides many physical benefits – increased testosterone, brain chemicals and other science-y things in addition to the strength and fitness ability. If you look at the math, social hierarchy is a must for men.
In today’s society, that means a cool job with money. So, in order to have children, i.e., the ultimate Skin in the Game, the behaviors of competition and working long hours to increase income are absolutely necessary for men and are negatively correlated with reproductive success for women.
There’s no wage gap, at least not one based on any sort of discrimination. Thousands (if not more) of years of human breeding have made men drive to succeed – because success is the currency of reproduction.
The final observation for today:
Raising boys is a full contact sport. To allow them to reach their full potential they have to fight. I suspect that many (but not all) cases of ADHD and the other alphabet salads of childhood disorders that have suddenly emerged after existing . . . never, are really just boys not being able to take risks or have a fistfight or nurse a bloody nose or confront a bully – behaviors that bind them into the social hierarchy.
“We’re a generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.” – Fight Club
Oops, I guess I broke the first rule of Fight Club. Again.
Eleven rings. Phil Jackson.
Exactly. But with more fart jokes.