The sports you love reveal your character

Virtues Transfers

The Ancient Greeks gifted athletics to the world almost 3000 years ago. For them it was the ultimate arena to display and gain virtue.

Virtue was both emergent and brought about through intentional action. It was spontaneous but also calculated.

I still believe when played to their fullest potential, sports today still act to give us virtue and character traits we can then transfer into the rest of our lives.

So did the famous ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, proclaiming the pentathlon the most moral of all the ancient sports:

"a body capable of enduring all efforts, either of the racecourse or of bodily strength...This is why the athletes in the pentathlon are most beautiful."

An athlete who was generally proficient in many sports would thus be generating and activating many virtues inside himself, rather than over specializing.

• Too much courage but not enough intelligence

• Too much strength but not enough agility

• Too much speed but not enough endurance

• Too much kindness but not enough restraint

What’s important to recognize is that specific ways of moving our bodies correlate to different virtues being encoded into our characters through our actions.

It’s about STYLE TOO

I also believe sports are best understood as expressions of personal style as taste.

The sports I like to play and watch say as much about me as the clothes I wear, food I eat, music I listen to, pictures I love to watch, etc.

So when we gravitate towards a particular sport it’s a signal about what’s inside of us. Either a strength to be intensified or a limitation to be exposed and overcome.

If you stop and think for just a second, you’ll see that these athletic preferences are not skin deep.

It’s important for you to recognize what you’re being pulled towards and how you can leverage that information to know yourself more deeply. That in turn creates the conscious understanding of the virtues you’re embodying in one arena, making it possible to transfer over into other domains of your life.

How to apply in your training and competing

Each sport has a nature. Each type of training too.

Think about the ‘essential’ qualities of an activity and that nature reveals itself.

For simplicity and brevity let’s quickly look at the difference between endurance and strength generally. We’ll use distance running vs weightlifting.

Weightlifting: Courage, Aggression, Discipline, Intention

When you step up to the bar to lift heavy you need to bring ALL OF YOURSELF to bear for a few seconds of ferocity. But it’s not all out. It has to be calculated and controlled. It’s aggression controlled to the precise degree.

This teaches you how to block out distractions, take on a massive challenge, and bring all your intention to bear for a moment of intense action.

So often in our lives, we’re forced with a quick decision situation that requires our full attention in the precise moment. Lifting weights teaches you how to not only spot these moments but also how to move through them swiftly and safely with yourself in tact.

Distance running: Courage, Patience, Restraint, Grace

When you step out for your weekly long run you need to go to battle with yourself. But not just in one moment, in countless moments in body, mind, and spirit. You learn to slow down the totality of the effort into manageable blocks.

You recognize the importance of pacing to complete the route and get on with your day afterwards. There’s a lot that can go wrong with a longer time duration, and you learn to roll with the punches and account for lady luck. There’s an acceptance that not everyday will be great, but the process keeps you in check and moving towards the target.

Like Aristotle argues, I think it’s valuable to train in a variety of ways so we’re consistently exposed to different character tests. Most trainers worth their cost would tell you the same, but from the physical frame. Runners need to strength train. Weightlifters need to do cardio.

I agree, but it’s so much deeper than that.

We should aim to harmonize our spirits in sports first, the body simply follows.

Happy Training Team!