THE TOTAL ATTRITION PROTOCOL: A Training Guide for the Inevitable
The modern gym is a cathedral of vanity, built on the lie that looking good is the same as being ready. But life doesn’t care about your body fat percentage. Life is a series of collisions – physical, emotional, and existential.
You aren’t training for a beach in July. You are training for the bar fight you can’t avoid, the silence of the apartment after she takes her keys, and the weight of the casket you’ll eventually have to carry.
Here is your syllabus for the hard years.
PHASE I: THE IMPACT ARCHIVE (To be Punched)
Most men have ‘human drywall’ for a neck. When the world swings at you – and it will – you can either be a bobblehead or a monolith.
The Neck Bridge: Spend time on your head. Build a neck that is wider than your skull. If your head doesn’t snap back when the jaw takes the heat, the brain doesn’t shut off.
Heavy Shrugs: Trap muscles are your natural shock absorbers. Bury your chin in them.
The Lesson: You don’t train to win the fight; you train to stay conscious long enough to see it through.
PHASE II: THE SEPARATION PROTOCOL (To Be Left)
She’s gone.
The house is quiet. your phone sits in your pocket like a useless stone.
You can drink until you don’t feel anything.
Or you can do the other thing: let your body burn it out for you.
The 100-Rep Rule: Pick a weight. Do a hundred reps.
Don’t stop when it starts to hurt.
Stop when you realize you’ve been counting without thinking about her at all.
Heavy Bag Volume: Hit the bag until your hands are raw and your lungs feel scraped clean until you’re too tired to romanticize the pain.
The Lesson: Iron doesn’t lie to you. It doesn’t change its mind.
It weighs the same it did yesterday, and it will weigh the same tomorrow.
It’s the only thing in the room that stays honest.
PHASE III: THE FINAL CARRY (The Burden)
Eventually, the drama of youth burns out.
And what’s left is the heavy, grey work of being the one who stays.
You’ll be the person they call when something needs lifting.
When a house needs to be emptied.
When someone has to do the unpleasant, necessary thing.
When someone has to carry the weight because no one else can.
Zercher Squats: hold the bar in the bend of your elbows.
It hurts. it’s awkward. it crushes your chest.
it feels like holding a person and realizing you can’t put them down.
The Farmer’s Walk: Grab the heaviest weights in the room and walk until your grip fails.
The Lesson: This is for the ‘long haul.’ This is for the years of quiet service after the shouting is over. You train the grip so that when the world gets slick, you are the last one to let go.
’Fitness is a luxury. Durability is a necessity. Train like you’re already dead, and everything else becomes a gift.’
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Iryna Somkina is a Kyiv-based writer. She is Best Small Fiction nominee; her works appear in Gone Lawn, ANMLY, Heavy Feather Review and everywhere else. She explores ambivalence of intimacy in gritty reality.
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