The Standard
A man we used to work with got his InBody scan back and had questions. His lower body was under-muscled, he had a left-to-right imbalance — the kind of thing that turns into a stability problem as a man ages — and he couldn't hold a wall sit for two minutes (our standard is 6:00).
We told him to train his lower body. Goblet squats, Bulgarian split squats, work on the wall sit using progressive overload.
He stayed with sprints.
Ask him why and you get three answers. He likes sprinting. He thinks it helps, though he can't say how. He's done it for years.
None of those answers has anything to do with the problem. Sprints are good work — part of Zone 5 training, and they can improve your VO₂ max. Sprints build no muscle mass and correct no imbalance. We explained the difference. He kept sprinting and kept getting the same result.
Call it pulling a Sinatra. Doing it your way long after your way stopped producing.
Be as rigid as you can in your discipline. Stay open on the solution. A solution can be a method, a process, a set of tools, a mindset shift, or a man you model. Give one enough time to work, and stay open to a better one if you plateau.
Are you in love with the problem or the solution? If you aren't getting results, if you aren't improving, chances are you're in love with your solution.
Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.
Three Signals
Read — Die With Zero, Bill Perkins
One of the books I'm reading during five weeks in Oceanside. Perkins argues for accumulating life experiences and what he calls memory dividends, and for giving to your kids and your causes when it has the most impact rather than after you're gone. We're taught from an early age to delay gratification and save as much as possible, whether or not we're already well past what we need. This book changed my thinking.
I don't agree with everything he writes. He says your health "just keeps declining from your peak years in your late teens and twenties, sometimes suddenly but usually so gradually that you don't notice it." Men in Argent Alpha in their sixties will tell you their decline has been reversed and they're performing better than ever. But I get his point. Create memories while you are in good health. Sooner is better than later.
The part he gets right is the part that matters most. If you don't have health, you can't enjoy wealth. Get out of the decline-management Sick Care model and into the CEO of your health seat. That's part of what we call Turning Pro.
Read — Benjamin Hardy on your future self
I spent a number of years in his coaching program and learned a lot. Many of Hardy's concepts are embedded in Argent Alpha culture. Our proven process starts with your future self, and the post below is a good refresher on why. Hardy's frame is to look at your present and future selves as two different people, which improves the decisions you make right now. He points at Dr. Daniel Gilbert's work at Harvard on the End of History Illusion — we recognize the big changes we've already been through, we see our current selves as the finished version, and we assume that in ten years we'll mostly be who we are today. Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.
There are so many men in Argent Alpha who have fully embraced their future selves and are living as that man today. John B., Dan S., and Brandon A. are three who come to mind. Real men doing amazing things because they bought into the process.
Read — The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter
Easter opens the book with this: "Most people today rarely step outside their comfort zones. We are living progressively sheltered, sterile, temperature-controlled, overfed, underchallenged, safety-netted lives." His book covers why we do hard things. We took that and put it on a weekly cadence, one hard workout every week. This week's is below.
One Rep
Death by Kettlebell. Talk about getting out of your comfort zone.
In the first minute you do five swings. In the second minute you do six. You add one swing every minute. Whatever time is left in the minute after you finish your swings is your rest. The workout ends when you can no longer complete the swings inside the minute with good form.
The standard is a 35 lb bell. Go heavier or lighter based on your abilities. Choose a bell that feels almost too easy in the first three minutes — your bell choice determines how far you get, more than anything else in this workout.
I ran it this week. 341 swings in 21 minutes and 40 seconds with a 35.3 lb bell. Below is the Polar heart rate monitor data (time includes a 4-minute cooldown).
Death By Kettlebell Results - August 24, 2026
If you had told me to do 341 kettlebell swings with a 35 lb bell in 21:40, I would have said you're crazy. Starting at five and adding one a minute reframes it. Swinging the bell 5 times takes less than 10 seconds. That's 50 seconds of rest. It gets you to do a really hard thing without thinking about the hard thing.
Grip and lungs end most of us. That was my experience. After that it's whatever is weakest in your chain — low back, shoulders, forearms. A swing loads all of it.
Run it twice this week. The first time, start with five swings in the first minute. The second time, start with ten. Those are two different workouts and they will teach you two different things.
This is week four of our training block for SISU, our next live event — three days at Camp Foley, a 300-acre camp in Minnesota, October 2–4.
From the Pack
Every Monday the men meet for R.A.D. — Recurring Accountability Drivers. The call opens with a check-in question to prime the mindset, then we work a topic together, then the group splits into breakouts to go deeper and apply the concepts.
This week we asked what they had learned since joining Argent Alpha and where they had raised a ceiling. Mindset ran through every group. Neutral thinking. Living in the gain instead of the gap. Putting your own oxygen mask on first. Less reactive, more calm. Overcoming limiting beliefs. Mindset drives everything.
"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't — you're right." — often attributed to Henry Ford
The Question
If your health and fitness were a stock, is your broker buying or selling?
Harder to Kill
Determine the life you want to live. Design standards aligned with that life. Track daily. Report weekly. Test monthly. That's what produces a trend line worth buying.
Argent Alpha has helped over 300 men become harder to kill that we know of, and thousands of others based on my Amazon bestselling book and over 200 newsletters.
Harder to Kill is the front door. One workshop a month, recorded and kept in the library, plus the Kickstart course. $47 one time, lifetime access. The price holds until we reach 500 members.
And next week we have a guest speaker. One of our Argent Alpha members will be joining us to share his journey from 35.4% body fat to knocking on the door of 15%. You won't want to miss hearing his first-hand experience.
