“The Muscle Factory”, by Guillaume Vallet (L’Echappée, 2022).
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Next to me in the gym, on his exercise bike, a young man seems to be struggling to death. He’s been pedaling for I don’t know how long. He’s dripping with sweat and his head is practically resting on the handlebars. He has his eyes closed. He is in pain, he is exhausted. The image amazes me. I suffer, too. Well, a little bit. Just enough to make me feel like I’m making an effort. I will forever be unable to put myself in the state of my neighbor on a dummy bike. On a real one either, by the way.
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Unfortunately, I know ” we have nothing without nothing “, as popular wisdom says. Magazines and philosophers have repeatedly told me that the fight against the elements, against oneself, was a small personal triumph that was not insignificant. For now, I’m not totally sensitive to these speeches, my endorphins are released in dribs and drabs and I don’t really know what to do with this injunction to suffer.
Fortunately, in The muscle factory (L’Echappée, 2022) by Guillaume Vallet, I found an enlightening diagram. The author, a researcher in economics and a follower of bodybuilding, defines three axes – masculine, but I will know how to adapt – which make it possible to define different types of “manufacturers” (the “body is a resource that can be valued as capital”). I am therefore ready for, muscularly speaking, “enhancing gains while reducing production costs”.
Avoid the “negation of life”
The first axis is that of the Greek divinity of love, Eros, a “willingness to attract women and feel superior to other men”. The second, that of Thanatos, personification of death: it is a question of always having in mind the mortal dangers of excessive practice and of guarding against them. The third, finally, belongs to Sisyphus and relates to the “feeling of living the practice obsessively”. We are dealing here with a “incompatibility triangle” : an axis will therefore have to be sacrificed.
Regarding my initial problem, after a long hesitation, I chose to eliminate Sisyphus. I like the idea of pleasing but not to the point of dying of it. This means sticking to moderate weight training. This sacrifice will allow me to avoid two lethal pitfalls such as the “denial of death” and the “denial of life”. Which suits me perfectly: dying muscular is not my goal.
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Back in my muscle factory, I observed my “equal dumbbells”, the convicts of cast iron, more attentively. Who in the “abdomen-proletariat” had sacrificed what? Not easy. Moreover, Guillaume Vallet warns: “Reality cannot be captured solely by this reference to these three mythological characters. It is more complex. » Spent a moment of disappointment, I have the advantages of this “complexity”. After all, it’s up to me to create new axes in a “incompatibility octagon”. Enter here, Bacchus, with your procession of ethanol!
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