If I grew up pampered in suburbs, is there a way I can gain the toughness of blue collar runners raised on farms?

Toughness comes from inside. It is not a product of experiences of our volition. Is it a product of experiences we wish we never had.

toughness is all in the mind of course.

if you want to be tough, just get yourself in life threatening situations for about six months straight, with the wolf knocking on the door every day, with lots of battles, pain, trials and tribulations. you need to overcome all of this on your own.

you either die or get tough or are traumatized into dysfunctionality and semi-sanity to insanity.

getting tough is not recommended for the masses then.

they simply won't survive.

but a brave tough soul is something to behold, golden, in this paradigm of sheep, cowardice and bullshit.

i mean in america, generally they treat their fallen soldiers and real heroes like garbage. such is the sport of doing the right thing and being tough.

toughness comes from inside the athlete! some great suburbia kids from well to do families are/were tough as nails racing. It all comes from how your family raises you!

I'm sure someone has pointed out that blue collar and farming are different things.

Wilson Kipsang had a pretty bland upbringing, wore shoes, didn't have to run to school. Then had a sedentary salesman job that had him spending his time driving a car. Then took up running in his 20s and set the marathon world record in his late 20s.

so blue wrote:

I'm sure someone has pointed out that blue collar and farming are different things.

Wilson Kipsang had a pretty bland upbringing, wore shoes, didn't have to run to school. Then had a sedentary salesman job that had him spending his time driving a car. Then took up running in his 20s and set the marathon world record in his late 20s.

And yet Bernard Lagat also grew up in Kenya, but on a farm in a large family and ran to and from school. I think Silas Kiplagat, another Kenyan of great accomplishment, took to running rather late in his teens (was he a soccer player earlier?).

Earlier in my career I took on a brutal audit job and unfortunately was tasked with travelling to numerous farms throughout the Midwest. I spent some of my childhood at a farm so I thought I knew what to expect in terms of culture. During every single visit all I saw were extremely overweight children who wouldn't move a finger to work. Once in a while I saw tougher middle aged men and women doing grunt work but they had a lot of machinery to help them. So anyone who says that THESE DAYS farmers are tougher than city people are full of $hit.

I hear people who were raised on farm have better immune systems and less allergies.

tuff nut wrote:

toughness comes from inside the athlete! some great suburbia kids from well to do families are/were tough as nails racing. It all comes from how your family raises you!

"How your family raises you" is also external.

Do you have siblings? If you don't, do you know other people who do? They could have very different levels of toughness.

Piano_Man87 wrote:

Toughness comes from inside. It is not a product of experiences of our volition. Is it a product of experiences we wish we never had.

I personally think being pissed off and having a history of suffering has a lot to do with it. I'm generally a very easy going and likeable person, but those early years are always with me, and often keep me awake at night. I feel the suffering when I run, and I push hard against it. The more it resists, the more po'd that I get and the harder I push. This is normal for me, in everything that I do. I didn't grow up on a farm, just had a meagre middle class upbringing, but was constantly fighting for my life in a venue of abuse and denial, still denied to this day. I left home at 18, and it still haunts me more than 50 years later.

I grew up hearing stories from my Dad of practicing b-ball at Oklahoma State for 6+ hrs without water. Thinking this is what I had to do to get better, as a 7 year old I recall practicing in the middle of July, outside in the heat, to the point of extreme exhaustion/blacking out. Then, I'd run inside to get some peanut butter on apples, drink a Coke, and come back out to continue practicing. I would do this every day, with no one forcing me to do it.

When I started running in junior high, it was already wired in me that I had to push myself to the extreme-- I didn't know any other way. I pushed hard, every single day and workout. It got me in trouble with injuries as a young runner, but I learned as I got older how to train properly.

Toughness is from inside. You're born with it, and your lifetime experiences most definitely shape who and what you become.

Yeah but did you look relaxed?

Do cement work. I was a hod carrier (brick mason's grunt laborer) and mud raker (foundation pourer's grunt laborer) and did that for a couple years in Las Vegas. Nothing like lifting weights all day long in the heat! I would do that, go home and take a nap then go running several miles with a wet dirt on and another on my head to keep cool enough to run.

It did make me strong and lean. I could carry a 94 lb sack of cement on each shoulder at a body weight of 155 lbs and could kick anyones rear in arm wrestling that was close to my weight. I was measured using calipers and tape at 3.5 % body fat then.

I just remembered that I did get beat by a guy in arm wrestling-who grew up on a dairy farm milking cows! I guess the old time farm kids were tougher.

Stop hanging out with jamin.

Choosing the right female sheep as a sexual partner would help. A male sheep would make you even tougher.