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The motivation continuum and how to build a bigger deadlift
Plus: Can you be manly and emotionally fragile at the same time?
Geoff Girvitz
February 13, 2025
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No audio edition today… It’s a snow day here in Toronto and the hills are calling us.
Today on Dad Strength
The motivation continuum
How to build a bigger deadlift
Can you be manly and emotionally fragile at the same time?
A book, a quote, a kid joke
The motivation continuum
If you want to understand how motivation works, start with whether it comes from: inside or outside of you. Intrinsic vs. extrinsic. Do you remember Fight Club, where Tyler Durden threatens a convenience store clerk and says, “If you’re not on your way to becoming a veterinarian in six weeks, you will be dead.”
If you haven’t seen the movie, the idea was to motivate this guy—who had lost his way—into restarting veterinary school. It was a literal gun to his head. Check out the continuum below and you’ll see that it’s on the hard left.
On the other end, we find the kinds of things you’d do with zero outside pressure? If you were miraculously freed from every single external demand, what would happen? Think of this as the opposite of a gun to your head…. When nobody can make you do anything, what you really want is revealed. The books you read (or don’t), the activities you take on (or don’t), the responsibilities you opt into (or out of) would live on the hard right of the continuum.
Will that guy wind up graduating from vet school? You’d assume so but about 50% of people stop taking life-saving medications after a year. Here, the spectre of death isn’t even motivating enough to get folks to swallow a pill.
Intrinsic motivation has a weaker but much more sustainable effect. Figuring out how to harness, shape it according to your values, and protect it from outside forces is important work—both for you and for the people you care about.
How to build a bigger deadlift
Improving your deadlift numbers can be helped by focusing some specific attention on the bottom and the top of the lift. This video from our team at Bang gives you a quick look at two things: 1) overload and 2) speed off the floor.
Overload
Part of this is building the capacity to simply handle more weight. Strength is the most obvious limiting factor but a lot of people experience psychological sticking points too. Weight over a certain number can. be intimidating. True story. So, there’s also a benefit to banging out some reps with heavier weights—through through partial range of motion strategies like rack pulls.
Speed off the floor
For many folks, speed kills the deadlift during the first few inches of the pull. The deficit deadlift solution is to start with the bar 2-4” lower than your feet. Here, you’ll use less weight but build greater speed at the bottom of the lift. For lifters with tight hamstrings, this also addresses the fact that you’re typically weakest at end-range. You address this by shifting your end-range further away from the pickup position. If this sounds like you, be extra-conservative with weight.
Lamar Gant, who had serious scoliosis, was also the first person to hit a 5X bodyweight deadlift
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Can you be manly and emotionally fragile at the same time?
I believe that you choose whatever version of masculinity you want to uphold. Do you wear lumberjack shirts or office casual? Put nuts on your truck (it’s a boy!) or ride a bike to work? Do you tell your bros you love them on a typical day—or do you need to get blackout drunk first? That’s your call.
Yet, some of the most masculine-presenting people are unbelievably vocal about being shielded from criticism, accountability, and vague words that they don’t like. This highlights the contrast between the outer shell and inner emotional world.
I have seen plenty of this kind of emotional fragility online—”Don’t make me feel bad feelings about the actions I took and things I said.” But have also personally experienced it in real life, where guys with big muscles and full-sleeve tattoos are weirdly delicate. If you have ever been part of a male-dominated space, like an MMA club, you’ll know careful you have to be not step on someone’s feelings. Clubs are forever fragmenting and restarting out of the most petty grievances you can imagine.
Like a lot of dads, I’ve told my kid that bravery is when you feel scared and take action anyway. Here’s what I’ve never told him: Bravery is cosplaying never being scared of anything and yelling at anyone who challenges that reality.
So, there’s masculinity as an outfit and masculinity as an emotional experience. Both are cool and fine. However, one does not automatically translate into the other and neither one of us is required to pretend otherwise.
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What I’m reading/listening to:
A Quote
“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”
A kid joke
My son asked me about an old bodybuilding book I had. I started to explain the idea of old-school body-part splits. He said, “I know the oldest one… Head and shoulders, knees and toes.” 10/10 kid joke, IMO.
Take care of yourself, man!
Geoff Girvitz
Father, founder, physical culturist
dadstrength.com