You're listening to the Heart Man Podcast, reclaiming biblical masculinity in a world of softness.

Well, welcome to the Hardman Podcast. My name is Eric Con. I'll be your host today. And we're going to be talking about the masculine virtue of physical strength.

As a young man, Teddy Roosevelt was frail, weak, and often plagued by asthma attacks that prevented him from leaving his bedroom.

He was warned by his doctors against a life of exertion.

He was told not to engage in activities so mild as climbing the stairs.

Now while it could have turned him into an immobilized self-pitting victim, Teddy's physical limitations

became the single most significant catalyst in shaping the kind of rugged man he would become.

Teddy's father was concerned about his son's frail body and his sickly health.

And so as any good father would do he sat him down for a heart to heart early in Teddy's

childhood and he told him this he said Theodore you have the mind but you do not have the body and without the body the mind

cannot go as far as it should you must make your body.

It is hard drudgery to make one's body,

but I know you will do it.

Now that's exactly what Teddy did.

He visited the gym daily to lift weight. Now that's exactly what Teddy did.

He visited the gym daily to lift weights, to box, and to spar, and to beat his body into submission.

Later in life, he'd build his own home gym he'd walk everywhere at an excruciatingly

torrid pace he'd fight in the military he'd work long dogged hours on a Montana

cattle ranch.

Like his father, Teddy recognized he embraced a fundamental truth.

And I want you men to hear this today.

One of the core virtues of masculinity is physical strength.

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