Train Naked: A Guide to a Meaningful Life and Work That Matters

By Pierre du Plessis

The ancient Greeks trained in the nude in the gymnasium and also competed in the buff in the Olympic Games. They literally had skin in the game. The ancient Greek word for gymnasium, gumnasia, means to train naked. However, the ancient Greek gyms were not just for physical training but also had dedicated spaces for intellectual exercise, for philosophy, teaching and conversation.
To train naked is to show up just as you are. No pretences, no masks, no BS. We train to compete, we practise in order to nail a presentation. We should also be training to become better human beings, to craft meaningful lives, do work that matters, and to thrive in chaos. Pierre du Plessis's daily reflections, meditations and practices presented in this book are a call to train naked, to practise for the ultimate marathon, and to have skin in the game.
Train Naked is a curated selection of short reflections, prompts to get skin in the game, on building a meaningful life and doing work that matters. Combined with a selection of ancient practices, such as meditation, Pierre's thoughts and ideas aim to inspire each reader to take charge, to try, to act, to learn and to do. Get skin in the game.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tracey McDonald Publishers
• Release date: Mar 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9780639992983

Book preview

‘A thought-provoking collection of ideas and musings that, if taken to heart, have the potential to add immense depth and richness (with compounding interest) to your life.’

– SHANE DRYDEN, Co-founder of Yuppiechef

‘Pierre looks at the world with infinite curiosity and an open mind.’

– DION CHANG, Founder of Flux Trends

‘A must read for anyone who wants to level up their life.’

– RICHARD MULHOLLAND, Entrepreneur, Author of Legacide and Boredom Slayer

‘The magic of this book lies in how seamlessly Pierre has combined true depth of reflection with ease of reading. Don’t just read the book. Engage with it. Wrestle with it.’

– ERIK KRUGER, Executive High-Performance Coach, Author of Acta Non Verba

‘Pierre is a remarkable writer. What he has achieved is the perfect combination of practical wisdom and spiritual inspiration. He has the very rare gift of conveying complex concepts in superbly crafted, perfectly weighted, surprisingly satisfying little bites.’

– FRED ROED, Founder of Heavy Chef

‘Pierre is the Seneca that the 21st century needs.’

– BRONWYN WILLIAMS, Futurist, Economist, Trend Analyst

To Tom, who taught me to train naked.

STAY IN TOUCH WITH PIERRE DU PLESSIS

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INTRODUCTION

Goom-na-see’-ah, it means to train naked

The ancient Greeks used to exercise in the nude in the gymnasia and even competed naked in the Olympics.

They literally had skin in the game.

Nobody knows the reason for this; some say it was just practical, others say it was because in one race a guy tripped over his loincloth and then the officials made it a rule to prevent further loincloth related injuries. Then there is the story of Acanthus, a Spartan runner, who showed up nude for a race and, of course, everyone wants to be like the Spartans ...

My friend Tom first taught me about Gumnasia, or gymnázō, the word the apostle Paul uses in his letter to Timothy in the Bible. Paul tells Timothy that to train physically is good, but to train spiritually is better. This is not far from the idea of the ancient Greeks who, although they worshipped the body, also trained their minds in the gymnasia. These gymnasia were places of physical and mental exercise, where wrestling and philosophical discussion were literally neighbours. Paul uses this intentionally provocative word to tell Timothy something: to be naked is to be without pretence, no hiding, to show up just as you are to do the best you can.

It is about living with an open heart, a courageous heart. The French word cœur is one of my favourite words in the world; it means heart. To live courageously is to live with heart, and to show up with your heart exposed, to risk it, to be, as Brené Brown would say, completely vulnerable.

Apparently above the doors of the Greek gymnasia there were written the words ‘Strip or Retire’. That is, get skin in the game. You either come in here naked and take part, or you leave. We live in a world that is filled with commentators but too few athletes.

Where we once lived there was a massive sports stadium a block or two from our house where on most Saturdays tens of thousands of sports fans used to come to watch their teams play. What always amused me were the comments from the stands, especially the cheap seats in the east pavilion. ‘You can’t run!’ a morbidly obese guy behind me would shout to the players on the field, while I would think, ‘Dude, you can’t stand up.’

The honour belongs to the person doing, trying. This reminds me of the famous quote from Theodore Roosevelt, now made even more famous because of Brené Brown’s books:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

I don’t want to spend my life in the stands; I want to be in the arena. I want to do, to try. I want to be the one knocked unconscious while trying, then waking up in a pool of his own vomit with his friends laughing at him. Much better than sitting safely in the stands.

To compete you must train. Training is different to merely exercising. Training is about having a goal, a purpose. You train for a marathon. You train to compete in a match. You practise in order to deliver the best speech in the history of humankind.

‘The more you sweat in training, the less you will bleed in war.’ A famous military maxim we would do well to remember. Training is the ultimate answer to handling a VUCA situation. VUCA is a military term used to describe a context that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. To be honest, that sounds like a Tuesday in South Africa. Training to the point of complete mindless embodiment where the responses and reactions of a soldier are near automatic is the only way to ensure survival and success.

‘I fear not the man who has practised 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practised one kick 10,000 times.’

– Bruce Lee

Gary Player, the famous golfer, always remarked that the more he practises the luckier he gets. Practising is not glamorous or easy, it is awkward and painful, but necessary. When a friend’s son was about ten years old he had to choose a musical instrument to start practising with over the summer. He chose the clarinet. Do you know what a clarinet sounds like when someone is learning to play it for the first time? Cats being slaughtered is light music compared to that, but they let him practise because they love him. The only way we get better at anything is by practising, and to practise we need space to learn, communities where we can try, make mistakes, fail, and get up and try again. My friend Leonard Sweet calls these simply ‘communities of practice’.

There are communities of practice all around us and they have existed for centuries. Communities where you can train your mind, train your body, and train your spirit. We have a rich history of bodily practices, mind-training exercises, and spiritual practices. Digging into these over the last 15 years has been life-giving to me, to say the least. I’ve learned how to meditate, to continually let go of thoughts, so when I’m faced with a disrupting or disturbing thought or event, I can let it glide right through me without attaching to it so that I can deal with the event instead of losing my head. I’ve learned how to physically defend myself, getting too many bruises and cracked ribs to mention, so that when someone attacks me, I can hit back. I recently completed the Ignatian exercises, 30 days of training designed 500 years ago on how to discern what to do in life.

And that is what Gumnasia is about and what this book is about. It is about showing up. It is about training to build a better life, to do work that matters and not only to survive chaos but to thrive on it. More than that, it is about entering a community of fellow Gumnasians who want to try, who want to learn, train, and do.

Thank you always to my wife Rialette for believing in me, for being my biggest supporter and most valuable critic, and to my mother for thinking I’m the best. My friend Rich Mulholland for pestering me to do a book again and always inspiring me to go for gold. Erik Kruger for lighting the spark to start blogging again. And for all those who read my emails every day, your replies and comments make my days.

Get skin in the game, train naked.

Pierre Cape Town, December 2019

HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

It’s an invite

Firstly, these are my musings and ideas on training to live a better life. They are my searching, exploring, trying, and practising and, as I said, that is not always pretty. These are my training naked sessions and they are not a declaration or a broadcast, nor do I have all the answers. What they are is an invitation to train with me, uncensored, with no egos and no bullshit. It is also an invitation to form a community of practice, a gymnasium, with me.

The ‘I’ in you

Secondly, they are mostly written in ‘I’ language, from the first-person perspective, partly because they are reflections on my own life but also because I want you to read them as yourself.

This is an intentional practice and the first one I want