Getting Fit by First Principles - Pt.3 - The Upper Bound
By Victor Wong | 01 Aug, 2026

Larping, or role play, and logging can provide useful connections between principles and workout mechanics.

Victor (00:00)
Hello, and welcome to this edition of Getting Fit by First Principles. If you have not done so already, I highly recommend listening to the first two episodes, as in this episode, I will be discussing the workouts. Now, the reason why I want you to listen to the prior two episodes is because I believe that the workouts

won't really matter until you have solved the first two issues that I bring up in the prior episodes, such as your daily habits and your psychology.

Victor (00:39)
When it comes to working out, in my experience, all styles of fitness work. The only thing is whether or not you can maintain it for an extended period of time. And your ability to maintain a workout habit is going to be contingent on your psychology and your daily habits.

Because if you're not properly fueling your body and tracking your calories, getting enough sleep, or have a strong psychological why behind your working out, then eventually you will stop.

Victor (01:20)
Consider the difference between acting and embodying. When you act, you are pretending to be something or someone that you aren't. And eventually, when life inevitably happens, you will lose the energy to keep up the act. And eventually your first principles will come to the surface. And as I've said before, your body will reflect those principles.

When

you contrast this with embodying and you are principally somebody that enjoys working out and that is active, then your body will reflect that.

Victor (02:06)
With that being said, I have seen people all shapes and sizes achieve great results doing completely different things. But the one thing that was common among all of them was a belief and a buy-in into what they were doing. None of them were acting, especially the ones who made a great physical transformation and maintained that physical transformation. There was always a belief.

in

their workout methodology.

Victor (02:40)
So, if everything works, where does that leave you the listener? What should you do? I will present a fun idea. It's called live action role-playing or LARPing. Think about when you were a kid and you watched a Superman movie, and then you went with your friends and pretended to be Superman fighting bad guys or whatever. Now

Take that same childlike enthusiasm and apply it to working out. Simply find a role and then roleplay. For me personally, a lot of my interests in fitness, they come from me seeing somebody doing something that looks kind of cool and then me wanting to copy it.

When I think back to my various phases, right, my most recent one was kettlebell sport because I saw a guy who was working out with with kettlebells in this interesting way. And then I thought, he has a nice looking physique. What if I just did kettlebell sport just like him? What if I just copied his workouts? Obviously with a good diet.

et cetera et cetera and I found that I got good results from that.

Victor (04:10)
Another person I copied online is named Raphael Pas. He mostly makes content on ring calisthenics. And when I saw him, I thought, here's someone with a satisfying looking upper body. What if I attempted to emulate his workouts and his skills? And over time, I also noticed positive changes in my physique as I started implementing his workout methods. And

Really,

this just goes to show the power of belief and curiosity and LARPing.

Victor (04:50)
When it comes to LARPing, you don't always have to choose a real person. In fact, a lot of young adolescent men latch on to fictional characters. I myself am guilty of this despite being a 30-year-old man. Much like some early 20-year-olds and six and late adolescents, I too ki saw Toji Fushigoro in the anime Jujutsu Kaiset and I thought,

It'd be cool to look like that. And, you know, with that sort of image in mind, it did guide my workouts. And I will say it yielded positive results as well. Is it goofy to aspire to look like a cartoon character? Yes. But life needs a little bit of whimsy.

Victor (05:43)
Now, once we have a solid idea of a fictional character we want to emulate and possible physical pursuits that we want to develop skill towards, we now need to combine that with some discipline and with some systems because it does us no good to fantasize without having some structure to follow.

Victor (06:09)
Now the first thing that I recommend

Is having some form of documentation when you embark on this journey. Whatever pursuit you decide to pick up, you should have some way to log it. If you're running, I recommend using an app like Strava if you are lifting weights. I personally like having a pen and paper log where I keep track of each workout and how much weight and the number of repetitions I have completed each session. So week by week I can monitor my progress.

Because

if we show up to the gym lifting the same amount each and every session, we are never going to elicit the changes that we want.

Victor (06:52)
Now, the second and arguably most important thing to consider is commitment. No matter what pursuit, what fictional character, what system you decide to adopt, you need to spend at minimum four weeks following a plan. Because any no matter how optimized a plan is, it will take time before you see results.

Victor (07:19)
Now I want to talk about how I utilize this framework for my personal physical development. So if we start from a fictional character, one I sought to emulate was Guts from Berserk, who is totally unrealistic by real human standards. In the anime, I believe he is six foot eight and two hundred and sixty pounds of solid muscle.

And has some insane feats of physical strength, but that doesn't matter. It's a fictional character. It's something to aspire to

Victor (07:58)
Now,

when I look at a character such as Guts, the first thing that struck out to me was his high level of maximal strength. So, for me it was a no-brainer. I joined the powerlifting club when I was an undergraduate in college.

Victor (08:15)
And this was very informative for me because it was my first exposure to disciplined systematic and regimented training. Because a lot of times I would have to follow workout plans that outlined

What

I was going to lift in one week, and I knew exactly what lifts I was going to perform the following week, the week after that. And for up to 12 weeks, there was a very solid plan designed to take me from point A to point B. And I saw the importance of allowing my body to adapt to greater and greater physical demands, and then also eating and recovering to support these physical endeavors.

Victor (09:02)
Now I definitely went above and beyond what I had originally outlined before about following a program for four weeks. I was following powerlifting programs for I think about four to five years, really. During that time when I was in undergrad and grad school, I was consistently in the gym following some type of program outlined on Excel, and I was consistently

keeping track of how much weight I was lifting and also my own body weight.

Victor (09:33)
And then eventually when I inevitably grew tired of the sport of powerlifting, I transitioned into other physical pursuits such as jujitsu, running, kettlebell sport, et cetera, et cetera, and most recently calisthenics. And during that time I still kept the same degree of discipline that I had learned from powerlifting, which was the logging of efforts.

and the intentionality of dieting.

Victor (10:05)
Now, one thing that I do want to emphasize in this decade-long journey of physical development is I always enjoyed training to a certain degree. There was almost never a point where I was just forcing myself. I was always having fun on some level. And that is something that you need to consider.

Victor (10:33)
Again, training is supposed to be a vehicle that takes you from point A to point B. And if you are not enjoying the training, then you will never get to where you want to be.

Victor (10:50)
Again, physical training should be something that allows one to express themselves at their highest level.

Victor (10:59)
Fundamentally, if you are someone that just wants to sit at home, play video games all day, then your physical body will reflect that desire.

Victor (11:13)
For me, I enjoy being active, I enjoy going outside, I enjoy hanging out with my friends, and I love acts of service for my friends. I mean just the other day on a hike through a hundred degree weather in Utah, I was able to carry water for all of my friends and when we ran out, I was able to run up and down a two mile long hill to fetch water when we all ran out.

That

is a reflection of who I am in my physical training.