From Fitness to “Phitness”: Why Building a Strong Whole Person—Mind, Body, Senses—Feels Like Building a Strong Body
On Learning
In my previous blog, I contrasted Darwin’s natural idea of fitness with phitness. There, the point was to emphasize how different these ideas are. Here, I want to point out how similar physical fitness is to phitness. We are familiar with the former, and that helps us understand the latter.
Anyone who has taken their physical fitness seriously—especially strength training—knows the rhythm: push yourself to the edge, maybe even close to exhaustion, then rest. Muscles are not strengthened by comfort. They are strengthened by stress—lifting heavy enough to cause microscopic tears in the fibers. Then, given time, rest, and the right fuel, the body repairs and reinforces those fibers, and you return to the gym stronger than before. This process is called hypertrophy: growth through recovery.
Learning philosophy works in much the same way. When we first encounter unfamiliar concepts, challenging arguments, or strange ideas, the immediate feeling is often fatigue—mental exhaustion from wrestling with thoughts that push us out of our comfort zone. This is not a sign of failure; it is the mental equivalent of a “muscle tear.”
Just as hypertrophy involves breaking down muscle tissue so it can rebuild stronger, developing philosophical strength requires taking apart the worldviews and assumptions we’ve lived with. This can feel unsettling. Our old frameworks for understanding the world may fray under scrutiny. But when we step away—living life, engaging in other healthy and stimulating activities—the mind, body, and senses quietly integrate what we’ve worked on. Days later, we return to the same problem with fresh clarity, able to grasp what once seemed impenetrable.
This kind of philosophical resilience—the ability to engage with difficult ideas, deconstruct them, and rebuild stronger analytical skills, reasoning, and optimism in oneself—is what we at Philosophit™ call “phitness.” Phitness results in an increasingly robust capacity to choose effectively and act to generate and protect one’s own power and successes.
- With phitness training, our optimism is rational and based on the evidence of our life.
What we call phitness, like physical fitness, is not built in a day. It comes from consistent practice, deliberate challenge, and respect for the recovery process. Just as a stronger body brings confidence in physical capacity, a stronger whole person—mind, body, and senses—brings confidence in one’s capacity to understand, to reason, to choose, and to live well. Both journeys are rooted in the same truth: growth comes from pushing to your limits, resting well, and returning stronger.
Is it Possible to Overdo Fitness and Phitness?
Absolutely. In physical fitness, pushing past safe limits can result in injury. The limit here is the point at which you can no longer control yourself or maintain proper form. Ignoring this, skipping proper rest periods, or training without the guidance of someone who understands pacing and can spot red flags will not make you stronger—it will set you back.
The same applies to phitness. Pushing yourself into intellectual overload without proper recovery, ignoring signs of burnout, or tackling challenges beyond your current capacity without structure can lead to frustration, confusion, and disengagement. In both realms, growth is about challenge and recovery, guided by an experienced hand that knows when to press forward and when to hold back.
Can I Do Fitness or Phitness by Myself?
In theory, yes. In practice, it’s risky and often inefficient. DIY training—whether physical or philosophical—comes with built-in delays because you have to spend time figuring out what you don’t know. Along the way, you risk making dangerous mistakes, and progress can be slow if you even manage to persist long enough to see results.
One of the biggest challenges in both fitness and phitness is the problem of blind spots—things we can’t see about our own form, technique, or thinking. In physical training, you might believe you’re lifting with proper posture while actually setting yourself up for injury. In philosophical training, you might think you’ve understood or resolved a problem when in reality you’re reinforcing old assumptions and engaging in logical fallacies. Such confusions can lead to serious practical mistakes in life that are not easy or even possible to fully recover from, where people do things they regret (or should regret) because they were not thinking clearly. Without an external check—someone who can see what you can’t—you can unknowingly limit your growth or even harm yourself.
A good teacher, coach, or guide doesn’t spare you the work—that’s yours to do—but they do spare you needless mistakes. They know where you should be putting your energy, and just as importantly, where you shouldn’t. They help you train in ways that are challenging but sustainable, safe, and effective.
While it’s possible to train alone, the reality is that in both fitness and phitness, meaningful, safe, and lasting results almost always come with guidance from someone who has gone far beyond the ordinary training.
Why We Do Philosophit™ as Group Coaching
At Philosophit™, it is possible to engage in one-on-one training—but it’s important to understand what that means. This is not training in mere philosophy. This is training that uses philosophy as a tool for personal power, autonomy, and success.
And just like in physical fitness, while one-on-one coaching can be valuable, the process is often easier, more inspiring, and more sustainable when done in a group. In a group, you train alongside others who are wrestling with similar struggles and walking parallel journeys. We may all have different starting points, but the work we must do to build this kind of personal strength—just like the work required to build physical strength—is fundamentally the same.
In both fitness and phitness, showing up regularly and making a commitment to train with others strengthens our resolve. The presence of fellow participants creates an atmosphere of mutual encouragement, shared discipline, and accountability. Each person’s commitment reinforces the others, making it far more likely that we all push through the difficult stretches and arrive at the breakthroughs.
That’s why the bulk of our offerings at Philosophit™ are group-based: because the shared structure, energy, and momentum of a group magnify the results for everyone involved.
