7 Lessons We Can Learn From the Roman Legionnaires to Develop Our Masculinity

0:00 Welcome to the Unapologetic Man Podcast, the only podcast that's all about self-improvement, confidence, success, women, and being a man without making any apologies for it. Welcome to the Unapologetic Man Podcast, the only po- wait a minute, wasn't that already taken care of by the recorded introduction? Fuck! Dude, you're fucking this up. Oh, where are my notes, man? I gotta start off. See, that was already taken care of. Dude, don't let them know, man. Don't let them know you fuck up this much. Liam, edit this out, bro.

0:35 Don't let them hear this. Oh, God, if they find out I'm a real jackass, they're gonna fucking stop listening. All right, where are my notes? Okay, gladiator. No, no, no, it was Legion. Legionnaires, that's it. Okay. Oh, here they are. Okay, how do I start? Oh, yeah. Okay. Um, three, two, one. What is up, gentlemen? This is Mark Singh. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the UMP. This is the only podcast where I get it right on every single take. I'm absolutely confident.

1:00 I am flawless in my delivery. So if you ever wonder, like, do I edit shit out? Hell no. Hell no, bro. Never, never edit anything out. It's perfect every time. It's just like, I'm flawless, bro. Like my podcast editor, Liam, the guy has nothing to do. I just send him the freaking raw file. He's like, oh, they're another perfect one. 300 out of 300 episodes. Absolutely perfect. God, this guy's easy to work with. And then he slaps it up on the podcast websites. Boom, done. Anyway, today we are going to talk about the seven lessons we can learn from the Roman Legionnaires to develop our masculinity.

1:35 I love topics like this. I actually have a lot of people tell me that the masculinity podcast, the self-development podcast, the stuff where developing yourself as an alpha silverback who's unapologetic about who he is and what he wants is some of their favorite content. Some of my favorite content too. In fact, spirituality and self-development is as entertaining to me and interests me just as much as attracting women, which also absolutely fascinates me and it always will. So this podcast comes because I've been doing a lot of research lately on warrior societies, the Spartans, the Romans, the gladiators, and even more modern day warriors like the Israeli special forces, Grom, which is like the Polish Navy SEALs, the German special forces, SAS, which is from Great Britain and Australia, all these bad-ass guys who I've been really researching.

2:28 And also I read something interesting on Instagram that I really wanted to add to this podcast. It's just really been getting me thinking and I love stuff that really gets me thinking. I saw it on Instagram. I tried to look for it on Google so I could read it back to you guys, but I can't find it. So I'm just going to kind of paraphrase what I read. Basically what it was is it was a message from the Taliban after they successfully took over Afghanistan to the American people.

2:47 And essentially what they said was, you Americans are fucking weak. Okay. You have no spine. You guys are obsessed with comfort and entertainment. And because of that, you couldn't outlast us because we, on the other hand, are born into a hard life. We are stronger than you are. You guys are fucking pussies. We outlasted you. And now we have Afghanistan. Go fuck yourselves. Now, when I read this, which is true for most Americans, it pissed me off. And I was like, man, fuck those Taliban, dude.

3:15 Driving your Taliban down the highway and trying to blow somebody up. You guys are all a bunch of fucking assholes. But then I got to thinking, and it really occurred to me that a lot of what they said was actually pretty damn true. As Americans, we have grown so unbelievably soft in recent years because of our obsession with comfort and our obsession, just like they pointed out, with entertainment. We live in an affluent society where all our beckoned needs can be met. And because of that, we've grown into a society of pussies.

3:47 Most people in the United States, even in Colorado, which is supposed to be one of the fittest states in the union are fat. Every time I go out of my house, I'm just amazed with the amount of fat people. And it's not only in the United States. This is happening in Great Britain. This is happening in Australia. I think it's not quite as prevalent in Europe, but it's getting there. And why is that? It's because sugar, they just add sugar to everything because sugar sells. It tastes good.

4:11 People want to eat it. So they just dump sugar into everything to try to make more money. And now we have an epidemic of fat people. So as a society on the whole, and I'm not talking about our military, which I'm going to mention in a second, but as a society as a whole, we are fucking weak. Okay. We don't go into pain willingly. We are not willing to suffer. We are not living the lives that our bodies were essentially designed to live through 200,000 years of evolution and hard times.

4:37 And this is a big premise of this podcast, which is to move into pain willingly, to choose suffering willingly because our modern day lives don't give it to us. And what happens when we don't develop ourselves as men, when we don't develop ourselves into a strong society? Well, exactly what the Taliban said. Now, I'm not saying the Taliban is correct with what they said. I frankly disagree with that because our military, we're fucking badass, right? The Marines, the army, the Navy, Air Force, all you motherfuckers and you guys listening, big salute to you.

5:11 Thank you for your service. They whip the pussy right out of the pants of all the boys who apply to become soldiers. And I think we have probably the best military in the world. You foreign listeners might disagree, but the United States military is absolutely phenomenal. And I think we have some true warriors who go through hard times in order to harden the fuck up and become what we need as a nation to protect us. So I'm not knocking our military. What I'm knocking is every lazy, self-entitled, comfort and entertainment obsessed American that I see on a day-to-day basis.

5:47 And it's just getting worse year by year. So we as men, and a lot of you guys agree with me, I get emails from you guys all the time. I get to work with you in my three-month coaching program. We as unapologetic alpha silverbacks have to go into discomfort willingly. We have to choose suffering in order to harden the fuck up and be the man that our family, that our friends, and frankly, that our nation needs to protect them. So the purpose of this episode is to glean some lessons from the Roman legionnaires who looked for a variety of very specific traits in their recruits so that they can maintain what was essentially an undefeated army through literally hundreds of years of Roman rule.

6:26 So what we're going to do is we're going to go through what they look for in their recruits. We're going to go through some of their fighting philosophies. We're going to go through some of their life philosophies and really apply this to ourselves because I'll tell you, they were really onto something. And when I was doing my research, I was like, yo, like what these guys are saying, what they were looking for is exactly what we need to do to develop ourselves into superior men. Needless to say, this also makes you way more attractive to women because women, I feel bad for them, can hardly find a guy who himself doesn't have a vagina in his pants and sit down when he pees.

7:00 Because we have been so massively pussified in this society that you literally have to separate from the norm, put yourself into pain willingly just to be a fucking man. If we all did what other people do, which is strive for comfort, seek entertainment, don't want to go into any pain whatsoever, fear pain and feel self-entitled to get everything from either our parents or the government that we ourselves didn't earn, this nation is going to fucking collapse, as well as other nations in the world. It is literally our duty.

7:29 It is literally our obligation. And this is pressing. This is an emergency for us to harden up and resist the trend of pussification that has been happening to not only the United States, also England, Australia, Canada, any nation that you're listening from. This is an emergency. We as men have to step up, take responsibility, responding with ability to the situation that has happened, which is the loss of our masculine instinct as men. So let's go ahead and bump into those lessons. All right. The first lesson is pretty damn obvious, but the Roman army would always look for soldiers from the countryside.

8:05 Why do you think this is? It's because in the countryside, life was a lot harder. You had to sleep in the dirt. It was cold all the time. You didn't get to eat a lot of food. You had to work your ass off farming, digging holes, dealing with all the farm animals. Your life was basically suffering. And what does suffering do? It hardens us up. It's that steel going into the fire. Rather than being put in the water the whole time, water does nothing for steel unless it first goes into the fire.

8:34 So hardening the fuck up is choosing calamity, choosing the struggle, choosing the hard life purposely, at least in our case, in order to become as hard as you possibly can. So the Roman legions would seek the recruits from the countryside. And only after they had their recruits from the countryside, would they go into the cities and seek the men from the cities. Once they got a man from the city, they would actually work him harder than they did the guys from the countryside because they knew they didn't experience the same hardships that the men from the countryside did.

9:06 So they had to harder them up in order to get them to that same level. Well, it happens in our military a lot too. You'll notice if you do any research on it, that a lot of the special operations guys, Navy SEALs, Rangers, Marine Force Recon, Air Force PJs, and in Great Britain and Australia, the SAS, a lot of those guys come from hard times, right? They had some issues with their parents. They grew up in a poor neighborhood. They had a significant amount of struggle to toughen them the fuck up so that by the time they were ready to apply for that kind of military training, it's like, whatever, I've been doing this my whole life.

9:40 David Goggins wrote the book Can't Hurt Me. His childhood was extremely, extremely difficult. And because of that, when he was going through SEAL training, it was like, yo, bring it on, dude. I can take this. You can't hurt me, motherfuckers. I'm the guy who's going to lift the boats. Remember that part of that book? So sick. One time he was like throwing up blood or something like that. And they kept telling him to sit down and they were doing like log PT where they have to lift the logs over their head.

10:03 And in the book, it's really funny because he kept getting on the log, even though he was like sick or something was happening to him. And they kept reporting in over the radios. Goggins is back on the log. And the guy's like, sit him down. They'd sit him down and then he would jump back on the log because he's just a hard motherfucker. He's probably the hardest motherfucker out there. And for that, I really respect him. So in our case, we have to choose pain willingly.

10:28 And I talk about this all the time. I'm not going to reiterate too much in this episode, but we have to go into pain willingly every day, do something that sucks. And frankly, I take all the calamities that I've had. For me, it was mostly mental anxiety, suicidal tendencies, agoraphobia, mentioned it a hundred times on this episode. But that kind of calamity, that kind of struggle that I went through, I really feel like it's developed my character. And yes, even women can see it. So I have a two-year-old daughter and I want to save her from any pain whatsoever.

10:54 But for example, when she gets launched off the slide at the park, which happened recently, and she eats shit and skins her knee, I'm kind of like, you know what? That's good because it's toughening her up for a life that is inevitably difficult. And the funny thing about it is this, is that if you don't go into your pain willingly, which I talked about a few episodes ago, life is going to throw it at you anyway. So you might as well harden the fuck up and choose it because it's coming at you anyway.

11:18 The more you avoid it, the harder it gets. Choose a hard life and your life will be easy. Choose an easy life and your life will be hard. It always comes around because that's the way it's designed. But you are strong enough to handle it. And when you choose it, at least you get to choose your pain and go into it like a fucking man does, which is by his own free will. All right. The attributes they look for in a Roman legionnaire was a strong physical shape, good eyesight, good shoulder to waist ratio, lively eyes, good manners, reputable family, sense of humor, the importance of team over self.

11:50 So putting the team first before yourself, a never quit attitude and loyalty to their nation and brothers of arms. That is to say, honor. All right. So if we look at these individually, of course, these are all signs of health. And the Roman legionnaires, as I'll talk about in a minute, were really obsessed with immune system and health. But this is also what makes you attractive to women, right? Good shoulder to waist ratio, strong physical shape, lively eyes, good manners, reputable family, sense of humor. Super important, by the way.

12:27 The reason why the legionnaires look for a sense of humor in their recruits is because they wanted guys who were funny on campaign. Because when you laugh, it helps the morale of the entire army. I found that pretty interesting. A never quit attitude. What, gentlemen, is one of the most important things a woman looks for in a man? Ambition. Ambition. And what is derived of ambition? A never quit attitude. I will succeed no matter what the fuck happens. So when they went through their crucible, which by the way, for the Roman legionnaires was four months long, equivalent to our modern military, where you have to go through an entrance phase, a crucible, a test to see if you make the cut.

13:02 While going through that, the only guys who made it were the dudes who said, I will fucking die before I quit. That is extremely attractive to women. And not only that, but it also makes you successful in life. I also love that they are honorable to their nation and their brothers in arms. What is more attractive than honor to a woman? Honor, integrity. Remember in Gladiator, that movie, strength and honor. Strength and honor are extremely important traits, not only to success, not only to hardening the fuck up, but also to being attractive to women.

13:39 All right. As I mentioned, they did a four-month trial to become a soldier. And this consisted of digging holes, working in the snow, doing things like swimming, getting whipped, getting their asses kicked, fighting with other men, basically hardening up to show that they had what it takes to be a legionnaire. All right. This next one I found pretty interesting. They swam across freezing rivers and they lived out in the snow and trained out in the snow because they believed when you expose yourself to cold and the hard elements, it boosted your immune system, which is actually scientifically proven to be true to an extent, to an extent.

14:12 But they did this because they thought that the harder your life was, the stronger you were immune system wise, because when they were on campaign, foreign bugs would creep in, sickness would creep in very easily into the camps. So they wanted men with a strong physical constitution. I found that really interesting. All right. Number five was the gladius, which is the swords that they used to train with, were twice the weight of their regular swords. I found that pretty interesting. We see this in modern day baseball, for example, when you swing a bat, you put some weights on it.

14:44 But it's also kind of true for attracting women, right? What I always tell you guys is to put yourself under massive, massive social pressure, which is embarrassing situations like, for example, laying in the middle of the mall while people are walking past you for two minutes while your buddy films it. This is a social pressure experiment. Now, why do we do this? Because it's like the gladius that is twice the weight of a regular sword. When we put ourselves under that immense social pressure, when we're talking to a cute girl, the pressure of talking to her can't compete with the pressure that we just willingly put ourselves under so that when we're speaking to her, we can actually act normal.

15:23 Because the reason guys get stifled, go into screensaver mode and act like a monkey fucking a football is because they can't take the social pressure of talking to this hot girl. So what we do is we put twice, three times, hopefully 10 times the social pressure on ourselves so that when we're talking to her, it's like no big deal. We can be completely normal. We can be relaxed. We can be funny. And she doesn't affect us at all. That is attractive. And I like that lesson. Also just from life, right?

15:49 We want to lift weights that are super heavy so that when your girlfriend says, Hey, can you put this box up in the attic? You're just like, whatever. And you do it with one finger because you're a fucking legend, right? As men, it's our job to be physically more powerful than the women who we date. We want to be able to pick them up, moving them across the bed. When she's ready for a reverse cowboy, you just toss her up in the air and she lands perfectly on your dick.

16:11 That's what a man does, right? He's strong. He can protect her, provide for her, preside over her, as well as her and your children. This is what the man of the family does. And this is a lesson we can learn from both the legionnaires as well as our modern military. What I find interesting about what the Roman legionnaires were taught when it came to sword fighting was they didn't want to slash, they wanted to stab. So think about slashing. It takes a lot more muscle because you're going from like left to right, right to left.

16:37 It takes a lot of that shoulder to do that. And then think about stabbing how it's just in and out and you can keep your sword right next to your shield because the homeboy shield on your right and left is right next to yours. So those swords will come out between the shields and they would just stab. I found that really, really interesting. Plus a stab wound is a lot more fatal than a slash wound. So the next time you're in a knife fight, which of course happens to all of us all the time.

17:02 We'll probably all be in one in the next three days. Stab. Don't slash. Way more effective. All right. Another fact that I found interesting that has nothing to do with self development is vault on and off horses with full gear. Now the word vault, I didn't really understood, but I'm pretty sure it meant while the horse is running, you can hop on that fucker and then you can also hop off of him. Can you imagine that with full gear? How did they do that? It's crazy what these guys were able to do, which by the way, the Native Americans, they rode air back, which was like absolutely amazing to me.

17:32 I don't know if you guys have ever messed with that or know anything about it, but it's so hard to do. I find Native Americans super interesting. I'll do a podcast about them in the near future as well. All right. The next one and the last one is they had a military oath. They swore their allegiance to their country. They swore their allegiance to the Roman cause and to the emperor, and they were branded with the symbol of the Roman army onto their hand. Isn't that interesting?

17:59 So a brand, as most of you know, is this metal thing that goes into a fire. They heat it up and then they burn your skin with it much like they do cattle. So I think they put SPQR. You guys remember that on Gladiator when he got that scar just below his tattoo and it said Spokor or whatever. I think that means Rome and I'm pretty sure that's what they branded onto them. But this goes back to honor. And I think as men, when we have honor, that is extremely attractive to women and it also makes you really successful in life.

18:26 I talk about this all the time. I want you guys to be down to the penny honest. Every word you say by definition is a promise. When they make plans with somebody, they don't flake. If they say they're going to be there, they are going to be there no matter what the fuck happens. As men, it is our job to have honor where anything that we say by definition is a promise. Any word you utter, it's going to happen no matter what the hell happens. I say I'm going to be there, I'm going to be there.

18:52 I say I'm going to pay you back, I'm going to pay you back. I say I'm going to meet with you on our free one-on-one breakthrough session. I will not fucking flake on you. 100% going to be there. You can guarantee it. So when you have honor, this is also extremely attractive to women because she knows she can count on you. And what is a woman looking for? She's looking for a man who's strong, who can lead her, who can take care of her and her family once you guys have it.

19:16 So when you have honor and you're like, yo, every word I say by definition is a promise. So if I say I'm going to be there, I'm going to be there. If I say I'm going to put that box in the attic, I'm going to do it. If I say I'm still going to go to dinner with you and your friends, even though, and you guys know how this is, you don't really want to do it. If you say you're going to do it, do not flake.

19:41 Be there no matter what. Be down to the penny honest in your business dealings, in your dealings with friends, in the dealings with your family. You have that same honor that the Roman legionnaires had when they had that brand put on the top of their hand that said, I will die for my emperor. I will fight for my city. I will fight for Rome because I am a Roman. And that's why guys, the Roman legionnaires were so successful. I mean, Rome had a multi hundred year reign over a gigantic piece of geography and their strong army, which had these attributes was largely the thing for it.

20:14 So I hope you guys took away some good lessons from this. I know I certainly did when it comes to the Taliban's letter to us, you know, it kind of hits home because the truth hurts. The truth hurts. We are fucking pussies. We are obsessed with entertainment and comfort and we are growing weaker by the year. And once again, boys, it is our job to harden the fuck up because the lack of your best hurts everything. I want to say that again. This was said by Jordan Peterson.

20:35 I love this quote. The lack of your best hurts everything, everything, your entire world, your entire planet, everything. But what is the opposite of that? Your best helps everything. So when you guys are doing your best, hardening up, putting yourself out there, doing those things that suck because you know it's going to make you better as a man, purposely putting yourself under social pressure, believing in yourself, looking yourself in the eyes and say, yeah, bro, I love you. I'm proud of you. You are my hero.

21:09 And going to bed at night knowing that you are a man of your word and every word you say is law in the universe. When we live like that, we help everything, not only ourselves, not only our family, but society as a whole. And that's your job as an unapologetic alpha silverback. All right, gentlemen, I draw a podcast on Mondays and Tuesdays. If you found value in this, I'd very much appreciate a five star review with some writing behind it. Go ahead and slap that goddamn into the biscuit.

21:35 Email me at coachmarksing, M-A-R-K-S-I-N-G at gmail.com. I will send you a bunch of cool shit, The Conversation Sniper, Guide to the Female Orgasm and three texts to build massive attraction in women. I'll also get your name tattooed on the inside of my lip and songs will be written about you that will be sung around campfires for generations to come. Thanks again for listening, boys, and I will see you in the next episode. I'll see you in the next episode.

This transcript was made automatically, so a few words may be off.