Fitness as a Vampire Problem

The Forbidden Knowledge of Moving Well

Nobody knows what it feels like to be a vampire until they are one. The same goes for fitness.

We were above three thousand metres, and the sun had just set on the thousand-year-old junipers around us. The air was thin and cold. The stars began to appear one by one, then the Milky Way, stretching clear across the sky. Much later came the moonrise - slow, pale, and otherworldly. Up there, everything feels both ancient and new. You start to sense that the ordinary rules of time don’t quite apply.

Before you’re fit, it is an abstract idea, often mistaken for punishment or pain. You think it’s about sweat, soreness, and self-denial. Short-term, all you see is effort. Long-term, you might be chasing abs, metrics or approval, but you can’t even imagine the freedom true fitness could give you.

What’s a Vampire Problem?

Philosopher L. A. Paul once posed the question: if you could become a vampire - no gore, no hurting anyone - gain incredible powers, live forever, and all your friends had already made the leap and loved it… would you do it?

A “vampire problem” is when you can’t know what something feels like until it happens to you, and once it does, you’re no longer the same person. It applies to all kinds of transformation: moving halfway across the world for a job is one. Having a child is another.

And, yes, so is becoming fit.

You can read about it, think about it, watch other people live it (but be careful about who you pick as your role model!) But you won’t truly know what it’s like until you’ve crossed over. That’s why people so often get it wrong: they’re trying to reason their way toward an experience they haven’t yet had.

Sacrifice Mindset is Wrong

In the mortal world, exercise means sacrifice. People chase fitness through exhaustion and willpower, measuring virtue in hours of suffering, calories burned, and calories withheld. They treat the body like it’s mortgaged to Lady Death, and pain is the interest they have to pay to keep it alive.

They fear losing time - to illness, to age, to cognitive decline - and that fear drives them to fling themselves at treadmills and spin bikes with manic intensity. Intensity that’s not needed, and often counterproductive.

They don’t know what it feels like to move easily, to climb or twist without stiffness or strain. Some pursue strength alone and get hurt along the way.

This is mainstream fitness. And it’s wrong: leaving you feeling drained instead of alive. Hours of effort that build resentment, not vitality. The tragedy is, most people think that’s what “discipline” means.

Transformation

I didn’t turn into a vampire overnight. It was less a revelation than a slow remembering of what it was like to move as a kid.

On that same hike, where the typhoon had torn the trail, I had to lift my knee high to my chest and hoist myself up. I expected the usual twinge in my hip or knee: that little whisper of limitation. But it didn’t come. I felt solid, fluid, and somehow ageless.

I honestly don’t know what my age is when I hike, or when I move in ways I couldn’t before. It’s not about adding years to your life; but it’s certainly about adding life to your years.

Through what I half-jokingly call forbidden fitness knowledge, my workouts became short… and sometimes even enjoyable.

If you do it right, in the short term you start to look forward to your (short) practice and what it gives you: calm, focus, and the sense of being gloriously alive.

In the long term, your world expands. There’s less fear of injury, more confidence in movement, and more curiosity about what your body can do when it’s no longer fighting itself.

The Vampire’s Gift (and Warning)

Once you’ve crossed over, it’s hard to explain the experience to those who haven’t. You can try to describe it (”you move like a kid again”), but they’ll still think of it in mortal terms: pain, time and sacrifice.

That’s why I call it forbidden fitness knowledge. It breaks all the supposed rules:

“No pain, no gain.”
“Push harder.”
“Train to failure.”

Those mantras are traps. They keep you confined and, conveniently, paying money to the industry that feeds on fatigue.

Once you know what I know, you can’t unknow it. Once you see how much of modern fitness is self-harm disguised as virtue, there’s no going back. You start to move differently, live differently. The old ways stop making sense.

Invitation to Become a Vampire

Sometimes, when I hike like that, or swim in the ocean or slow jog, I forget what time it is, or how long I’ve been doing it. The light shifts, but the body doesn’t seem to care. It moves as if it remembers something I don’t - a kid version of me that never got tired.

Like a vampire, somewhere between the sunset and the moonrise, I catch that faint glow of what it means to be alive in a body that works with you, not against you.

Maybe that’s what fitness really is. Not numbers, not limits, not suffering. Just quietly realizing you’ve crossed a line you never want to cross back. You’ve been bitten.

An Obligatory Plug for Myself 😜

If what I write about resonates with you, and you’d like to build strength and flexibility without surrendering your life to the gym - I’m building a course to help you do exactly that. Support me on Buy Me a Coffee for $10 a month, and you’ll get access to the early material already live: the 4-part Weeks Zero prep course and Weeks One and Two with more on their way.

Later, when the full program’s ready, it’ll be something you can buy. Right now, your support helps me build it.