The Strenuous Life Will Help You Put Your Abstract Intentions Into Action

The Strenuous Life is a structured program designed to push individuals beyond their comfort zone and develop every aspect of who they are. Adherents are expected to train their bodies with vigorous exercise, train their minds and muscles by learning new skills, and train their souls by living a life of service-seeking virtue.

In short, it’s a platform designed to facilitate skill acquisition and personal development.

Think of it as a scouting program for grown men.

Once you register with The Strenuous Life, you will have access to an online platform that will guide you through your journey in living strenuously.

To help develop your skills, we've created 50+ badges covering skills we believe will help men live a more fulfilled life, stay ever ready for any scenario, and be of greater service to others. You will find the requirements for each badge and a platform to track your progress on strenuouslife.co.

To help increase your fitness, Strenuous Life members will be asked to check in as to whether or not they've done at least one hour of physical activity each day.

Moreover, to hold you accountable in your journey of living a life of service-seeking virtue, members also check in for doing a daily good deed. Link one successful check-in to another to form a visible streak on your profile page that you'll want to keep extending.

TSL’s badges and fitness and daily good deed check-ins will all motivate you to develop yourself in body, mind, and spirit. But there’s one more element designed to bolster your training: the weekly Agon.

In The Strenuous Life, weekly Agons are challenges designed to push you out of your comfort zone. At the end of each week, you will receive a link in an email where you can view that week’s Agon. Each week's Agon will encourage you to break out of your routine and do something a little different from what you usually do. Along the way, you'll pick up new habits, learn new skills, and further your development in body, mind, and/or spirit.

After completing the Agons required for the 12-Week Challenge, Strenuous Life members receive a whole nother year’s worth of them. That’s 52 chances to grow and become a better man. (And you can of course repeat those 52 Agons each year thereafter!)

Besides the structure, The Strenuous Life provides accountability and motivation by putting you into a Class of 150 other members with whom you’ll encourage and compete for bragging rights in living The Strenuous Life.

The Strenuous Life Challenge begins the Saturday after you register, and consists of three parts:

• Earning at least one badge during the 12-week “boot camp” period. Choose from any of the 50+ badges available to earn.
• Completing the first 12 weekly Agons sent to you. These first Agons are foundational ones, designed to get you immersed in the habits of strenuosity. One Agon will be sent to you each week, and you must complete 12/12 of these to complete The Strenuous Life Challenge. If you cannot complete one of the weekly Agons during this period, there will be an opportunity to do one "make-up" Agon to reach the required 12 completions within the 12-week period.
• Completing 75% of your daily physical activity and good deed check-ins during the 12-week Challenge period.

Strenuous Life recruits who complete these 3 requirements will receive (for FREE) an exclusive Strenuous Life challenge coin that you can't get your hands on any other way. It will serve as a tangible reminder of your commitment to leaving behind comfort, ease, and mediocrity and doing hard things.

Trying to change your life on your own is hard. Having a support system and accountability helps significantly.

The accountability offered by The Strenuous Life begins with its two daily check-in questions. Each day members are asked whether they’ve done 60 minutes of physical activity and whether they’ve performed a good deed. Affirmative answers are tallied and reflected on their Class Leaderboard.

Accountability also arises from TSL’s Class structure. When you register with The Strenuous Life, you will be assigned to a Class. This will be your digital company as you undertake the 12-week Challenge.

Each Class will cap at about 150 members. We want to keep these groups relatively small to ensure that guys can get to know each other and that no one gets lost in the digital ether.

Each Class will have a forum where comrades can interact with each other. Your Class is where you can share what you are working on in The Strenuous Life and ask for advice on things you are struggling with. Treat your class like a “mastermind” by sharing your big picture goals and asking your compatriots to hold you accountable to them.

In addition to being your comrades in The Strenuous Life, your classmates will also be your competitors. Each Class will have a leaderboard that indicates the number of badges, Agons, and physical and good-deed check-ins each classmate has completed. Compete for bragging rights on who is living most strenuously.

You can also join groups based on your geography to coordinate and meet up with other Strenuous Life members in your local area.

Hopefully, by the end of the 12-week Strenuous Life Challenge, you’ll have gotten into the habit of living strenuously. After it’s over, you can continue to earn badges, check off your daily physical activity and good deeds, and interact with your classmates. We also encourage you, if you haven't already, to get active in your local TSL group, attending meet-ups to complete Agons and on Strenuous Saturday -- the third Saturday of every month and the official meet-up day for TSL members. On SS, members are encouraged to get together with other members in their local area to work on badges, do a physical activity, or perform community service.

We will also continue sending you new weekly Agons for the next 52 weeks. When it's all said and done, you will get a whole year's worth of Agons designed to push you in mind, body, and spirit.

Individuals who have shown their dedication to living The Strenuous Life by completing 52/52 of these Agons will be eligible for a special award. To the persistent!

Everything in The Strenuous Life operates on the honor system. When it comes to the physical activity and good deed check-ins, the achievement of the Agons, and the earning of badges, members are on their honor as to whether they did these things or not. If they lie, fudge, or hedge in a way they know deep down is wrong, they cheat their classmates, and most importantly, they cheat themselves out of getting better.

Cheating is controlled by conscience and the oversight of a member’s fellow classmates. We ask members to guard their honor strenuously.

Some of the weekly Agons will have you getting outside into nature. If you live an urban area, this could pose a challenge, but it's not impossible to overcome. It will just require some extra planning, creativity, or initiative. We've had members in cities like NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, and London successfully complete the 12-week Challenge.

The weekly Agons don't require any special equipment. With some of the badges you may need to purchase things to complete the requirements (e.g., if you're completing a requirement for the Handyman Badge, you'll probably need to buy supplies from the hardware store), but for the most part you won't need anything that you don't already have lying around.

No. Classes are created on a first-come, first-serve basis. During an enrollment period, we will populate classes with new members as they sign up. Once a class fills with 150 members, a new class will be created and populated.

If you would like to ensure that you and a buddy are in the same Class, you will need to coordinate when you sign-up so you do it at the same time.

The Strenuous Life is an offshoot of the Art of Manliness. Consequently, it is geared towards men.

With that said, nothing prevents a woman from registering with The Strenuous Life. I could have said "no girlz allowed" and a woman could have just said they were a man and signed up anyway. On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog, or a lady.

The physical standards on badges will not be modified for women. We are equal opportunity-ists around here.

You might be thinking, “This sounds awesome. But how much is this going to cost?” We like to keep things simple around here. No reoccurring subscription fees and no nickel and diming you to unlock features. Just a single, one-time payment that gives you LIFETIME access to The Strenuous Life platform and any and all updates that we make to the program.

So what's the nut for The Strenuous Life?

Price: $250

Speaking with other folks who offer similar membership programs/courses, many thought I was severely undervaluing TSL with this price, and suggested that I double it. After all, similar online platforms cost twice as much for a single year, and all you get is access to the online platform. With The Strenuous Life, you get LIFETIME access, plus you receive $100 of FREE product – actual tangible gear you can hold and feel and enjoy.

First, we want The Strenuous Life to be ad-free – free of distractions. The membership fee will help keep the lights on and allow us to continue to improve and grow the platform.

Second, charging people acts as a filter against trolls and other scalawags who make online interactions terrible. Most trolls aren't willing to pay money to troll.

Finally, the membership fee puts some skin in the game. We really want you to do this stuff. When things are free, most people just take it for granted and don't do anything with it. When you know you're paying money to be a part of The Strenuous Life, you're more likely to actually do the program lest you put your money in the metaphorical paper shredder.

Sure! While we will not lay out in detail exceptions to specific disabilities, we encourage members to use their "practical wisdom" to modify requirements based on their circumstance so that they get as close to both the letter and spirit of The Strenuous Life as they can. The guiding principle for fulfilling requirements here at TSL is to “err on the side of doing more rather than less.” Challenge yourself, push yourself. That’s the framework. How you decide to work within that framework is up to you. It’s all based on honor, and you are welcome to participate to whatever extent you are able.

With that said, some requirements do not provide much room for flexibility. Consequently, the completion of some Agons (and thus The Strenuous Life Challenge) as well as some badges may not be possible for those with certain disabilities.

After you earn a badge, you can purchase a badge in the TSL Shop.