By Sam Yang - Get similar updates here

Seneca said thousands of years ago: “Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.” This aphorism still stands the test of time.

Physical culture, and eventually exercise, became a tangible and easily understood way to modify ourselves. Prior to all the industrial and technological revolutions, we didn't dissociate ourselves from our bodies. Your sense of self was not secular from your body—they were one and the same. Thus changing our body meant changing our being...