The Program 2022: Off the Grid/On the Grind
In case a couple years of global pandemic didn’t get the point across, and losing young icons like Virgil Abloh and Kobe Bryant and Shawn Rhoden in their forties didn’t make it clear, life is brief. It is fragile, precious, tenuous, volatile. It can be both glorious and cruel. It is to be protected. Celebrated. And lived out loud. It is to be planned and executed. Built up. Crafted and honed. Shared and spent. But never wasted.
A legendary life, however, does not come easily. It takes work. It is to be earned. Attained in the dark hours when fatigue sets in. Toiled for in the shadows, in the dark recesses where no one cares to look. It is to be fought for, defiant to doubt and circumstance. Impervious to derision and criticism. It is to be mocked and misunderstood by inferior minds.
And if there’s anything I’ve learned in the past five years, it is that this journey is an intensely personal one. For me to own. For me to earn. Not to talk about… But to be about. The business of being too busy. The business of being shunned by friends and scorned by family. The business of minding your own business and getting shit done.
I remember seeing a comment on social media in the hours after GCode went “public” that read something along the lines of “I feel like G dropped this brand out of nowhere.” I loved that. But it illuminated a fact. Something I had hammered away on, plotted and schemed on, cried over and reveled in anticipation about behind the scenes for literally months and years, to the rest of the world, seemed to appear out of thin air. They had no idea the dues that had already been paid long in advance.
This is the back story of every great “level up”. That some maniac drove themselves to the brink, just to earn a shot at greatness. And in the midst of all of that progress and productivity–a chaotic cyclone of creativity tearing through the internal countryside, no one on the outside had any idea it was even happening.
Your arrival at this very moment is no different. You have a vision, a goal, a plan. You are commited. But the work you will do to make it real will happen in seclusion. In dark silence. Often alone. Far away from the public eye. Without glamour and acclaim. It will be difficult and monotonous and thankless. Fueled by equal parts passion and pain. I’ve lived it and continue to daily. And I cherish it all.
Like the Summer when Kobe made 100,000 shots in private practice. What mattered to most was the end result. We only glorify the process in retrospect. But what always spoke to me was the legend-making legwork. The off-the-grid grind that turns average into exceptional, good into great, great into god, run-of-the-mill into running the world.
Your physique is just one part of your personal evolution—your exterior shell. But as Socrates once declared, “No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.” GCode exists to empower you to grow, inside and out, for all of your days. To manifest the “beauty and strength” the wise Greeks once so valued. To “pursue lifelong domination” in everything you do.
Since 2018, we have crafted The Program with this intent. To start the New Year resolute in our commitment to create change. To share the gift of creation, of transformation, the priceless power of self-actualization. One positive thought. One wicked workout. One productive day at a time. Busy being about the business of building something epic. Off the grid. On the grind.
