Barbarian Foundation

Why Barbarian?

The Rite of Passage

What is The Barbarian?

The Barbarian is a modern-day rite of passage... an initiation into
manhood to always stack the deck, dominate, and win... at life.

The ancients glorified perfection...

We glorify obesity.

The ancients' advanced ideals of strength, courage, and honor...

We advance ideals of acceptance, compassion, and agreeableness...

The ancients celebrated the evolutionary hunter...

We indiscriminately celebrate everything...

The ancients were harder to hurt and harder to kill.

We are easy to hurt and easy to kill (suffering at record rates).

Man’s biological imperative is to claw, bleed, fight, provide n
protect...

He must be WHAT HE IS (his amoral beast)...

Double-fisting battle axes, running up the mountain to no end.

Before he can be WHO HE IS (his moral animal).

Why Liver King Invented Barbarian?

How do we move him along the continuum from the wandering man-boy to the Barbarian that he was born to be... so that they know the depth of challenge, worth and potential so clearly that one day, they come to believe in themselves... so they too take extreme ownership, leadership, and responsibility over the lives they shape and create.

I CAN’T THINK OF ANY BETTER WAY TO TRAIN, TEST AND TRANSFORM MY BOYS INTO MEN, THAN TO BLEED THEM THROUGH THE LIVING HELL I CALL "BARBARIAN"... THEIR RESPECTIVE RITE OF PASSAGE.

Make it hard as fucking hell, I like to say! Because I'd rather my boys hate me in the moment, than grow up to hate themselves.

Why Modern-Day Men Are Pussies

Modern-day men are submissive, subprimal, and weak... suffering from low manhood, low virility, and low testosterone. Liver King would know, I was one of them. Then, I did what any self-respecting lion or evolutionary hunter would do… I became a barbarian.

Liver King doing the Barbarian with his dogs

Even a lion knows… what is right — wins, and what is wrong — dies. His biological imperative is as fundamental as nature, because IT IS his nature. Before higher, or lower, values (good/bad) can be entertained, a man must be a formidable force to claw, bleed, fight, provide and protect.

Without a fight, figurative and literal, he will never carry a load... he won't have self-respect and his peers won't respect him either... he will never rise to be the evolutionary hunter (fighter, provider, protector) he was born to be. Without a fight, he will remain agreeable.

Agreeable men get less money, less girls, and less respect. Money is a proxy for the value that we create in the world, so by default, agreeable men... create less value... express lower status, and are relegated to a subprimal life (did I mention less girls). If you don't build the weaponry to be a formidable force to fight, provide and protect for yourself, why would your peers want you in their tribe... if you show them that you lack self-respect... if you don't see value in yourself, they don't see value in you either. As a consequence, you invite attack upon yourself and the tribe which leads to a life of rejection.

I would know because this was my own life and I fucking hated it… then something happened, it all changed when I got to fucking work... I took extreme ownership, leadership, agency over my life. I learned that what I do is geometrically more important than what I say… I call it “massive fucking action”... “lighting it the fuck up,” to form a formidable force that always strives for MOOOOAR! I got strong, I started pushing back… I fought back and I went on the attack... I uncaged my barbarian.

THE RITE OF PASSAGE AND INITIATION INTO MANHOOD - THE THREE ELEMENTS

Welcome to Barbarian… a modern-day rite of passage and initiation that forges man-boy into barbarian... barbarian into King... cave into fucking Kingdom... a place where the social forces and depression fall away, purpose, and hard-fucking-work becomes crystal-fucking-clear. Not just another workout... it's a methodology to scale and lead at life.

Liver King doing the Barbarian on his driveway

RITE OF PASSAGE PART I:
THE SEPARATION

Must include a symbolic act of separation from self. Liver King tribe takes a machete to the head (c’mon, it’s just hair) as the fire ceremony ensues. Before him, his gentle and fragile self set adrift into the heavenly winds.

Must include the act of separation from tribe. He is sent off alone, into the wild unassisted, thrown to the fucking wolves… this is an individual endeavor, or else it doesn’t count.

RITE OF PASSAGE PART II: THE ultimate test

Must call upon the alpha-masculine tactical virtues across history: strength, courage, mastery, honor and loyalty… this is THE ULTIMATE test of his force of will (the body, heart, mind and spirit) with such depth, he becomes something else on the other side.

Must call upon his strength: his ability to generate force, dominate an opponent (self, nature, or another man) in contrast to being dominated, and to stand fast, firm and immovable when pushed.

Must call upon his courage: his ability to outwardly express indifference to risk, pain, and physical danger. Without the element of danger, it doesn’t count. He must have a serious possibility of not being able to complete the journey. It is measured in steps… sometimes a single step. It will put him on his back and bring him to his fucking knees. It will be hard as fuck but he already knows hard AF because he has trained and tested for this day.

The active suffering, active struggling, discipline, focus, and unrelenting effort to achieve… It will be hell, and it will be earned. He must not be rescued by an outside force… it is he alone who must destroy himself (symbolic of death) out there, and it is he who must rescue and rebuild himself… piecing himself back together with his bare fucking hands.

Must call upon his mastery: his ability to express skills and adeptness to further his interest, save his own life, and to further the interest of his tribe. Always be ready… to carry your own fucking weight. Always be ready… to carry someone else's weight… train for the unknowable… Have contingencies… what does he do when his grip rips, dripping with sweat and blood… when he’s dehydrated… when something breaks… when his soul breaks... when the heart wants to quit… when the mind has nothing left… when he has emptied himself into the journey… But he has fucking trained for this… it’s called mastery… once he uncages his barbarian, it is forever!

Must call upon his ancestral honor: his ability to scale and lead his reputation for strength, courage, and mastery — in the eyes of other men.

NOTE: Men of ancestral honor actually give a shit about being a barbarian… there’s an acute understanding that his barbarian brothers’ proficiencies in these alpha virtues elevate the strength and reputation of the tribe, deters and mitigates attack from the outside, and ensures the bloodline. The dishonorable man, the one that says this is toxic (maybe even child abuse when young Primals like my own boys do it), expresses indifference, even contempt for these alpha ways and virtues. He weakens the tribe and invites attack. To be clear, ancestral honor is not the same as integrity.

He must experience novelty, new territory across his being… unfamiliar territory to learn, solve and navigate so he can scale and lead more of the same. Running a mile as fast as he can ain’t cutting it… not even close. Once again, the path to paradise is paved in fucking hell… so make it fucking hell.

RITE OF PASSAGE PART III: THE RETURN

IF he returns unassisted, he is a savage beast… a self-made barbarian, and he is welcomed into the brotherhood of barbarians with a new name and new claim in status with new rights.

The ritual/celebration that follows is a primal feast and he is awarded the barbarian crown… a token that represents his initiation and journey ahead to self-made king… to wield the battle axe and continue running up the mountain to no end. He has earned himself respect… self-respect, the respect of his brotherhood (the ones that have done the same), and the respect of the tribe.

His return earns him a new name: he is Stryker “The Barbarian”
His return earns him new status and a symbol: The Barbarian Crown and he carries himself as such.
His return earns him new rights: he will fight, provide and protect, and enjoy new freedoms… earned!
His return earns him new life: he is now wielding the weaponry to create and shape all outcomes in his life, and one day, he will become a self-made king, a Barbarian-King.
Must call upon his loyalty: his devotion and reverence to the rite of passage and tribe. Ancestral (tribal) loyalty is thought of as an adaptive mechanism, a bond above to further the interests of the tribe.

Liver King's Barbarian
- The Workout -

The sacred rite of passage AKA the Liver King Barbarian March, is every man's birthright. It’s my unequivocal favorite workout and the greatest gift that I can give to another brother that strives.

I train Barbarian just about every Saturday (I've clocked 117 of them as of this writing 7/23/23), it's my renewal, and it’s the hardest thing I do all week so that everything else can be performed with relative ease. Train the barbarian, test your barbarian, uncage your mother-fucking-barbarian.

Liver King's branded kettlebells for the Barbarian

70 LBS KETTLEBELLS
IN EACH HAND

70 LBS Backpack

120 LBS ON TOP OF A SLED
(W/ SHOULDER STRAPS)

20 LBS ANKLE WEIGHTS

Liver King's ankle weights for the Barbarian

Liver King doing the Barbarian on a desert road

1 MILE WALK

Every step is unsteady, off balance as if trekking through shin-deep mud and carrying a fallen comrade back from battle. Shoulders and upper back remain lit up; never get a rest. Grip, grit and absolute resolve are measured in steps.

It's a time that reminds me that there’s really nothing harder in life. It reminds me that our barbaric ancestors performed this kind of back-breaking work on the regular. It reminds me that this is my barbaric lineage… we are descendants of the sole surviving species of genus Homo - the baddest, most barbaric mammalian predators that ever lived.

When he is a barbarian he carries a progressively heavier load (literally and figuratively)... he carries his own weight… he carries someone else's weight, and even his words carry weight… it’s called gravitas and it commands respect, success, and status beyond measure because the way of the barbarian is how he walks, talks, trains, looks, eats, moves, manners, thinks, breathes, enjoys and destroys anything in his way.

He has earned the code that unlocks the thing… he has armed himself with the weaponry to dominate, to a centerpiece six-pack, to a fulfilling relationship, and to any business endeavor.

A barbarian disposition is commanding and monstrous... he has the capacity for catastrophe, to inflict monstrosity where he stands as his blades grow sharper by the day and ready to strike but remain sheathed until it's time to stand firm, push back, attack and destroy when duty calls. He is a more complete beast precisely because he is a savage Barbarian (people, especially bullies, don't want to fuck with a superpower) tempered by his moral animal... Before he takes his blade, he takes aim as a provider, protector, and doer of good.

This kind of feared and formidable force is made possible by the noble balance of his blades... as a doer of right and good in the world. See the dedicated page on The Way of the Barbarian... the history, the brotherhood and access to the entire system.

FOLLOW THE BARBARIAN FOUNDATION

@thebarbarianfoundation

The Barbarian is a modern-day rite of passage... an initiation into manhood to always stack the deck, dominate, and win... at life.

Man’s biological imperative is to claw, bleed, fight, provide n protect...