By the time I was five, I had mastered the art of being a 'helpful' son while secretly treating every chore like a biomechanical experiment. My father, Wei Bai, was a man of few words and even fewer rest days. He saw me as a blessing—a small, strangely intense pair of hands to help him battle the stubborn soil of our village.
I saw him as a tragic case study in 'junk volume' and poor kinetic chaining.
"Wuque, hold the yoke steady," my father grunted, his face turning a deep, dangerous shade of purple as he tried to pry a jagged boulder from the center of our planting row. His spine was curved like a question mark, and his heels were lifting off the ground. He was pulling with nothing but his lower back and his sheer, stubborn will.
I watched him, my five-year-old brow furrowing in genuine distress. If he kept this up, he'd have a herniated disc before I even hit my first growth spurt.
"Father," I said, my voice high but steady. "Stop. You're pulling like a broken ox."
He paused, wiping a glob of mud from his forehead. He looked down at me, half-amused and half-exhausted. "Oh? And how does a five-year-old know how to pull a stone from the earth?"
"Don't pull with your arms," I said, stepping forward and placing a small hand on his massive, knotted thigh. "The power is here. Keep your back straight. Sit back into your hips. Use your legs to push the earth away, don't try to pull the stone up."
He adjusted. He straightened his spine, dropped his center of gravity, and drove his heels into the dirt.
Creeaaaak
The boulder popped out of the mud with a wet thwack. My father stumbled back, looking at his hands as if they belonged to someone else. "That... felt light," he muttered. "How did you—?"
"I saw a crane lift a fish once," I lied smoothly. "It didn't bend its neck; it used its whole body."
But structural form was only half the battle. You can't build a palace out of mud and expect it to reach the heavens.You need the right materials. Heh, I'm beginning to sound like a mogger already
That evening, as we sat in our dim hut, my father handed me a bowl of our usual dinner: a thin, watery gruel made of wild grains and a few stray greens. He ate his with the mechanical indifference of a man who viewed food only as coal for the furnace.
I, however, stared into my bowl tracking the macros in this excuse of nutrition.
Analysis: Approximately 300 calories. 60 grams of complex carbohydrates. 4 grams of plant-based protein. Near-zero leucine content. Catabolic.
"Father," I said, looking up. "The neighbor, Uncle Zhao, has been complaining about the pests in his grain store. I offered to clear them for him tomorrow in exchange for the 'scraps' he throws to the dogs."
Dad raised an eyebrow. "The scraps? Wuque, that's just gristle and bone."
"It's what I need," I replied firmly.
To him, it was waste. To me, it was a vital source of collagen and essential amino acids. For a five-year-old, I was already a master of the Village-Macro-Tracking System. I had mapped out every nutritional source within a three-mile radius. I knew which wild berries had the highest antioxidant yield and which stream-side moss contained trace minerals for bone density.
I spent the next day harvesting "scraps"—boiled marrow bones and bits of tendon. I didn't just eat them; I timed my intake. I consumed the protein-heavy "waste" immediately after my morning chores to maximize the anabolic window of my growing tissues. I even rationed my father's meager stash of salted eggs, calculating the fat-to-protein ratio to ensure my hormonal profile was optimized before I even hit puberty.
The goal: A 40/40/20 split on a peasant's budget. It was a logistical nightmare, but my growth plates depended on it.
That night, after the fire had died down to embers, I began my "private" training.
My body was still that of a child—small and frustratingly limited. But the bones were hardening. The window of 'Manual-Maxxing' was narrowing.
I lay on my back, focusing every ounce of my will on the sutures of my skull. Using my fingers, I began to apply precise, rhythmic pressure to the bridge of my nose and the edges of my eye sockets. It was a dull, throbbing ache.
Deformity or Perfection, I thought, my teeth gritted. There is no middle ground.
I began my 'Infant Calisthenics'—slow, controlled movements designed to prime my nervous system. I did 'hollow body' holds to strengthen my core and 'scapular retractions' against the floor to ensure my shoulders would grow wide and proud, not slumped like the other peasants.
I looked at my reflection in a shard of polished metal. The face staring back was still 'average.' My nose was a bit snubbed; my chin was 'soft.' If I stopped now, I would just be another background character.
"No," I whispered to myself. "I didn't get a second chance to be 'mid.'"