Most people train for how they want to look.
Fewer train to be ready for what life might throw at them.
Five hundred years ago, an English lawyer imagined a whole island that trained for readiness.
A popular post says Thomas More had his imagined citizens practice military drills regularly, even in peacetime, to keep their bodies ready.
That is broadly true of his book Utopia. The reasons behind it, and the details, are more interesting than the summary.
Who Thomas More Was
More was born in London on February 7, 1478.
He was a lawyer, a writer, and a statesman.
He served as Lord Chancellor of England from 1529 to 1532.
He was executed by beheading at Tower Hill on July 6, 1535.
His reported last words were “I die the King’s good servant, and God’s first.”
The Catholic Church made him a saint in 1935.
What Utopia Is
Utopia was published in Latin in 1516, in Leuven.
It describes a made up island with its own laws and customs.
A traveler named Raphael Hythlodaeus tells the story.
His name roughly means “dispenser of nonsense” in Greek.
The word Utopia itself suggests “nowhere.”
Scholars still debate how much of the book More meant seriously and how much was satire.
That matters here. We cannot assume every Utopian custom was advice he wanted people to follow.
What the Book Says About Military Training
In the chapter on military discipline, the Utopians are described as hating war.
One English translation says they “detest war as a very brutal thing.”
Yet they still train for it.
“They accustom themselves daily to military exercises and the discipline of war, in which not only their men, but their women likewise, are trained up.”
Two details are worth noting.
First, the training includes women, which stands out in a book from the 1500s.
Second, the training happens while the island is at peace.
The book also says the Utopians prefer to hire foreign soldiers rather than risk their own people.
So their drills look more like a shared habit of readiness than a plan to go to war.
Translations differ in wording, so the “daily” detail may not appear the same way in every version.
A Workday Built for Balance
Utopia is also known for its short workday.
The Burnet translation says Utopians set aside six hours of the day for work.
That left time for rest, learning, and other activities.
In More’s picture, a fit body was part of ordinary civic life, not a special hobby.
What Research Says About Staying Ready
Modern military research backs the idea that fitness protects people who face hard physical demands.
In 2021, Stefan Sammito and colleagues reviewed risk factors for musculoskeletal injuries in armed forces.
They included 176 original papers and 3 meta-analyses and listed 57 possible risk factors.
They found strong evidence that low physical fitness is a modifiable risk factor for these injuries.
Low fitness carried a relative risk of 2.34.
In plain terms, less fit personnel faced more than twice the injury risk.
Readiness also takes less work to keep than to build.
In a 2021 review, Barry Spiering and colleagues looked at the minimum exercise needed to maintain performance.
Endurance was kept for up to 15 weeks with two sessions per week, or with volume cut by 33 to 66%, if intensity stayed high.
In younger people, strength was kept for 32 weeks with one session per week and one set per exercise.
Older adults may need more sessions and sets.
The authors concluded that intensity seems to be the key variable for holding on to fitness.
What This Does Not Prove
Neither review tested anything like Utopian drills.
The injury review looked at soldiers and recruits, not ordinary adults.
The maintenance review noted limited evidence for athletes and military personnel specifically.
And Utopia is fiction, so its customs are ideas, not results.
The book also tells us nothing about how More himself exercised.
Finally, a link between low fitness and injury does not prove fitness alone prevents injury.
Load, sleep, past injuries, and equipment matter too.
How to Build Everyday Readiness
- Train movements you actually use. Carrying, lifting, climbing stairs, and getting up from the floor all count.
- Mix strength and conditioning. Group formats like those in our look at whether boot camp classes are worth it can cover both.
- Keep a minimum dose. Even one hard strength session a week helps hold on to what you built.
- Protect fitness on busy weeks. Our guide to keeping strength while traveling shows how to scale down without stopping.
- Practice working while tired. Fighters do this on purpose, as shown in how Alex Pereira trains to perform while exhausted.
Common Mistakes
One mistake is training only for appearance.
Mirror muscles do little for carrying groceries up three flights of stairs.
Another is stopping completely during busy seasons.
The maintenance research suggests a short, hard session beats doing nothing at all.
A third mistake is chasing intensity every single day.
Even Utopia, as described, balanced work with long stretches of rest and learning.
A fourth is skipping the basics of recovery, like sleep and easy days, when training volume climbs.
Who Should Be Careful
Military style training can be intense, with long runs, heavy carries, and little rest.
Beginners should not copy a recruit program on day one.
People with heart, joint, or back problems should get medical advice before starting hard group training.
Anyone returning after a long break should build up over several weeks.
Readiness is the goal, and an injury undoes it.
The Bottom Line
Thomas More’s Utopia does describe men and women training for war in peacetime.
The book may be partly satire, so it is safer to treat that as an idea than a rule he lived by.
Modern research supports the core point: fit people get hurt less, and fitness is cheaper to keep than to rebuild.
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References
- More, T. (1684). Utopia (G. Burnet, Trans.). Project Gutenberg edition. (Original work published 1516). https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2130/2130-h/2130-h.htm
- More, T. (n.d.). Of their military discipline. In Utopia. Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/more/works/utopia/ch9.html
- Sammito, S., Hadzic, V., Karakolis, T., Kelly, K. R., Proctor, S. P., Stepens, A., White, G., & Zimmermann, W. O. (2021). Risk factors for musculoskeletal injuries in the military: A qualitative systematic review of the literature from the past two decades and a new prioritizing injury model. Military Medical Research, 8(1), 66. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40779-021-00357-w
- Spiering, B. A., Mujika, I., Sharp, M. A., & Foulis, S. A. (2021). Maintaining physical performance: The minimal dose of exercise needed to preserve endurance and strength over time. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 35(5), 1449 to 1458. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000003964
- Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Thomas More. In Wikipedia. Retrieved September 16, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_More
This article is for general information only and is not medical advice. If you have an injury, ongoing pain, or a medical condition, talk to a doctor or physical therapist before you change how you train or eat.
