This saying comes from playing pool. It means to sink all of the balls on the table, not giving the competing party a chance to even shoot. In pool if you sink a ball you get to shoot again and keep shooting until you miss. Only if you miss does the other party get to shoot and keep shooting until he misses.
It has moved to other areas meaning to win it all, for instance a team winning all of its games in a season.
They will run the table, winning all of their games this year.
The act of hitting all the requisite balls during a billiards game in one turn to win.
Doing it on one's first turn on the table is to doing it any other time in the game is as getting a royal flush is to getting a straight flush in poker.
We were hill hill and I didn't get anything on the break and the rat bastard ran the table on me.
To keep winning a game (beirut, beer pong, pool/billiards, checkers) so that you stay on the table and opponents keep coming like lambs to the slaughter.
Last nightSimon and I ran the beirut table and groupies were eyeing us like a kid in a candy store.
The grindset is a contemporary ideology of self-exploitation disguised as strength, deeply tied to the aesthetics of the “sigma male” and to new digital forms of patriarchy. It promotes the idea that human worth depends on productivity, economic success, absolute emotional control, and the ability to work endlessly, turning vulnerability, rest, community, and tenderness into signs of weakness. Beneath its rhetoric of discipline and power often lies a profound inability to relate healthily to pain, fragility, and human interdependence.
“That’s the grindset, brother. While weak men sleep and complain, sigma males stay disciplined, work in silence, suppress emotions, and build power while everyone else wastes time chasing comfort.”