The TRUTH About Lifting (What No One Tells You!)
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Lifting is a rather stupid activity.
Now - when I say that, of course I’m being a bit facetious, but you easily can see where I’m coming from. You pick up weights and then you set them right back down again. You squat weights down and then squat them right back up again. The barbell ends up right back in the same place it started.
It’s like running the 400m dash in track - all that work and you end up right back in the exact same spot.
So what’s the point? If you literally accomplish no work whatsoever (and it’s true - you do zero work against gravity when it’s all said and done), then what’s the point of all this effort?
The point is that training makes the quality of your life better.
Don’t get me wrong - the act of training itself is not always enjoyable. There will be days when you enjoy your training, of course. On the other hand, there will also be plenty of days when you’d rather not head to the gym, and on those days you go anyway because you understand that sometimes - most of the time, even - you just need to punch the clock and put in the work.
However, we’re not talking about the training itself - we’re talking about the results of training. This is what makes life better.
You train because you get stronger in the process, and getting stronger makes everything else easier.
If you’re in high school, this means you get better at your sport. The stronger version of you can now generate more force than you could previously, and you’re now a stronger, more powerful athlete who can practice harder and longer.
But as we get older - as we enter our 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond - this newfound strength has a far more profound effect. It is absolutely life changing. Getting stronger changes the quality of your life, and the logic is pretty straightforward.
You’ll note that your training never gets any easier. You absolutely get stronger, yes, but you simply add more weight to the bar, so your training is always challenging. But because of this - because your training never gets any easier, what you do out there - in life - does become easier.
Suppose I’m eighty years old, weak, and have never trained before. Now, I come in and start to train. My squats on day one are only a couple inches deep (just to a relatively high box), and perhaps I’m not strong enough to use a barbell yet. But I start training.
Slowly, day by day, I squat lower and lower and soon get to the point where I can squat to depth. Then I add a light barbell - perhaps 10-15 lb or even less. Then, session by session, I add a little more weight to the bar. Over time, I get my squat up to 50 lb, 75 lb, 100 lb, etc. The exact numbers don’t matter.
What does matter, however, is that I have gotten significantly stronger. I’ve gone from originally not being able to squat my own body more than a few inches all the way to squatting 100 lb all the way down and back up again. It is very possible - and we see this all the time - for a new lifter to double their strength in a short period of time under the guidance of excellent coaching.
everyone can get stronger. everyone.
Now, as a result, every step that I take up a flight of stairs is much easier than it used to be - in fact, it only takes half as much effort as it used to. By the time I get to the top of the stairs, I’m no longer exhausted like I used to be.
I’m not exhausted after climbing those stairs, so I’m much more stable, which means I’m not at risk of falling anymore, either. At the very least, the risk of falling is significantly reduced, and even if I do fall, everything about me is stronger. My bones are denser and my tendons and ligaments are more resilient because not only do your muscles get stronger when you barbell train - everything else does as well, so even if I do fall (and we all trip now and then), I stand a much greater chance of surviving that fall relatively unscathed.
This is why our motto is “Get Stronger. Live Better.” Strength makes everything better. It increases the quality of our lives. It never gets easier in here (i.e., the gym), but because of that, everything out there does get easier.
This is why you train. This is why you do Stupid Things like picking up barbells and setting them back down again.
Keep doing Stupid Things. As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.
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