Two months ago, when I set out on my strength training journey, I saw the process entirely from the perspective that progress was synonymous with heavier weights. Lift more, get stronger, end of story. It’s certainly not a bad model for the world, but it is a very simplistic one. Two months of tire-meets-the-road training has reinforced the lesson that progress in a meaningful endeavor is rarely so linear or one-dimensional.
Struggles Along the Journey
The journey will quickly present unforeseen obstacles and challenges for us though. For myself in the gym, I learned that my body isn’t flexible or mobile enough to properly perform certain exercises:
- My wrists and lats aren’t flexible enough for me to even get into the front squat position.
- My rounded shoulders don’t let me put weight directly overhead for the military press and they feel incredibly uncomfortable in the back squat position.
- My ankles and hamstrings both restrict my range of motion while performing a deep squat.
There were also long term body ailments that returned to the forefront of my attention. Some vertebrae in my neck and middle back have always given me trouble. For a while, I had let those problems go unnoticed. Now I’m forced to pay attention to them as I place heavy loads on my body and feel the weaknesses and discomfort first hand.
I wasn’t even prepared for the anxiety that set in each day on my drive to the gym. Apparently going into an unfamiliar place to face my own inadequacies, feel the silent judgment of strangers, and bruise my ego was a journey to the underworld.
Blessings in Disguise
Maybe the fact that there is so much unforeseeable struggle is a blessing in disguise. If we could clearly see the entirety of the hardship awaiting us before we even took our first step, would we still make the choice to step forward? Or would we hesitate and aim our lives elsewhere?
I would even go further to say that every struggle we face is a blessing because of the potential hiding just beyond our triumph over it. The dragon may breathe fire, but it also guards a treasure.
A Worthwhile Goal
My perspective on this journey has grown immensely. Instead of strength being simply about muscle size and output, strength now includes structural integrity, joint health, and functional ability. While I used to see stretching as a chore and avoid it entirely, flexibility and mobility exercises are now a part of my daily routine that I look forward to. My mindset changed when I learned that stretching wasn’t just a chore for after a workout, but instead a valuable tool that I could leverage to reach my goals:
- front squatting and olympic lifting
- a long and enjoyable amateur soccer career
- joint health and independence in old age
A worthwhile goal can completely change our perspective of our day-to-day actions.
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
-Friedrich Nietzche
Learn to be Braver
Even though my initial fears of going to the gym turned out to be almost entirely psychological, there is immense truth in these words:
“Taking on your fear as a voluntary challenge does not make you less afraid, it makes you braver.”
Jordan Peterson
I’ve been learning this for years at Toastmasters. Every Tuesday we volunteer to speak in front of our fellow club members. It feels like we become less afraid of speaking each and every week. And one day we find ourselves in a completely different environment on a Saturday, called upon to perform an anxiety provoking task. Our old selves would have run for the hills, but we step forward and voluntarily face the challenge because we’ve practiced being that kind of person.
A Different Story About Yourself
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
-James Clear
The first few weeks in the gym were a psychological battle, and now it’s something I look forward to each day I go in. The story I tell myself has begun to shift; I am the kind of person who goes to the gym to improve and maintain his body. And this mindset is spilling over into other areas of my health: the food I eat, my posture at my desk, the time I go to sleep, and yes, even how regularly I floss (thank you Dan John).
More generally and maybe most importantly, I’m training myself to be the kind of person who can follow through on his commitments, have faith in the process, and see long term visions to fulfillment.