Life Lessons Taught Through Lifting
Committing oneself to any discipline or skill will yield learning that can be applied across other areas of one’s life. In particular, crafting a physique is a discipline that requires consistent, process-oriented work with the end goal of creating something beautiful. Who doesn’t want that? Thus, such a lifestyle imparts some fundamental truths which can help in achieving any goal.
Question Your Ego
Despite training being a pretty intellectual endeavour nowadays, it still amazes me how many self-proclaimed intellectuals believe that training for physique is somehow beneath them. It is for brutes, neanderthals, self-obsessed narcissists, etc.
Nothing could have been further from the truth once I quickly began lifting, but it is one of those situations where you don’t know that which you don’t know. To experience what is on the other side, it requires one to question their ego.
Are those beliefs around fitness true, or am I just insecure in myself that I am not part of that movement? I think the latter. The same person who puts down physique training will still watch action movies or play video games, where the protagonist always has a good physique. The book ‘alpha god’ by Dr Hector Garcia examines how we have an inbuilt natural tendency to revere the strong male archetype because it implies protection for the tribe. Though we no longer live in tribes, we still inhabit the same bodies as our ancestors, with the same instincts.
Simply put, being in great shape will never antagonise other life endeavours. It will augment other endeavours, or at least it should if done correctly. Criticising competence from a place of insecurity is ego preservation at work. I, too, have been guilty of this, and it is not easy to own up to deficiencies that stand in the way of your true desires, but it is essential to realise those desires.
The Law of Diminished Returns
In the previous section, I stated that fitness should augment other areas of your life if done correctly. I truly believe this. Even if your primary goal lies in business or intellectual pursuits, one must understand that the brain is part of the physical body. Posture, cardiovascular fitness, metabolic health, and digestion all play critical roles in the brain's functioning. With the numerous indirect benefits, we must observe the law of diminished returns to ensure these benefits cross over to other areas of our lives.
This law was first observed in economics, where increasing benefits could be obtained from a given input, behaviour, etc, up to a point. But past that point, the returns start to dwindle and can even backfire, causing a regression.
If we think of this in terms of training and nutrition, optimising for ‘perfect’ can often drive us entirely in the opposite direction. When we initially embark on a new plan, we see immense results in a short period of time, but it is essential to realise that this return will not continue in perpetuity unless we were to sacrifice other areas of our lives.
If we were to spend two hours per day training instead of one, our returns would not be significantly greater, and we may end up going backwards, through issues with recovery. If our ultra-clean diet, planned out for every last morsel, results in binge eating two weeks in, then perfect is rendered useless.
Energy Balance
Tracking calories in and calorie out, manipulating accordingly and observing the results teaches one how to manage their energy effectively. This balance between input and output can be applied to other areas of life, such as household financial budgeting.
Take, for example, building muscle mass. This is the equivalent of investing one’s money to get a recurring return later. That return would be more calories burned at rest, making it easier to maintain a lean physique over time. Cardio would be equivalent to working more hours to earn more money. And calorie intake would be seen as disposable income, where particular necessities need to be covered (micronutrients, fibre, protein) before allocating funds for luxuries (e.g. dessert).
Financial management and budgeting one’s energy is essential for executing goals in other areas of one’s life. If we waste money, time or energy on luxuries before covering the bases, it not only makes it more difficult to cover those bases but also there is less motivation to do so.
In the same way that it is generally preferred to save up the most palatable food choices for later in the day, it is better with most goals to complete the most difficult tasks first, where the feeling of fulfilment garnered from execution fuels further execution, in search of an eventual reward.
That Which Is Measured Gets Completed
The process of simply tracking your lifts and nutrition almost automates progress. The Hawthorne Effect is an interesting phenomenon where human behaviour is heavily influenced by whether or not someone is being observed. In the case of tracking, you are observing yourself, and you are competing against who you were the day before.
Competing against yourself and yourself alone is the healthiest way of setting and achieving such goals. After all, these are your goals. No one is going to achieve them for you, and in this process you build self-reliance and healthy self-esteem.
SMART Goals
Physique goals can be some pretty cruel teachers when it comes to ensuring that your goals are SMART
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time-framed
It can take many attempts at achieving overly lofty goals before accepting that the rate of muscle growth and fat loss that are realistic or achievable takes a lot of time to complete. Typically much more time than we would like. It requires patience and a constant readjustment of one’s expectations before this concept truly hits home.
For example, during my last bulking period, lasting 20 weeks, my goals were as follows:
To take compounds where I was managing 3 sets of 6 reps, up to 3 sets of 12 reps by adding 1-2 total reps per session.
To increase my total body weight by 7KG by averaging a 1.5 KG gain per month.
Embarking on a journey of fine-tuning one’s body composition is challenging but ultimately rewarding, far beyond achieving one’s fitness goals. It is quite common to see some of the most popular fitness influencers on social media eventually branching out to other ventures, and being extremely successful, based on the fundamental life lessons this journey imparts.
If you want to work with me to achieve your health and fitness goals, you can book a Personal Training plan with me here.