The Work Beneath the Weights

Photo by Cyril Saulnier on Unsplash

I lift therefore I am. Or ... something like that.

I’ve been training in gyms and with weights in some capacity for two decades (this year in fact!). I’ve yet to win a major bodybuilding, powerlifting or weightlifting title. Neither will my lifts, sacred though they are to me, ever be something to write home about. But what I have done, a lot, is think about fitness. Its history, its evolution and, to be frank, its purpose.

At the time of writing the minimum exercise guidelines, as prescribed by the World Health Organization vary between 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity each week. They also throw in something about strength training but that is far more vague. People should engage in strength training. Okay...

Does that mean an eye-popping, all out 1rm? Or 3 sets of 10 on a leg press? Are we talking training maxes, RPEs and periodization? Or push-ups? Things get murky when it comes to strength.

My own lifting journey echoes this confusion.

I’ve long past the point of my initial motivation for training. I was a chubby kid who wanted to lose weight to avoid the bullies and, dear readers, potentially attract girls. I know! A totally unique situation for anyone entering a gym for the first time. When that torch faded, along with my belly fat, I bought into an early generation of online influencers who convinced me that going to the gym was like training for war.

This was around the time that Kai Greene was the people’s bodybuilding champion, at least online, and pretty much every training video had someone shouting SPARTA or an equivalent in the background. Anyone else remember these videos?

That too faded. Next came competitions in natural bodybuilding to keep me focused, a short sojourn in weightlifting (although never at a meet) and now some general tom-foolery lifting natural stones of strength.

My motivations, and my training, has shifted massively over this time. Working out remains a joy, free from many of the emotional burdens which first brought me to the gym, but I rarely think about why I do what I do. Sure if someone asks I’ll do the usual platitudes. ‘It’s like brushing my teeth... I just do it’, ‘I’m training so that I can... ward off zombies, be a good father, a better partner, not get sick etc. etc.’

None of these are bad reasons, in fact I’d argue the father/partner motivation drives a lot of what I do, but they are not the full answer. These are things that being fit and strong are useful for. But why do I do it? Lets be honest. My current workouts are spread over 4-5 days. I could just as easily be fit and strong doing 1 full-body workout a week if my goal was to be above average strength. So why do more?

I don’t think we ask this question enough. Why? It’s an annoying question and damn near impossible to satisfy. Ask any parent. Your child will ask you why so many times you’ll eventually end up with ‘just because,’ ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘because God made it.’ Why do we train?

Annoyingly fitness writing used to be very philosophical. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, where I am currently spending a lot of my free time, fitness manuals were often written as educational manuals. Jean Jacques Rousseau, a French social contract theorist, and one of the sharpest minds of the eighteenth-century, also turned his attention to fitness and the need for exercise. So too did John Locke, another political philosopher whose writings contributed to the underpinnings of Western philosophy.

And to be clear, they did not argue that people needed to train because ‘it would make them a man,’ ‘because training means going to war,’ or whatever crap I injested growing up. They looked at the whole person. For them, training, and experiencing one’s physicality was a gift. A joy even.

Four years ago I stumbled across a quote which I still believe to be the greatest fitness line bar none. Forget Arnold waxing lyrical about the pump, Johann GutsMuths summed everything up in 1793. That year, he published Gymnastik fur die Jugen, a 700-page book which combined workout routines, commentaries on the problems of young men and fierce political rhetoric about his nation’s enemies.

GutsMuths was, politely, a pretty full-on person, but he was passionate about fitness. One of the Chapters in Gymnastik fur die Jugen is called

We are weak because it does not occur to us that we could be strong if we would

This, for me, encapsulates the essence of strength and fitness training.

I train because training pushes me to examine and expose those parts of myself that are self-limiting. Strength training, in particular, is hard work. All of us have seen someone in the gym, or been that person, who gave up mid-way through a rep because their mind, and their spirit, wasn’t up to the task. Training hard is hard. It sucks. It is uncomfortable and, when you push yourself to extremes, it is emotional.

Earlier this year I travelled to Scotland to lift stones. Yup.

One of the stones, the ‘Saddlin Mare‘ required my to lift a 99kg sharp stone and push it up a 7ft boulder, delicately balancing it on an edge. It was cold that day, mucky and I had been travelling since 4am. In 15 minutes I saddled the mare, scraped the ever loving hell out of my arms, and felt a level of exhaustion I haven’t had in a long time. It was an emotional moment for me, by myself, in a rural part of Scotland. I had spent weeks preparing but on the drive there I was shacking like a leaf.

Old negative emotions came up. The idea that ‘I can’t do this’ or ‘I can’t handle this’ bubbled towards the surface of my psyche as teenage Conor began to relieve years of ridicule and insecurity. Once the stone was saddled, there was silence. Internal chatter stopped and my body began to regulate. I have lifted heavier stones, and much heavier weights than the Mare, but there was something about the stone and the lift, that drew me to it, and drew something out of myself.

I don’t think lifting that stone proved a single thing about my manliness or my strength. But the act of pushing myself from my comfort zone, forced me to confront the ways in which I hold myself back. I was weak, because it did not occur to me that I could do hard things and survive. Having trained in many different contexts, I am always struck by those trainees who bring intense focus to what they’re doing versus those going through the motions. Those pushing themselves seem to appreciate that training forces adaptation.

It makes our muscles bigger and stronger but it also, I believe, forces changes in our psyches and mindsets. I continue to be amazed at how much personal growth something as silly as lifting weights has been for me. Everyone is on a journey. Mine at the time of writing is best characterised by a crotchety Prussian writer from two hundred years ago. GutsMuths knew that exercising was part of what it meant to be human but, more critically, about what kind of human you can be.