Fifteen Life Lessons from Lifting
Libertarians who have experience with weightlifting will know that there appears to be a correlation between having libertarian political views and being an active lifter. This is because the process of pumping iron and increasing one’s physical abilities has an effect on the mind as well. There are lessons that the iron has for those who are willing to listen, and these lessons provide a significant push in a libertarian direction. Let us examine some of these lessons.
1. You are responsible for your own advancement. While other people can give you advice on which exercises to perform, how many repetitions and sets to do, how much weight to use, how much of each food to consume, how much rest to get, and so on, no one can do the work but you. You must figure out how to sift through the available information, motivate yourself, and do the work to get the results you want. This is no different from any other aspect of life.
2. You must put something in to get something out. In the words of Ronnie Coleman, “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder. Nobody wants to lift this heavy-ass weight!” Without proper effort, strength and endurance will not develop, fat will not be burned, and your health will not improve. Elsewhere in life, you cannot learn without listening, reading, watching, or thinking. You cannot start or improve relationships without spending time with people and treating them properly. You cannot maintain skills without practicing them. Results out requires effort in.
3. You cannot compensate for bad (or no) preparation. If you go into the gym after eating junk food (or nothing at all), or after laboring hard the previous day with inadequate rest, you will not lift as much as you could with proper preparation. In other aspects of life, a lack of studying will negatively impact your test scores and a lack of rest will lower your productivity at work. If you want success, prepare for it.
4. Targeting your weaknesses makes other aspects of your performance improve. When you reach your maximum weight for a particular lift, there is usually a particular muscle or group of muscles that is too weak to allow you to lift more. Exercises which isolate those muscles can not only help with that lift, but with other tasks as well. The same reasoning applies to other disciplines; fixing one bad technique while playing an instrument will make other techniques work better, eliminating one bad habit of studying will improve one’s overall learning ability, and so on.
5. Those who focus on appearance will have inferior performance. There are those who lift to look strong, and those who lift to be strong. Training for size involves more repetitions with less weight than training for strength. If one never ventures into one-rep-max loads, then it is possible to build a physique which looks impressive but does not perform as well as that of a smaller person. Outside of the gym, this lesson applies to people whose beauty is skin-deep and whose personality is superficial. They may appear to be attractive and polite, but underneath the surface they are inferior, if not rotten to the core. Which brings us to…
6. Appearances can be deceiving. Most people would look at a skinny person and believe that person to be in better shape than an overweight person. But there is a condition which trainers refer to as “skinny-fat,” which means that a person is thin but weak and deconditioned. Meanwhile, an overweight person may have a large amount of muscle mass in addition to a large amount of fat mass, which can allow them to perform well despite their extra baggage. In every other aspect of life, it is equally important to not judge a book by its cover, so to speak.
7. A positive attitude makes a real difference. In the words of Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t − you’re right.” This is not entirely true, of course; lifting a weight which is far beyond one’s capabilities will not happen regardless of one’s attitude. But at the edge of what is possible, toughness and endurance are partly mental. A positive attitude can make the difference between making a new personal best lift and having to wait until the next time you perform that movement. This is true of any other activity; believing that you can do something makes it more likely that you will, whether in the moment or long-term.
8. All can boast; few can beast. Anyone can claim to be able to do anything, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Regardless of whether you tell yourself that you can move mountains or nothing at all, the iron is an arbiter of truth. Everyone has their own opinion, but 150 kilograms is 150 kilograms, and it cares not for anyone’s opinion. Elsewhere in life, you will encounter people who make dubious claims. Require evidence for them, and watch the wheat separate from the chaff.
9. There are different kinds of pain, each with a different meaning. The body is capable of experiencing several kinds of pain. Pain can be acute or chronic, caused by tissue damage or nerve damage. Most importantly for the lifter, there is a type of pain that represents weakness leaving the body, and a type of pain that warns you to stop. Failure to decipher which is which can lead to serious injury. This is true of all physical activities, regardless of whether they involve lifting.
10. Those who focus on one aspect of fitness while ignoring others will miss out. Moderation is important for achieving a healthy, well-balanced life. Those who lift heavy but ignore their cardiovascular health will have health problems later in life and a shorter lifespan. Those who never lift heavy will be physically weaker, less capable of dealing with stress, and be at greater risk for osteoporosis and falling as seniors. This is true in mental endeavors as well. Focusing only on mathematics while ignoring language studies will leave one ill-equipped to communicate one’s proofs. Focusing only on history while ignoring science will leave one ill-equipped to understand why certain events happened as they did. Whether physical or mental, do not be a specialist to the exclusion of other disciplines.
11. Actions have equal and opposite reactions. That which you work against will work against you. If you work against heavy weights, they will make you more like them. You will become heavier, larger, and harder to push around. If you work against light weights, these positive changes will happen slower, if at all. In life, this applies to the kind of associates one keeps as well as the larger tides of political change.
12. There are no shortcuts to any place worth going to. Every lifter knows that this one is about steroids. People use steroids because they work; they reduce the amount of recovery time needed before lifting again. But strength can be gained through a proper barbell program without resorting to substances which can cause long-term health problems, as well as land one in jail (although jail for steroid use would not happen in a libertarian society). Outside of the gym, cutting corners is a way to avoid learning needed skills while increasing the risk of an accident, which will eventually come back to haunt you. Shortcuts may seem like a benefit in the moment, but they always cause more trouble than they are worth in the long-term.
13. There are hard limits which cannot be surpassed. Even with the best training, diet, supplements, and rest, you can only do so much. You will not squat, bench, or deadlift 1000 kilograms. The human body is simply not capable of structurally supporting that kind of load. In other aspects of life, there are also hard limits, whether imposed by the laws of physics or the limitations of biology. It is important to recognize such limits and know that that which cannot be done should not be attempted.
14. There is no equality of outcome or opportunity; there can only be equality of freedom. Everyone has equal freedom to lift, in that unless someone has committed a crime and is being punished for it, no one has the right to deprive anyone else of access to gym equipment. But this is no guarantee of opportunity, let alone results. Some people have more opportunity because they have more access to resources which will help them recover from a tough workout. Some people will have better results because they work harder, work smarter, or are naturally inclined to be stronger. In all aspects of life, people have different amounts of potential and various levels of motivation, and will therefore achieve different amounts of success. This is because…
15. All people are not created equal. Each person has the same fundamental rights, but we are not all interchangeable cogs in a machine. There are measurable differences in performance not only between individuals, but between genders and ethnic groups. On average, a woman will lift about 30 percent less than a man of the same size, build, and experience level. Also note that most weightlifting world records are held by people from Asia or eastern Europe. Such differences occur not only with physical strength, but with intelligence and temperament as well. Whether such differences come from nature or nurture, they do exist and are measurable.
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