have you read Sloterdijk’s “You Must Change Your Life”? he argues that religion actually consists largely of habits of movement and feeding, in a way you articulate beautifully here.
risking excommunication, I’ll share that I lift regularly but reluctantly, and am skeptical of the lifting religion; it doesn’t seem Lindy nor does it make me feel the best. Team sports like ultimate and football are the movement pattern that brings me the most embodied joy (once initial awkwardness is overcome), and the fact that they’re intrinsically social makes them a more complete basis for a lifetime movement practice than solitary lifting.
in case of vampire problems (lifting, parenthood, serious meditation), it is not only that you can't evaluate them until you have been transformed by them, but also that the testimony you receive from those who have been transformed is plagued by selection bias. like if you heard only from happy vampires because unhappy vampires were either dead, reclusive, or ashamed.
you can't get into all heavy-initial-investment activities which their respective transformed evangelize. have to back that your instincts will lead you to the ones you need most.
I wish people talked more about this, double clicking on the mental side of gym - and how the physical changes are mere side effects, pleasantly felt on the way out of the gym. It is a drug, and you can't help someone experience/visualise/conceptualise lsd through words.
and the jolt from iron is so wonderfully personalised to your memories, battles that it's almost unreal when verbalised from the outside, because it's just....a boring object everyday?
yet they must feel the trippy visualisations off leg extension, the rise from the bss hole, shock at the first time your head rises beyond the bar.. even when you've barely escaped from being underwater, you emerge flying
“How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can she suffer the absence of a person who is present?”
This is one of my favorite quotes from the book and was reminded of it the way you talked about not being able to imagine getting back to where you were.
printed this out to read again and again. thank you for perceiving and articulating this state so very sharply. am a beginner lifter. appreciate your perspective so much.
Great writing. I feel a bit similar re. other states I can't imagine getting to (again) in the domain of depression/feeling good.
And a question: these benefits that you write about: do you think they apply only or mostly to lifting (free) weights, or about the gym in general? I find the free weights a bit intimidating (and cumbersome) and I only do the machines.
I think a large chunk comes from the intensity of exertion. You can do it with machines, but free weights and compound exercises are preferable.
Have you learned the proper technique for the major lifts before?
In my experience, the intimidation comes from "not knowing what to do with the free weights". A good coach starts from zero, e.g. how to do a hip hinge for the deadlift, and as the intelligent person you are, there is nothing in your way of learning it step by step. If the learning curve appears too steep, the coach is bad. Have some faith that you, too, can become the person who knows their way around a barbell step by step.
thx. it's partly what you wrote about I think: I feel not motivated enough to get a coach and take this really seriously. I started to do (at a pace at most twice a week) because I'm hearing it's important for later :) But who knows... Theoretically I can imagine it brings benefits that are hard to imagine :)
I hope you can cross the chasm again and feel as great as you did before!
Wonderfully written. But have you considered that you might be a hyper-responder? Either in the hypertrophic sense - gaining muscle faster than average - or just the sense of how much enjoyment you get from lifting.
For me it’s something I used to enjoy - I picked up StrongLifts when I was 18 or so - but long since became a chore. Perhaps I should try to get back into regular compound lifting. But it seems like the bug really bit you in a way that doesn’t happen for everyone, and I’m not sure I’d generalise that everyone is thus missing out.
(For sure doing strength training is basically a universal prescription, I’m talking more about heavy compound lifts and making it a ~big part of your life which is what you seem to be advocating here)
Then again, it's pragmatically true, as in, whether or not it changes people's experience as it did for me, they would benefit from going to the gym in terms of longevity and other metrics.
It also doesn't hit you immediately, I find, I had to work out for a while before it became intrinsically rewarding. Once you are in shape and strong, the attractor changes.
Beautiful post. My boyfriend (a devoted Crossfitter) got me into lifting this year, and it’s completely transformed me. I just shared this post with him and we’re now quoting your piece to each other in the living room (“the heavy is the road to the light” amen). Funnily I actually started reading Callard’s “Aspiration” this week too!
Beautifully and touchingly written, Anna! Especially the part where you write about proleptic reasons reminds me of Terrence Deacon's model of life and consciousness, where *absence* is the teleological driver. A profound insight, which I noted in my daily mantra reflections as "I am and live for what can be ○" (where "what can be" means "what could be, but isn't yet", and the empty circle symbolizes both absence / potential and the boundary between inner and outer that characterizes all life).
I lifted weights today and will think of you when I lift again in a couple days.
Fantastic essay. Thank you for writing it. Do you have any advice for developing the proleptic reasoning or faith required for such pursuits? Overcoming the inertia and in some cases fear (let's say one is afraid of trying improv for the fear of looking stupid) seems to me more than a problem of just rationality. Any way to put the nervous system at ease or amp up the reward system to make the action more likely so one can start a positive feedback loop?
This is all I've ever wanted to write about lifting, in about one tenth of the effort and one hundredth of the wordcount. Now I must do entirely new thinking. Rude.
Hah, glad to hear. I actually have notes for more I have to say about lifting, more than ten times the effort and more than a hundred times the wordcount. You will love it.
Hope you've recovered from the surgery complications by now!
I gave weightlifting another try this summer (the fourth, I think, but I never stuck with it), got an injury that kept me from it for three weeks, and then very nearly didn't go back to it. I came across this post then and it was one of the things that pushed me into trying again. Now I'm at the point where it starts to feel intrinsically rewarding. Hoping that the bug has now bitten me for good :) Thank you for that!
I have a question - you say "Ideally, worship it daily." Do you mean splits/different muscle groups? I only have one routine that includes everything I care about, and I try to aim for every three days. (I also do several other sports...) My intuition is that daily would not be better?
Hope you're not bothered by the object level question. I'm not adverse to googling, it's just that everything I've read recommends against daily, so I'm surprised to hear something different from you.
Sadly I am actually worse now than when I wrote the post and still haven't touched the iron again. It's grim. Compensate for me, will you?
So glad to hear this!
Yes, if you want to lift up to every day, then you need to do splits. Ideally you always want to do splits and plan at least one day of recovery time for the muscle groups you trained. Whether training every day is good, depends on your goals and other constraints. One can build muscle mass with 3-4 times a week and often maintain a lot of muscle mass with only 2 workouts per week.
Great piece, so many good quotes in there too. You nailed the feeling of not being able to imagine what it's like to be in a certain state even though you've been there before. It reminded me of how every time I get a fever it's like my brain forgets what it was like to ever be healthy. The mind is a weird thing.
have you read Sloterdijk’s “You Must Change Your Life”? he argues that religion actually consists largely of habits of movement and feeding, in a way you articulate beautifully here.
risking excommunication, I’ll share that I lift regularly but reluctantly, and am skeptical of the lifting religion; it doesn’t seem Lindy nor does it make me feel the best. Team sports like ultimate and football are the movement pattern that brings me the most embodied joy (once initial awkwardness is overcome), and the fact that they’re intrinsically social makes them a more complete basis for a lifetime movement practice than solitary lifting.
current opinion, weakly held:
in case of vampire problems (lifting, parenthood, serious meditation), it is not only that you can't evaluate them until you have been transformed by them, but also that the testimony you receive from those who have been transformed is plagued by selection bias. like if you heard only from happy vampires because unhappy vampires were either dead, reclusive, or ashamed.
you can't get into all heavy-initial-investment activities which their respective transformed evangelize. have to back that your instincts will lead you to the ones you need most.
I like “vampire problems”!
Thanks for writing this!
I wish people talked more about this, double clicking on the mental side of gym - and how the physical changes are mere side effects, pleasantly felt on the way out of the gym. It is a drug, and you can't help someone experience/visualise/conceptualise lsd through words.
and the jolt from iron is so wonderfully personalised to your memories, battles that it's almost unreal when verbalised from the outside, because it's just....a boring object everyday?
yet they must feel the trippy visualisations off leg extension, the rise from the bss hole, shock at the first time your head rises beyond the bar.. even when you've barely escaped from being underwater, you emerge flying
“How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can she suffer the absence of a person who is present?”
This is one of my favorite quotes from the book and was reminded of it the way you talked about not being able to imagine getting back to where you were.
printed this out to read again and again. thank you for perceiving and articulating this state so very sharply. am a beginner lifter. appreciate your perspective so much.
Means a lot to me that it spoke to you enough to print it out! All the best for your journey. I intend to write more about lifting soon.
sweet. looking forward to reading more!
What an impactful article! Rare to see so many insights in such widely varying domains tied together so naturally! Bravo.
Glad you enjoyed it.
Great writing. I feel a bit similar re. other states I can't imagine getting to (again) in the domain of depression/feeling good.
And a question: these benefits that you write about: do you think they apply only or mostly to lifting (free) weights, or about the gym in general? I find the free weights a bit intimidating (and cumbersome) and I only do the machines.
Glad you liked it.
I think a large chunk comes from the intensity of exertion. You can do it with machines, but free weights and compound exercises are preferable.
Have you learned the proper technique for the major lifts before?
In my experience, the intimidation comes from "not knowing what to do with the free weights". A good coach starts from zero, e.g. how to do a hip hinge for the deadlift, and as the intelligent person you are, there is nothing in your way of learning it step by step. If the learning curve appears too steep, the coach is bad. Have some faith that you, too, can become the person who knows their way around a barbell step by step.
thx. it's partly what you wrote about I think: I feel not motivated enough to get a coach and take this really seriously. I started to do (at a pace at most twice a week) because I'm hearing it's important for later :) But who knows... Theoretically I can imagine it brings benefits that are hard to imagine :)
I hope you can cross the chasm again and feel as great as you did before!
Wonderfully written. But have you considered that you might be a hyper-responder? Either in the hypertrophic sense - gaining muscle faster than average - or just the sense of how much enjoyment you get from lifting.
For me it’s something I used to enjoy - I picked up StrongLifts when I was 18 or so - but long since became a chore. Perhaps I should try to get back into regular compound lifting. But it seems like the bug really bit you in a way that doesn’t happen for everyone, and I’m not sure I’d generalise that everyone is thus missing out.
(For sure doing strength training is basically a universal prescription, I’m talking more about heavy compound lifts and making it a ~big part of your life which is what you seem to be advocating here)
Yes, that's not unlikely.
Then again, it's pragmatically true, as in, whether or not it changes people's experience as it did for me, they would benefit from going to the gym in terms of longevity and other metrics.
It also doesn't hit you immediately, I find, I had to work out for a while before it became intrinsically rewarding. Once you are in shape and strong, the attractor changes.
(That said… it does make me want to get back to the barbell)
Beautiful post. My boyfriend (a devoted Crossfitter) got me into lifting this year, and it’s completely transformed me. I just shared this post with him and we’re now quoting your piece to each other in the living room (“the heavy is the road to the light” amen). Funnily I actually started reading Callard’s “Aspiration” this week too!
Beautifully and touchingly written, Anna! Especially the part where you write about proleptic reasons reminds me of Terrence Deacon's model of life and consciousness, where *absence* is the teleological driver. A profound insight, which I noted in my daily mantra reflections as "I am and live for what can be ○" (where "what can be" means "what could be, but isn't yet", and the empty circle symbolizes both absence / potential and the boundary between inner and outer that characterizes all life).
I lifted weights today and will think of you when I lift again in a couple days.
Fantastic essay. Thank you for writing it. Do you have any advice for developing the proleptic reasoning or faith required for such pursuits? Overcoming the inertia and in some cases fear (let's say one is afraid of trying improv for the fear of looking stupid) seems to me more than a problem of just rationality. Any way to put the nervous system at ease or amp up the reward system to make the action more likely so one can start a positive feedback loop?
This is all I've ever wanted to write about lifting, in about one tenth of the effort and one hundredth of the wordcount. Now I must do entirely new thinking. Rude.
Hah, glad to hear. I actually have notes for more I have to say about lifting, more than ten times the effort and more than a hundred times the wordcount. You will love it.
Hope you've recovered from the surgery complications by now!
I gave weightlifting another try this summer (the fourth, I think, but I never stuck with it), got an injury that kept me from it for three weeks, and then very nearly didn't go back to it. I came across this post then and it was one of the things that pushed me into trying again. Now I'm at the point where it starts to feel intrinsically rewarding. Hoping that the bug has now bitten me for good :) Thank you for that!
I have a question - you say "Ideally, worship it daily." Do you mean splits/different muscle groups? I only have one routine that includes everything I care about, and I try to aim for every three days. (I also do several other sports...) My intuition is that daily would not be better?
Hope you're not bothered by the object level question. I'm not adverse to googling, it's just that everything I've read recommends against daily, so I'm surprised to hear something different from you.
Hey Ray,
Sadly I am actually worse now than when I wrote the post and still haven't touched the iron again. It's grim. Compensate for me, will you?
So glad to hear this!
Yes, if you want to lift up to every day, then you need to do splits. Ideally you always want to do splits and plan at least one day of recovery time for the muscle groups you trained. Whether training every day is good, depends on your goals and other constraints. One can build muscle mass with 3-4 times a week and often maintain a lot of muscle mass with only 2 workouts per week.
Sorry to hear that! I will do my best!!
Thank you for taking the time to answer my question!
Too bad for anyone with a chronic illness, who can’t do anything of the sort. Hey ho.
Great piece, so many good quotes in there too. You nailed the feeling of not being able to imagine what it's like to be in a certain state even though you've been there before. It reminded me of how every time I get a fever it's like my brain forgets what it was like to ever be healthy. The mind is a weird thing.
Beautifully said. Thank you for this.