As with everything in life, I’ve gone through phases in my training career; I’ve made a lot of mistakes; I’ve had a number of achievements. More importantly, I truly believe the sports of weightlifting, powerlifting, crossfit games, strongman, etc. teach you the “intangibles” that everyone is looking for these days. I consistently hear, “working out is my outlet; if I can’t do that, I will get way too stressed out.” That got me thinking, what does weightlifting do for me? As I thought more and more about it, I realized how much it has actually shaped me into the person I am today (pun intended). We all know the health benefits of working out, and almost everyone knows about the psychological benefits. Those are both fantastic things, but what are the intangibles? The intangibles are the things that make you who you are, that define you when your friends tell people about you, that employers look for at the interview to know you’ll be a great hire. Here’s how weightlifting affected me personally regarding the intangibles:
- Dedication – Fitness sports require dedication. If you don’t have it, then you will hate fitness, you won’t progress anywhere, and you won’t make the changes you want for yourself. Becoming a competitor in any fitness sport revolves around dedication. Once you know you can program 5x/wk and make each one of those workouts, and feel great about each one of those workouts, imagine how you’ll feel about this big meeting you have coming up. The dedication to your workouts and your plan carry over to work life and personal life. People will see the dedication (and as much as your buddies will try to get you to do shots, they really do understand why you decline) and they will want it, they will admire it, and they will reward you for it.
- Work ethic – Dedication transitions to work ethic nicely. Having the dedication will fuel your work ethic. The desire to do a fantastic job and blow everybody away (the same way you want to murder all your workouts). This is probably one of the biggest influence weightlifting has had on my life. Take the same approach to everything else that you do in the gym, and people will undoubtedly be blown away.
- Resilience – Strength and fitness are not linear. We’ve all been through that newbie phase where pounds are added to the bar like there’s no tomorrow, but what happens when that phase ends? Do you just give up? No, you search for a better way to continue the progress. Being resilient is an invaluable trait. No matter what happens to you at work, in your personal life, in family affairs, you know you can make it through because of how you’ve made it through trials and tribulations at the gym.
- Toughness (mental/physical) – Along with resilience inherently is toughness. What it takes to get crushed at a massive squat workout, and then come back two days later and do a killer deadlift workout. You are putting your body through a lot (hopefully programmed correctly to you as an individual). You are also making the decision to get up and do it again showing your mental fortitude. These traits are crucial to receiving criticism and changing course appropriately. If you get injured, do you just give up? No you shut it down (no matter how mentally hard that may be), heal, then get back too it. All around you are stronger for it.
These next four are the biggest intangibles in my eyes. Fitness strongly improves these when you take it seriously and give it everything you’ve got.
- Dependability – This one might be a stretch to some, but showing up day in and day out working on a goal you will achieve 8 months from now, 2 years from now, or 5 years from now. Damn, that requires a lot. Along with all of the above, you have to be dependable. Think of you and the gym as a relationship. The gym is counting on you to show up so you can achieve your goals. When you show up every time, then you achieve your goal, your strengthening your dependability. Likewise outside the gym, your friends/family/co-workers know they can count on you to get the job done correctly, on time, and better than anyone else.
- Ownership – Taking pride in your achievements, but maybe more importantly taking the fall for your shortcomings. In fitness, you have no-one to blame but yourself. Was your nutrition right? Did you get enough sleep? Did something terrible happen in your family? Did you make a programming mistake? Conversely, did you do everything right and kill it at your meet? Being able to figure out your mistakes and where you went awry, and then admitting it is a big thing these days. Own up and say you fucked up, or take your medal knowing you did everything you had to do to get it done. Ownership is something that is a rare find these days, but will enhance every aspect of your life from work to home.
- Critical thinking – This one is huge. The ability to take information, process it, and apply it to yourself or your situation. There are MASSIVE amounts of information available about anything. Does it apply to you? Will it benefit you? Are there other things that will benefit you more? These are all decisions that every fitness athlete needs to make. The answers will be different for every single person. As you grow in your fitness career, you should be better able to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. The better you get at that, the better you can critically think about situations outside of working out. Better critical thinking skills results in improved decision making and better outcomes in any regard.
- Awareness – Lastly, awareness is a trait that many struggle with, but if you develop it, then your growing potential is endless. Fitness teaches you physical awareness (movements, execution of lifts). It teaches you the responses of your body so you know what to expect of yourself next time. Fitness will show you where you went wrong so you can be aware of that mistake and adjust it in the future. Being aware of your programming, your movements, your responses, etc is just the start. From there you will notice how you respond to situations at work (good and bad), you will figure out better ways to handle personal situations, and you will become aware of where you are weak as an individual so you can utilize that understanding to your advantage.
That’s my take on what weightlifting does. This is clearly an opinion piece and these are my thoughts. If you agree or disagree or have other things you think fitness sports have done for you then I’d love to hear in the comments below!