When strength training, there’s a moment when you teleport into hyperreality. Your muscles boil against unbearable weight, and you switch from moving weight to discovering what you’re made of.
Much of your growth comes from those last few reps, when you’re quivering under a loaded bar and your mind is begging you to stop. You have to deliberately push yourself to a state of weakness to introduce new strength.
Even as you get stronger, strength training should not get easier. Your task is not just to lift weight, but to continually challenge yourself with heavier loads, greater range of motion, more technical lifts, etc. This not only makes you stronger — it hones your ability to do what it takes to become even stronger.
Your tolerance for discomfort grows with regular exposure to it. And this principle extends far beyond the gym. Productive discomfort shows up everywhere worth going.
Growth, whether physical, mental, or emotional, happens outside your comfort zone, beyond your perceived limits, and near full exertion. It hides in those last few reps, that last mile, that extra round of practice — in the most challenging units of effort. It happens when you’re not sure if you can, but you try anyway.
Quivering under the bar also attunes you to the true extent of your capabilities. It sharpens your ability to discern the difference between too little, just enough, and too much. As a result, you’re less likely to underperform, overreach, burn out, or sell yourself short.
“Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but nobody wanna lift this heavy ass weight… I do it though!”
Ronnie Coleman
“Everyone should get at least one good look at the eyes of a man who finds himself rising toward what he wants to pull down to himself.”
~David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (Book)