I love weight training. It is one of three things I recommend to every human being. It is one of the things I love that is actually good for me.
Weight training has positively impacted my life as much or more than any other external concept I’ve encountered while I’ve been alive. I’ve been regularly weight training for two thirds of my life now.
I don’t plan on stopping. All physical exercise is a marathon, not a sprint. Weight training is not something one does for a season, it is something one does for life.
Every year that goes by more and more scientific studies come out showing greater and greater benefits of weight training. Broader benefits and deeper benefits. Physical benefits, mental benefits and social/emotional benefits. Benefits for children and benefits for the elderly. Benefits for living longer and benefits for living a higher quality of life.
There has been and will continue to be resistance to weight training because of it being intertwined with bodybuilding. Male bodybuilders are to weight training as female instagram influencers are to yoga pants. They go hand in hand but only represent the egomaniacal extremes of the user base.
Most people want to exercise and benefit from weight training for practical health benefits. Not because they are seeking external validation from strangers via their smartphone to compensate for an internal lack.
For every fitness influencer covered in athleisure shape ware from head to toe while they photoshop their selfies, there are 10,000 people who would benefit from going to their local gym, a few times per week, to see and feel tangible physical benefits of exercise, surprisingly quickly.
Warm up, lift some weights that challenge their effort and comfort level, do some cardio, stretch, cool down, go home, shower, and eat. Anything beyond that moves into intermediate and beyond which one can find infinite information on in the growing podcast and youtube fitness video sphere.
Weight training helped me in the deepest, darkest times in my life. From depression, to burn out, to grieving the deaths of both of my parents. It helped me to feel good, feel challenged, feel accomplished, feel pride, feel growth. I wish that for every person I meet which is why I recommend it to everyone regardless of demographic or type.
Weight training also makes for great analogies and metaphors. Meditation, another thing I universally recommend, has been called doing bicep curls for the brain. Seeking general challenges and discomfort has been called weight training for life.
More weight training for all and more weight training metaphors please.
Notice how I am yet to bring up aesthetics. Except to poke at the social media narcissists who use perceived visual fitness achievement as a fix for their addiction to attention. Aesthetics is a by product of weight training and exercise in general.
Exercising for aesthetics can be a path the dark side of the fitness world. See fit fluencers and steroid abusers. People who are chemically and surgically enhanced, making a living, by living and lie. Lying to anyone and everyone, including themselves, that their aesthetics can be achieved with discipline, consistency, and whatever products they are selling.
I’ve had multiple IFBB pros tell me when it comes to who is on gear/has had cosmetic surgery vs naturals; muscle mass volume to body fat percentage never lies, ever.
So use common sense, although I’m not so sure how common that is anymore.
But common sense would dictate all humans engage in some form of physical exercise unless they spend their days engaging in physical labor for the job/career.
Use it or lose it. That applies to your body and your mind. Physical and mental ailments and deterioration are often brought about by physical and mental inactivity. The happiest and most spry elderly are the most active. The saddest and slowest youths are the most sedentary. Use it or lost it.
More weight training for all and more weight training metaphors please.
Anarchy Journal Constitutional 