It’s nearly the end of my first month with the trainer and while I’m so much stronger than when I started, I’m still working my way up to doing anything with the bar and real weight. This week I struggled, I was frustrated, I forgot my form, everyone else in the gym was stronger than me and knew what to do already, lifting was hard and was (by design) never, ever going to get easier.
Then my work bro, who also lifts, sent me an essay by Henry Rollins (yeah, that one) and oh look! We have another post about doing a hard thing in a sport that is really about doing hard things in life and embracing the struggle, not fighting it. (If I get nothing else from learning to lift, I will have gotten so much blog content from it.)
Joking aside, though, it’s a pretty great essay–kind of a “Zen and the art of lifting.” From Iron and The Soul:
I used to think that it was my adversary, that I was trying to lift that which does not want to be lifted. I was wrong. When the Iron doesn’t want to come off the mat, it’s the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn’t teach you anything. That’s the way the Iron talks to you. It tells you that the material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against will always work against you.