7 Life Lessons the Gym has taught me in my 20’s
I have never been a stranger to physical activity, as I grew up an athlete in many sports. Since I was young I was on a soccer field, in a basketball gym, or running around the back yard simulating one of the two! However, even as I entered high school, competed in Varsity athletics, and was introduced to the weight room, I found little progress or change from my “efforts.”
I was also met with many adults (coaches) who told me I had a certain body type, and there was not much that lifting weights would do, I was just skinny.
As I worked my way through my undergrad at Colorado State University, I would make efforts to reassert my gym “routine” at the beginning of every semester, just to have it wiped clean after the first round of tests. Even though I was studying Health and Exercise Science, and I found myself learning more about the human system, I still found little to no ability to create physical change in my body.
So after 4 years of college, I was still the skinny 6’4, 160lbs kid that graduated from high school. I had really started to buy into what I had been told by those around me growing up about my body type, and as I graduated and stepped into working full time I gave up on a routine.
For the second half of 2015 I was working as a manager in retail. I had been slowly promoted, and to end the year, I finished with an Interim Store Manager assignment for the Holiday Season that led to 6 straight 95 hour work weeks. This was December of 2015, and I was 22. After those 6 weeks, I returned to a position that was 40 hours a week. That is when I decided I could do something with the extra 50+ hours a week I had been working. So, I signed up for my first gym membership, as I had always been able to use the student rec center while on campus.
From December of 2015 to now, I have finally found success in creating progress in the gym. Over those 7 years, I am so grateful for the progress I have made in the gym, and the weightroom. In that process I have learned many things, but some ideas are what I consider to be true “Life Lessons.”
I will always love the gym and weight training, and will utilize both for a long time to come. The confidence and efficacy that it has helped me build have truly changed how I approach my life. That being said, these “Life Lessons” will forever be something I am grateful for having learned in the gym in my 20’s.
Consistency is the #1 Key to Growth: You can be as intense as you want, as intelligent as you want, or any amazing combination of the two. But, if you do not apply your tools with consistency, growth will always elude you.
Discipline will take you further than motivation: Motivation is a short lived emotion that is often discovered under optimal circumstances. Discipline is the mental fortitude that will carry you through even in suboptimal circumstances. So many people will begin a journey and set themself up for a challenge when they create expectations that whatever they are motivated about will last as long as they need it to. I have rarely found this to be the case. It is not that you should rob yourself of ever feeling motivated. However, when feeling motivated, you should remain balanced and set the expectation that at some point discipline will be needed to continue to process.
If you want to perform at a high level, nutrition is critically important: Nutrition is the fuel for your performance. You would not put 85 unleaded in a Ferrari and wonder why it was not performing well would you? I did not think so. As I began to find success at the gym, there was a certain point of performance where even the smallest miss in a nutrition plan would lead to impacts in performance. This goes the same for any area of life you want to have ELITE performance in. Your performance can and will be capped out by the fuel you utilize, unless you are intentional about your choices.
To perform at a high level, you have to recover at a high level: To be real, great performance makes high demands of our system. These high demands utilize large amounts of resources, and stress your system. If you expect to meet these demands over a long period of time, consistently. You must be able to recover well.
Strength is not lifting a weight you have before, no matter how heavy. Strength is being willing to attempt something new, even when facing the possibility of failure: Sometimes in order to grow, you just have to be brave enough to step into the unknown. You should always do so with a plan, and a specific approach to protect yourself should the need arise, but this is where you really create growth.
You build self efficacy by keeping commitments you have made to yourself: When you start to BE the person you want to see in the mirror, instead of thinking of what “could be,” it creates a foundation. This foundation is what allows you to step into any new endeavor with belief in your abilities. Not because you already know everything you need to, BUT because you have shown yourself you are capable of growing, learning, and creating change.
There will always be someone BIGGER/FASTER/STRONGER. This is YOU vs. YOU: As I have worked through my 20’s, there have been several times where I have lost sight of this. This is always a road that leads to unhealthy endings. The periods of time where I saw the most growth and change over the last 7 years, were without a doubt the time frames where I was most successful at staying focused on MY process, and what I was doing to impact it.
I believe that we all walk individual journeys, and I do not by any means believe that the gym or weight room is the ONLY place to learn these lessons. In MY story, it is where I learned them, and I would not change that for anything. What I do hope is a take away from this blog post, is that if you feel like you are in process of or are working on understanding these lessons, then I would encourage you to know that the gym, exercise, and physical activity in general is a great tool to help you do so!
Here is to utilizing physical activity as a positive foundation point in your Wellness routines!
