This post advocates for exercising to learn how the body works instead of lifting weights to lift more weights. Lifting weights can be a great tool in our repertoire, but we often find ourselves influenced to lift weights in order to outdo our peers. This leads to injury and restricted movement. When we spend time learning how our bodies can move, we see where we can improve and how lifting weights can fit into our systems.

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The Gym is Fun

I remember when I was finally old enough to go to the free-weight section of my local gym.

By then, I had been going regularly for over a year.

I loved the gym. The unassuming facade transported me to a steel-bar toy-scape, offering countless opportunities to move things around. I could jump, push, curl, and twist weights with any combination the building’s machine playscape. However, none of this had the same allure as the free-weight room.

Had a negative experience with the gym? Consider checking out my post on Negative Biases to see if it helps!

Lifting Weights in the Public Eye

I probably used every weight in the free-weight room the first day I was allowed to enter.

There’s no power quite like being able to move heavy things around. I was curling, squatting (baby weight), benching (135, or at least that’s what I’d tell my fellow 6th-grade friends) and pressing everything around. It felt great.

After a few days, I began to see people my age and older in the free weights section. We might exchange a few words, but there was really only one thing on our minds: what does that guy lift?

Lifting weights can be a great way to improve your body control and understanding, but most see it as having one common objective: lift more weight.

Why Lifting Just to Lift More is Shortsighted

Our bodies work best when we train them with intention.

For example, if we want to run faster, we have to train to be faster. Similarly, if we want to be stronger, we have to train to lift heavier.

The intention to improve a particular ability is important, but the ability must come second to an intention to build a durable system (if, of course, we want a body that’s sustainable).

What does that mean?

We need to put our long-term health first. I find that many people prioritize lifting more weight now over protecting their bodies from damage. This results in bodies that are strong for specific movements but lacking understanding of where they can go and how to deviate from those movements, making them more prone to damage.

Every action we take comes with its own unique risk profile, and we should build our lives to do what we want (for more on figuring out how to build your day, check out my page on Time Management!).

When we prioritize lifting more to learning how our bodies should work, we are likely to train bad habits and improper techniques, which may lead to premature wear and injury. If your passion is lifting and you want it to be your sport, great! However, you must consider your body and the implications of improper movements with added weight.

Want to learn more about working out? Check HERE!

Gym Time and Reinforcing Conventions

Going to a gym has the tendency to normalize lifting to lift more (not necessarily always to this extreme, but we’ve all seen an ego lifter before).

When we go to a gym, we enter an environment full of people exercising. Working out with other people can be motivating, but we also feel pressure to follow conventions and outdo our peers (consider reading about the Bandwagon Effect, which can impact anywhere from the gym to the workplace).

When we surround ourselves with people who are lifting to lift more, we often feel compelled (and even challenged) to do the same. And just as seeing someone’s good form can teach you to improve your own, seeing someone do a cheat repetition but lift more than you can influence you to forget you form in attempts to beat them.

Lifting to lift more helps us learn to recruit muscles to complete a task (which is an important skill to have), but it also reinforces our existing movement patterns and influences us to search for the easiest path to success. This can lead to shortened ranges of motion, wonky form, and, most importantly, injuries.

How Free Weights Come into Play

Lifting weights to outdo your peers can be a risky foray into machismo, and the risks only amplify when free weights come into play. Instead of trying to push or pull the heaviest number on a machine built around our litigious legal system and full of safety measures, we are now moving heavy objects around our bodies that are deliberately designed to result in fatigue.

Can you see where I’m headed?

If one arm gets more tired than the other, you can strain yourself trying to compensate (which may result in negative feelings we want to avoid). When we push too hard, we may give out and drop the weights. Don’t even get me started on sprains, strains, and tears.

We can reduce the likelihood of injury from losing control by adding partners, but these lifting buddies are also most likely to challenge us and influence us to lift more, further perpetuating the goal of lifting more instead of understanding self. Instead, it is most important that we take time to study ourselves and learn how it is that we are meant to move.

Start with Bodyweight Movements!

We control our bodies and everything attached. We can kick our feet out, squeeze our hands, and do whatever dance craze hits our phones.

Why not prioritize refining our body control before going to the gym?

I find that we so often choose power and gym numbers over knowledge of how our bodies actually work. Getting a big bench is cool, but it does not necessarily reflect a strong grasp of your upper body’s ability to move.

Bodyweight movements are a wildly adjustable way to study basic movement and develop an understanding of where you might move. They can also easily be mixed into any lifestyle and built into workouts based on our available time (see how to in my page on Micro Assessments!). When we try to move in different ways, we provide our bodies more stimuli and help them discover the best ways to get the job done.

Instead of sticking to a few workouts and doing them until our numbers go up, it helps to prioritize learning to move in a variety of fashions. Jump, roll, and skip your way to better body understanding. A good body movement base knowledge helps us better understand gym workouts and use free weights more effectively.

Remember Your Goals

We can build a much more durable system with the gym once we’ve taken time to understand how our bodies work. There is always more to learn, but a good base knowledge helps us build thoughtfully and avoid injury.

A gym is not essential to building a more durable system. In fact, I think most people should stay away from it until they’ve spent some time moving around and getting a general understanding of their bodies.

However, if we enjoy the gym, it can provide a great opportunity to work with various weights, benches, bars, and kettlebells that can target any muscle we want to train. Gyms are excellent educational resources (including occupants. Knowledgeable mentors and trainers can be found in the gym), and they should not be discredited merely because people can influence others to use them inefficiently.

When we regularly study our bodies and basic movement, we can build systems that can keep us moving well far longer than we thought possible. We can compliment these systems with lifting weights, but it’s important that we do so with an eye to where we seek to be.

Optional: Lifting at Home

Do you find that you prefer exercising in the comfort of your own home? Do you hate working out in public gyms and feeling how other people watch and judge your exercises?

I love exercising at home. I appreciate the ability to easily build workouts into my day and take on exercises as my time permits. I’ve done home workouts in bedrooms, basements, apartments, back yard, and houses, finding that very little space is actually needed for a good full-body workout. Over time, I have built up a useful arsenal of tools (as well as many other fun but far less useful tools I will not be recommending to you today).

Here are the few top items for any home gym. I will provide Amazon links, as that’s where I got most of them, but I recommend that you look on Facebook Marketplace or something of that sort because you can often find a good deal (nobody wants extra heavy stuff when moving).

The Recommendations:

• Outdoor Power Tower
  • You would be hard pressed to find a day in the past five years where I was home and didn’t use my Outdoor Power Tower. I love to workout outside, and these things last. I appreciate this Stamina one because it is durable, heavy, and has a wide array of workout options.
• Indoor Pull-up Bar
  • Not everybody has space (or desire) to have an outdoor power tower, and I don’t blame them. I also have an indoor bar like the one listed, and I love it (well, I actually have several, but that’s beyond the point). These bars are great because you can easily put them up, take them down, and they will not collapse on you. If you put them on the ground, they are useful for depth push-ups and L-sits, and I find them worth every penny.

Note: make sure you get one with the weight distribution pad so you don’t destroy your door frame!

• Bowflex 552 Dumbbells
  • I love these dumbbells. Highly adjustable, limited real estate impact, and durable. I have two of them so I can do most pressing workouts, and I recommend them to anyone who likes to lift weights at home. I prefer the small increments of the 552 over the maximum weight of the 1090, but that’s your call.
• Bowflex Kettlebell
  • As previously recommended in Working Out, I maintain my recommendation of the Bowflex Kettlebell for a home gym. These kettlebells offer a good range of weights and are very durable. They don’t take up too much space, and I typically find I don’t need more weight for my purposes.

Conclusion

The gym can be an excellent resource, as are free weights. However, lifting to lift more rather than to learn how your body works perpetuates inefficient practices that restrict your movement, set you up for injury, and take extra time to correct.

Most people are wise to start spending more time learning how their bodies can move. Bodyweight movements are great ways to learn our current strengths, weaknesses, and where we may run into movement down the line.

Once you have a solid understanding of where your body can go, you will be more successful in keeping true to proper motion when you add weight.

The goal is to be strong enough to do what you want to do, and then add power as you see fit. While the gym is fun and a great way to become fit, it is not necessary, and may lead to problems if we don’t first take time to understand our abilities to move.

Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Let me know!

-G

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