People talk about training like it’s just about getting stronger,
looking better, chasing numbers. And sometimes, especially at first,
it is. But if you’ve been doing it long enough – I mean really
doing it – you start to realize it’s about something much more
than that.
It becomes the one
place in your life that doesn’t lie to you. It won’t sugarcoat
your weakness, it won’t let you hide, and it doesn’t care how you
feel when you show up. The bar doesn’t pity you, it doesn’t cheer
you on, and it sure as shit doesn’t say, “You’ve been through a
lot today, just take it easy.” It just sits there – cold, honest,
and unmoving.
And that, I’ve come
to learn, is what makes it so powerful.
Because when your world
falls apart – when you lose someone you love, when you get a phone
call that changes everything, or when you wake up and wonder how the
hell you’re going to keep going –the barbell is still there. It
doesn’t fix anything or solve a major problem, but it gives you a
place to put the things you can’t carry anywhere else. And when
life hits hard, sometimes that’s enough.
And here’s the thing:
when everything already feels unbearably heavy, when your mind is
frayed and your heart’s in pieces, choosing to do something hard –
on purpose – becomes an act of defiance or of reclamation. You’re
not ignoring the pain and you’re not pretending everything’s
fine. You’re simply saying, “This won’t break me,” and then
choosing effort over apathy, purpose over paralysis, and the path of
most resistance.
When shit hits the fan, people turn to all kinds of things to cope.
Some dive deeper into work while others disappear into food – too
much or not enough. Some numb themselves with alcohol, with
distractions, with meaningless scrolling, isolation, or anything else
that provides temporary relief. Therapy helps, sometimes meds,
sometimes a weekend lost in a bottle, or a series of bad decisions.
We all look for something.
But I’ve found the
barbell works,
As shitty as I feel, as
bad as life gets, I always feel just a little better after I train. I
walk out knowing I took action and somehow, that small act makes
everything else seem a little less insurmountable. It’s not about
fixing things. It’s about moving through them, one rep at a
time.
I know I’m not the
first person to realize this or write about it. I didn’t even
understand it myself until a few years into training, but damned if
it isn’t true. What it does, how it helps you cope, how it helps in
some small way to stand back up and take it on the chin again,
regardless of the form it takes. Training doesn’t make the grief
disappear and it doesn’t solve a burnout. It doesn’t bring back
what’s gone or erase what’s been done. But it does something
else, something quieter and harder to define: it teaches you how to
keep going and gives you something to stand on when the ground
underneath you starts to crack.
That’s why some
people train through the worst moments of their lives. Not because
they’re trying to “stay disciplined,” hit a PR, or check a box
– they train because it’s the only hour of the day where
something makes sense that they have complete control over. It’s
the only place where effort still matters and where actions still
lead to results, even if they’re small and even if they hurt.
Training won’t call
you back, it won’t hug you, and it’ll never tell you that
everything will be okay. But it will meet you right where you are –
broken, bitter, burned out – and ask you to pick up something heavy
and move it. That’s it. And somehow that simple, brutal task has a
way of making everything else a little more manageable. Not because
the problems shrink, but because you get a little stronger.
That’s the thing
people don’t talk about.
For my part, I trained
the day my mom was diagnosed with cancer and I trained the same night
we buried my brother in the cold Manitoba earth. I didn’t do it
because I’m callous or because I didn’t give a shit. I think about
both of those days all the time, and if I had to do it again I’d
still train. I did it because training builds more than muscle. It
builds grit, patience, acceptance, and resilience. The ability to do
hard things, again and again, without applause or reward, and the
ability to keep going even when your heart isn’t in it. Especially
when your heart isn’t in it.
And that’s the real
discipline. Not perfect attendance, not streaks or spreadsheets or
meal plans. But the quiet refusal to stop showing up when you’re
tired, when you’re angry, when you’re grieving, or when you’re
just fucking empty. When everything in your life is telling you to
lie down and quit, you keep going because that’s what life is and
that’s what people do. We carry on, even when we have every reason
not to.
When the weight in your
chest feels heavier than anything on the bar, when even breathing
feels like a task, showing up and doing the work anyway is not about
ego. It’s about survival. It’s a way of saying, “I don’t have
control over much, but I can control this and I will not break.”
It’s not even about strength. It’s about choosing to move forward
– literally and physically – when everything inside of you wants
to stop.
Training becomes your
anchor in chaos, a ritual that doesn’t need to make you feel better
to matter. Sometimes you don’t leave the gym feeling “great” or
“empowered.” Sometimes you leave still hurting. But you leave
knowing you did something about it. You put your feet on the
ground and you fought inertia. You didn’t run from the pain, and
that’s not nothing.
That’s how you build
the kind of strength that can’t be measured on a platform.
Because it’s not
about the numbers when your mind is spiraling. No one gives a shit
what you can deadlift when your life’s unraveling and the bar sure
as shit doesn’t care. It does, however, respond to effort –
honest, deliberate effort, regardless of whether you’re at your
best or barely holding it together. That kind of thing and that kind
of person is rare these days.
We live in a world that
offers a thousand distractions, a thousand ways to avoid discomfort.
We scroll, sedate, and escape. We’re told that if something feels
hard we should stop, and that if we’re hurting the answer is to
back off, find some balance, and take it easy.
My take on it? Fuck
that. Training pushes against all that bullshit because it asks you
to show up anyway and to do something hard on purpose. And that
simple act – the choice to engage in voluntary hardship – changes
who you are as a person. It teaches you that even when you can’t
fix the problem, you can still take action, and even when you’re
powerless to stop the chaos you can still move forward. Even when
you’re afraid, angry, grieving, numb, you still have one thing
that’s real, one thing that grounds you. And when things get bad –
really bad – that may be the only reason you don’t fall
apart.
And that just the big
stuff. I’ve trained through a tweaked back more times that I care
to count, with broken toes and fingers, tendonitis in just about
every joint, the flu, a stomach bug, and after 18-hour days. You name
it, I’ve trained through it, 7.5 years now and almost 1350 workouts
without a miss. It’s not much, but it is something and it’s mine.
So no, training doesn’t
solve your life. It doesn’t undo loss and it doesn’t guarantee
success. It won’t keep bad things from happening or protect you
from pain, but it arms you with something most people don’t realize
they need until it’s too late: the ability to stand up when you
want to sit down. And that, my friends, matters very much. Because
life will hit you. Hard. It won’t wait until you’re ready and
won’t pause because you’re overwhelmed. It’ll take people from
you, and it’ll gut you. And when it does, you’ll either collapse,
or you’ll keep going.
And the barbell? It’ll
still be there. Still waiting. Still offering the same question it
always has:
Can you move this? And
whether the answer is yes or no, the fact is that you showed up to
find out.
That’s the whole
fucking point.
So if you’re in it
right now – if your heart’s heavy, you’re burned out, you’re
knee-deep in shit, and if everything in you is screaming to quit –
load the bar, chalk your hands, put on your belt and move forward.
Pick it up, put it down, and do it again, because that’s how you get
through it.
That’s how you get
through anything.
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