I was recently persuaded to go to the gym in large part thanks to this article. Excerpt:
“Noob gains”—the fact that novice lifters gain strength with incredible speed—is a phenomenon that’s advertised widely, but still under-advertised, as evidenced by the fact that there are people out there who could take advantage of it, but haven’t. I will consider noob gains to be a correctly-rated phenomenon when literally every adult who possibly can has enjoyed them.
If you haven’t lifted weights or done significant resistance training, you might understand, in theoretical terms, that you can double your strength in a matter of a couple of months with little difficulty. But if you haven’t done it, it’s probable that you haven’t fully absorbed just what that means, or how easy it is. I’m writing this in the hopes that reading one more person extolling the benefits of strength training will finally get you to go out and grip a barbell. [...]
Let’s start with a conceptual reframing. You might think of lifting as the art of becoming unnaturally strong. But that’s not the way to think about it.
Your body isn’t designed for its current state if you live in a post-industrial society—you’re abusing yourself by default. Your body wants to be more muscular. It craves adaptation under stress. Thus, it is generous. In your early days of lifting, you won’t be pushing it to do crazy, outlandish things. Instead, you will simply be allowing it to be as strong as it should be.
This is why, in the early days of lifting, the gains are so quick, and come without bodily protestation if your form is solid. It’s also why something just feels materially correct about becoming stronger, like you were crooked this whole time but finally you’ve been straightened.
That sense of rightness is not just physical. Gaining muscle gave me emotional equanimity as well as physical equanimity, and this is reported generally. I could try and track down some stupid survey to “prove” this to you, but you will experience it yourself. Maybe the mechanism of action is ‘physiological,’ in the sense that your muscles release hormones or something, or maybe it’s ‘psychological,’ in the sense that you’ll have more confidence, and you will radiate it into the world, and the world will radiate back something different.
I don’t care. It works.
You might think that you’re strong enough to do everything that your life requires. And, well, that’s probably true. But what you haven’t experienced is the feeling that your life is abundantly physically easy.
This was a revelation to me. Until I’d gained some muscle, I didn’t know that getting out of bed shouldn’t actually feel like much, physically, or that walking up a bunch of stairs shouldn’t tire you out, or that carrying groceries around shouldn’t be onerous. I felt cursed by the necessity of occupying space while shuffling around this mortal coil. And now I do not. Moreover, I no longer feel that I need some special justification for existing, because simply residing in the material is now a privilege.
I used to have mysterious transient back pain. I thought this was normal because I heard that some back pain is normal. Then I did some deadlifts, and my pain evaporated. It turns out that my back was just weak.
There’s this nice side effect, too: when things in your life are less physically onerous, they are then less psychologically onerous. It’s easier to live life when the prospect of basic physical activities isn’t exhausting. You will want more to move in the world.
I’m not condemning you to a lifetime at the gym. Here’s the fun part—once you have some muscle, you can either keep building strength or just maintain it with light-to-moderate exercise, if you feel like it.
I’m not a huge, musclebound guy. (Not yet, anyway.) I definitely look like I’ve done some exercise, because I have, but what I did is build up a reasonable level of strength—I stopped at a 2x bodyweight deadlift—and then didn’t lose it. Mostly I’ve been kind of half-assed about my workout regime in the last couple of years, and that hasn’t mattered a bit. The aesthetic and physical benefits have persisted.
So you can just do this for three months and then quit exercise except for what makes you feel good. That’s perfectly satisfactory.
Probably the biggest impact on me was the idea that I could just do an exercise program for a few months, then stop and keep the gains. Going with the D&D metaphor, if I was playing a game and I got the chance for a relatively minor one-time investment that gave me a permanent +4 STR for the rest of the game, I’d most likely take it! Probably I’d take it even if I was playing a spellcaster with no particular use for STR, because hey a permanent +4, I’m sure there will still be some situations where it comes in handy.
Now it still took me quite a while to get to it, because I had a bunch of shame of “being bad at this kind of thing” from school physical ed classes, and I knew I’d need to get a personal trainer to look at my form and those are expensive and paying for those felt icky. But then I had the fortune that a gym rat friend of mine volunteered to act as my personal trainer for free, and after that things have been going great.
I can confirm that it does wonders for my mood and helps boost my self-esteem, and I’m very happy that I started. At times it has felt sufficiently pleasant that I’ve felt slightly addicted to going to the gym. (I haven’t yet noticed clear differences in daily activities or things like how easy it feels to get out of the bed, though.)
What I can confirm about that article is that doubling my strenght would matter absolutely nothing in my daily routine; I can’t remember the last time I had to lift something heavier than a pack of water bottles. Also I am not overweight and I don’t suffer from any physical pain in particular (yet), so my brain ended up framing that article as “you’ll feel miserable for an hour thrice a week, but at least you’ll solve problems that you mostly don’t have”. Which is not exactly great for motivation.
This is a massive misread of the article. The benefit of lifting is the feeling of joy in the merely material, and of transforming the feeling of being embodied from a feeling of trappedness to a feeling of capabilities being granted to you.
Until I’d gained some muscle, I didn’t know that getting out of bed shouldn’t actually feel like much, physically, or that walking up a bunch of stairs shouldn’t tire you out, or that carrying groceries around shouldn’t be onerous. I felt cursed by the necessity of occupying space while shuffling around this mortal coil. And now I do not. Moreover, I no longer feel that I need some special justification for existing, because simply residing in the material is now a privilege.
The first time I moved apartments after I started seriously lifting, I enjoyed it. I had always suffered while moving before lifting, ending up sore and tired and cranky, but after lifting, I didn’t feel any negatives.
I’ve heard that often, when someone who says, I don’t care about strength, what’s it good for, I’ve no use for it, etc. actually gives weight training a try and gets the noob gains, then funnily enough, you don’t hear that from them again.
I don’t care about strength and have no use for it; several years of lifting later, I have gotten my noob gains and still have no use for strength (with the exception of possibly helping with some occasional back pains I used to have). Nothing in my daily life hinges on my deadlift doubling—not even carrying in the groceries.
Chapin is describing a range of gains—“Until I’d gained some muscle, I didn’t know that getting out of bed shouldn’t actually feel like much, physically, or that walking up a bunch of stairs shouldn’t tire you out, or that carrying groceries around shouldn’t be onerous. I felt cursed.” If you can remove a general feeling of being cursed and get a license to live in the material world, wow! If you can solve chronic pain with strength training, great! If you can climb stairs without getting tired, a lot of people already can, but good! If you can carry groceries, like most people can, okay!
Since most normal people’s gains will fall in the last two types (for real, what percent of the people feel they “need some special justification for existing” because they’re physically not-that-bad-kinda-on-the-weak-side?), you have a point that for a lot of people who already can do things without bother, this won’t move the needle. Yet, for many who can do these things, doing them without bother may be nice (and prospectively under-appreciated) - feeling less exhaustion in your life generally and having more energy to do things you really want to do are quite good benefits.
But even if the benefits are more trivial than Chapin characterizes, I think your characterizing the costs as “feel[ing] miserable” is a bit much (though obviously everything is subjective here). Again, for some, sure, it’s misery. For most, it’s challenging and uplifting and potentially even energizing (especially after the first couple workouts).
So, we have Chapin claiming (BB−c), and I suggest it’s probably more like (B−c) or at worst (b−c), either of which should be more motivating than your (b−C). But I agree the benefits seem trumped up by Chapin.
I was recently persuaded to go to the gym in large part thanks to this article. Excerpt:
Probably the biggest impact on me was the idea that I could just do an exercise program for a few months, then stop and keep the gains. Going with the D&D metaphor, if I was playing a game and I got the chance for a relatively minor one-time investment that gave me a permanent +4 STR for the rest of the game, I’d most likely take it! Probably I’d take it even if I was playing a spellcaster with no particular use for STR, because hey a permanent +4, I’m sure there will still be some situations where it comes in handy.
Now it still took me quite a while to get to it, because I had a bunch of shame of “being bad at this kind of thing” from school physical ed classes, and I knew I’d need to get a personal trainer to look at my form and those are expensive and paying for those felt icky. But then I had the fortune that a gym rat friend of mine volunteered to act as my personal trainer for free, and after that things have been going great.
I can confirm that it does wonders for my mood and helps boost my self-esteem, and I’m very happy that I started. At times it has felt sufficiently pleasant that I’ve felt slightly addicted to going to the gym. (I haven’t yet noticed clear differences in daily activities or things like how easy it feels to get out of the bed, though.)
What I can confirm about that article is that doubling my strenght would matter absolutely nothing in my daily routine; I can’t remember the last time I had to lift something heavier than a pack of water bottles. Also I am not overweight and I don’t suffer from any physical pain in particular (yet), so my brain ended up framing that article as “you’ll feel miserable for an hour thrice a week, but at least you’ll solve problems that you mostly don’t have”. Which is not exactly great for motivation.
This is a massive misread of the article. The benefit of lifting is the feeling of joy in the merely material, and of transforming the feeling of being embodied from a feeling of trappedness to a feeling of capabilities being granted to you.
The first time I moved apartments after I started seriously lifting, I enjoyed it. I had always suffered while moving before lifting, ending up sore and tired and cranky, but after lifting, I didn’t feel any negatives.
I’ve heard that often, when someone who says, I don’t care about strength, what’s it good for, I’ve no use for it, etc. actually gives weight training a try and gets the noob gains, then funnily enough, you don’t hear that from them again.
I don’t care about strength and have no use for it; several years of lifting later, I have gotten my noob gains and still have no use for strength (with the exception of possibly helping with some occasional back pains I used to have). Nothing in my daily life hinges on my deadlift doubling—not even carrying in the groceries.
Chapin is describing a range of gains—“Until I’d gained some muscle, I didn’t know that getting out of bed shouldn’t actually feel like much, physically, or that walking up a bunch of stairs shouldn’t tire you out, or that carrying groceries around shouldn’t be onerous. I felt cursed.” If you can remove a general feeling of being cursed and get a license to live in the material world, wow! If you can solve chronic pain with strength training, great! If you can climb stairs without getting tired, a lot of people already can, but good! If you can carry groceries, like most people can, okay!
Since most normal people’s gains will fall in the last two types (for real, what percent of the people feel they “need some special justification for existing” because they’re physically not-that-bad-kinda-on-the-weak-side?), you have a point that for a lot of people who already can do things without bother, this won’t move the needle. Yet, for many who can do these things, doing them without bother may be nice (and prospectively under-appreciated) - feeling less exhaustion in your life generally and having more energy to do things you really want to do are quite good benefits.
But even if the benefits are more trivial than Chapin characterizes, I think your characterizing the costs as “feel[ing] miserable” is a bit much (though obviously everything is subjective here). Again, for some, sure, it’s misery. For most, it’s challenging and uplifting and potentially even energizing (especially after the first couple workouts).
So, we have Chapin claiming (BB−c), and I suggest it’s probably more like (B−c) or at worst (b−c), either of which should be more motivating than your (b−C). But I agree the benefits seem trumped up by Chapin.