Why do you lift weights? Or why do you want to lift weights? Why drag yourself to the gym when you don’t want to, however many times a week that may be? Why eat the right foods? Why avoid what you want to eat? Why stick to a diet? What’s the best testosterone booster for your body type? Why do we do all these? What is the point of it all?
A lot of us, myself included, started bodybuilding as a means to an end – exercising to look better. To gain the attention of women. To receive admiration from our friends.
These are all extremely valid reasons to start working out. No doubt, it feels fantastic to see ourselves in the mirror after a few weeks of doing so. We look bigger – and so much better than before. We lift a new record – it feels awesome!
And could anybody please tell me, what better is there than when a person you haven’t seen in a while looks at you in surprise and exclaims ‘you’ve changed!’
Suppose though, for whatever reason we go through a rough patch – or we have an early plateau. Maybe something happens to us that hinders our progress. Maybe it disrupts our progress so much we actually experience setbacks and move backward in our journey.
This is when it’s easy to give up. This is when we look in the mirror and don’t see any gains after a few weeks of hard work. When we don’t see any improvement on the bathroom scales. Or worse, when something happens to us that makes us lose weight, or sucks our energy to such a degree we end up losing some of our strength.
But we only give up if we lose grasp of that end result. When we see it slip through our fingers like sand. It is when we think to ourselves that we cannot achieve what we want to achieve, we ask ourselves ‘what is the point?’
Well, in regards to bodybuilding – what is the point? After all, it IS about building a better body, isn’t it? Why bother if you KNOW that’s not going to happen?
Make this distinction; work out with a goal to sculpt your perfect body. But don’t make this goal the be-all-end-all.
Work out primarily to work out. Exercise to exercise. You will always be becoming better.
Remember, it is the journey, not the process. If you enjoy the work, that becomes the end result. So when you’re feeling down because you’re not looking any bigger in the mirror, or heavier on the scales, you still exercise, because it’s the exercise itself that is the point.
Of course, in time, with this attitude, we reach our goals. It is inevitable. There is no future goal to slip through your fingers now.
