Lifting Weights

    Whether you start lifting as a New Year's resolution or just because you wanted to make a change, the change that is made is usually much more than just looking better. Lifting weights is seen as a way to build muscle and stay healthy, both mentally and physically. Lifting helps people stay healthy physically by constantly pushing one’s body to its limit. Pushing your body to its limit consistently helps build the muscle needed to continue getting better and or stronger. This provides a ceiling that could always be broken by staying consistent and learning how to lift properly which comes hand in hand. 

     Lifting weights for a lot of people is an outlet for their problems, whether it's mental or physical, lifting helps clear the body and soul of a lot of problems. For example, a lot of people struggle with confidence issues which lifting helps a lot with because you could either lose weight or gain weight by building muscle and losing fat. As well as lifting helps build up one's mental fortitude because if you take it seriously a lot of the things you didn’t think were serious before have become essential to maintaining a functional schedule. Maintaining a healthy amount of sleep, eating correctly (which could be just limiting the amount you eat, doesn’t have to be eating completely clean), and staying on time are all ways of improving mental fortitude by creating a schedule to go by leaving time to do the things you love to do.

     There are also influencers who post on social media their lifting journey which has inspired a lot of younger people to start lifting. Like Sam Sulek, an influencer who has been blowing up lately for his whimsical yet extremely relatable content. Sam posts a majority of his workouts on YouTube where he provides tips and tricks as well as extremely intense workouts (a few of which I’ve tried myself)  he uses as a veteran lifter but also provides advice to the youth about life in general. Another content creator who has helped inspire people to lift is Joey Swole, a personal favorite of mine who has helped show Gym etiquette for those who don’t know or just blatantly ignore it. Joey replies to videos of people who are making fun of other people in the gym or making accusations about someone and politely or in some cases aggressively calls them out on how they are acting and tells them to do better along with calling out the toxic masculinity that happens a lot at the gym. Both of these creators have done a lot for the weight lifting community as they provide role models for beginners.

     Lifting weights has provided a place for personal growth, mental or physical, for many people including me. As well as give people an opportunity to change for the better and maintain those changes through extremely hard and rewarding work, or gain a sense of self worth and accomplishment. The influence that lifting weights has had on me and a whole lot of other people is undoubted, but will it have an effect on you?