Train Just to Train

 

Some Thoughts and Musings on Why I lift and Why You Should Lift (with a Little Help from Budo and Zen)

     Over the years that I have been lifting—going on almost 4 decades of training at this point—I have been asked a number of questions.  Most of them are in the “how” category.  How do I gain muscle?  How can I increase my bench press?  How do I get big arms?  And, from primarily women, the most often asked is how do I lose weight?  Or how do I get in shape?  Occasionally, however, I have been asked the why question.  Why do I lift?  Why do I train?  Now, usually, though not always, this is a what question.  As in: what are my goals?  What am I trying to achieve?  Though there are times when the inquiry is deeper.  Especially as I get older, sometimes folks want to know why I still do this lifting thing.  After all, I’m not preparing for powerlifting meets anymore or getting ready to enter a bodybuilding competition, yet I train, for the most part, just as hard and consistently as I ever did.  So, why do I train?  And I suppose a secondary question is why should you train?  We’ll get around to that 2nd question later, as it’s something you will have to decide for yourself.

     When I give the honest answer, the truth that ultimately lies at the heart of the matter—any other answer that I give wouldn’t be the complete and total truth, so I don’t give another one—I’m often met with a look of slight confusion, sometimes even downright bewilderment.  But here’s the answer.  I train just to train.  Don’t get me wrong.  I still set performance goals, whether it’s for strength and endurance, and I still train to have more muscle and less fat, so I definitely train, at least somewhat, for aesthetic reasons.  I also train in order to be fit and healthy, especially as the years pile on.  I’m not getting any younger, after all.  I wouldn’t mind living to a ripe old age, as long as my quality of life is good and I’m not relying on the miracles of modern pharmacology.  But in many ways those are just the “side effects” of the lifting.  I enjoy them, and having goals ensures that I’m not slacking off in my training.  But, still, the answer remains.  I lift just to lift.  The other day, while I was in the middle of a workout with a large dip of Copenhagen between my cheek and gums—so much for doing something just for health—I had a bit of an epiphany.  I realized that I have never lifted for health or “fitness,” not really.  It’s simply what I enjoy and who I am.  (And if you think it’s odd to dip snuff while lifting then, well, you’ve never been to a gym in East Texas.)  That flash of insight is what, I suppose, inspired this essay.

     That might make sense to you.  It might not.  If you’re a real lifter, then I reckon it does.  Another way of putting it, I guess, is that I lift because I’m a lifter.  I love lifting—the feel of iron in my hands, the satisfaction of a heavy, sometimes downright hard, workout.  If you’re a lifter, too, then you get it.  That’s what makes one a lifter.  That’s what a lifter does.  He lifts.  It’s impossible for a lifter not to lift.  It’s in her blood.  It’s in her bones and her marrow.  It’s in her very soul.

     I suppose the other things that I do are similar.  I’m a lifter but I’m also a budoka, one who trains in the budo.  I started my journey in budo more than 40 years ago, and I definitely wasn’t thinking about doing it for any “health” reason when I was 10 years old.  I’ve had the same question put to me more than once when it comes to training in the martial ways.  Sometimes folks want to know why a guy in his 50s still trains martial arts multiple times per week.  I’m still fast.  I’m highly skilled.  But I can’t beat guys 20 years younger than me who have the same skillset, so why do I do it?  I mean, no matter how skilled a fighter may be, once he gets into his 40s, as the saying goes, it’s all downhill from there—the body just can’t do what it did once upon a time.  You don’t see any 50-year old UFC fighters for a reason.  In Hong Kong kung-fu movies—something else I’ve enjoyed for over 40 years, I must admit—you might see elderly, silver-haired masters kicking butt and taking names, often against multiple axe-wielding, knife-brandishing assailants.  But the real world doesn’t work like that.  “Don’t you already know everything you can know?” someone once asked, befuddled at finding out that I regularly train in budo an hour in the morning or evening several times a week.  I could see it in their eyes.  Why would anyone want to do that, much less someone my age?  But I train in budo for the same reason that I lift.  I train in it just to train in it.  I train in it because it’s who I am.

     I’m a lifter and a budoka but I’m also a zennist, one who practices Zen.  Believe it or not, the practice of zazen (seated meditation in the Zen tradition) has traditionally been seen in much the same light as I see lifting or budo.  The Zen master Kodo Sawaki is well-known for saying that “zazen is good for nothing.”  He also said, “No matter how many years you sit doing zazen, you will never become anything special.”  So much for attaining tranquility or peace-of-mind, much less becoming enlightened.  But his point was that the practice itself is the goal.

     The 20th century Zen master Taisen Deshimaru said something along the same lines.  He said that you must practice with a mushotoku mind.  Mushotoku roughly translates as “no profit, no gain.”  Roshi Richard Collins, in his book No Fear Zen, says that it is a mistake to think of mushotoku as an "escape" from profit and gain, because it's not a rejection of either.  "It is simply a recognition that there is a state of mind in which profit and gain play no part,” to quote Collins.

     Lifting is the same thing.  When you concentrate on what you can get out of it, you end up missing out on the real treasures that lifting has to offer.  Once again, don’t get me wrong.  You do “get” something from lifting—the same way that you “get” something from budo training and zazen practice—but it’s often something that transcends words.  I have a feeling that a great many lifters feel the same way, even if they can’t really express it or don’t even understand it completely themselves.  But in their guts, they feel it.

     An odd thing happens, however, when you lift just to lift, when the lifting itself is the goal that is being sought.  You end up achieving the results you were seeking—whether it’s getting strong as an ox or looking good in an itsy bitsy, teenie tiny bikini—easier and quicker than when you were focused on the goals instead of the process of just training.  That’s one of the great things about being on a program.  You show up.  You do the workout.  Then you leave the gym and forget about it.  And then the results show up too.  The results are, again, more the side effects of training when the training itself is the goal.

     When you have this sort of goalless way of approaching your training, another practical benefit arises.  You enjoy your workouts.  You don’t just enjoy them, you fall in love with them.  When you love doing something, you’re going to stick with it.  Sticking with something means consistency.  And if there’s one thing above all others that produces results from working out, it’s being consistent.

     Now, you might be asking yourself, what if you don’t enjoy lifting?  What if you don’t feel as if you really are a lifter, at least not in the way that I have been categorizing it?  What if the only reason that you go to the gym is because you want to look better or be healthier, but you find it to be more of a chore than a delight?  Well, first off, that’s okay.  You can only be what you are.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  Don’t try to force something that isn’t really there to begin with.  My advice in this case is always the same.  You don’t have to enjoy the training, but you do have to enjoy the results that you are seeing from the workouts.  So, second, make sure that you’re on a program that will produce the results that you are seeking.  Which means that you need to actually be on a program instead of just “working out.”  Find a program that looks as if it’s something that you can stick with and it’s a form of training that you do enjoy, at least somewhat.  Once you find that program, stick with it and don’t think about it too much.  Just do the program.  When lifters take this approach, I find that they actually begin to enjoy their workouts, even if it takes some degree of time for this “switch” to take place.  In fact, they often enjoy it enough that, assuming they do stick with it long enough, they become lifters.

     If you find that the above paragraph describes you, then I also advise getting on a high-frequency training program that involves daily, or near-daily, training.  One of the problems with training just 2, or even 3, days a week is that you have more off days than lifting days.  And if working out has yet to become a habit for a trainee, after a couple days off they are apt to skip a training day here or there.  Eventually, they just stop training altogether.  Get on an easy strength regimen—such as my popular 30-Day Program—where you train a minimum of 5 days per week.  Easy strength programs are great for establishing consistency.  The workouts are short, they don’t involve a lot of hard work—they’re called easy strength for a reason—or a whole lot of thought.  They are both easy to do and easy to design.  After a few months of easy strength workouts, once you know you will stick with your workouts on a consistent basis, you can then move on to less frequent routines.

     If you can only make it to the gym a few days a week or if you know that you will stick with longer, harder workouts, then my advice is to choose programs that, though voluminous, have limited exercises for multiple sets.  Something such as my 3x10x3 program might be a good plan.  Doing only a few exercises for multiple sets of lower reps helps a trainee to “get in the groove” of the workout better than workouts that have multiple exercises but for a fewer number of sets per movement.

     These sorts of training programs, for most lifters, allow the trainee to focus on the process instead of the outcomes, though the outcomes, whatever they may be, will come.

     I hope that I have clarified, at least somewhat, in this essay why it is that I lift.  Now, the question remains, why do you lift?  Only you can answer it.  Hell, you may not even know yourself why you do it.  The only way to find out, by the way, is to get to the gym and train.  So, I have only one question for you at this point:  What are you waiting for?