How the weight exposes the limits of overthinking.
You probably go to your local gym, or at least have a membership. But how often do you use the weights room? Or do you see it as somewhere scary or alien. It can be a daunting place, usually filled with men grunting and not so subtly flexing in front of the mirror. Anyway, that was my perception when first deciding to pursue strength training. But eventually, I was able to just do it. Lifting weights is pretty simple without all the overthinking.
Starting at the Gym
My experience began when I got a new partner. They had an impressive physique. Not obviously muscular, but clearly strong and toned.
Perhaps there was some insecurity in my decision to pursue the gym, but there was also genuine inspiration. Aside from the many obvious benefits, I realised strength gives a certain presence and aliveness, to both men and women.
I am usually someone who believes in fate, so when looking for a personal trainer at my gym, I just picked one with the same nationality as myself, Italian.
This started my strength training journey with Giuseppe.
A major reason for seeing him was wanting to learn the compound exercises. For me, these are barbell squats, pull ups, bench press and dead-lift.
These are pretty special because they target lots of different muscles at once, and require skill and coordination. It also means that any new gym goer really should get a PT to learn them, as they are dangerous if done incorrectly.
I learned much more than these from Giuseppe however. He taught me that to really build muscle, you have to do progressively lift more. Nutrition is essential, but while you are in the gym, it’s as simple as pushing your limits.
Overthinking Strength Training
And overthinking is indeed something I am an expert at. It can be genuinely be a useful skill. If you for example want to write an article on a topic, then why not explore every possible facet of it.
There is great wisdom, however, in being aware of the its limits. People who have brainy sorts of jobs are often not.
So at first, I treated the gym as just another mental task. Seems crazy right?
But I would psychologise everything. Thinking things like:
Will I be stronger if I purposefully channel my emotions?
What if I remain present and focus on the strain?
Eventually, I realised that all that overthinking was getting me nowhere. In strength training, in the moment, it’s just you and the weight, and you just have to move it.
What About Mindfulness?
At the time, I was also engaged in regular mediation practice, so I also thought:
Can I do this mindfully?
This is genuinely a tricky question.
My practice emphasises calming the body and feelings through mindful breathing. It advocates against violence, both internal and external. Mindfulness is gentle and open.
But when you are in the gym with the weight, and all you have to do is move it, then something more primal than that takes over.
Strength training usually involves pushing to failure. When your muscles and nervous system are at their limit, and you are grunting and maybe even angry, that is when many of the gains are made.
After all, you need to put your body under stress for it to adapt.
Eventually, I just gave up on trying to reconcile my spirituality and the gym. The weight demanded it.
Is Strength Training Supposed to Be Stressful?
It’s a raw and chaotic state, when you are pushing every last bit of energy out of your body. It’s not particularly good, and you wouldn’t want to feel like that all the time. But it’s also very real.
Mindfulness itself is a cure to overthinking, but it’s a different one from the gym. It creates distance between yourself and your raw emotions, with the aim of calming them.
Strength training, if done with all your effort, draws out that rawness, because sometimes you need it.
In reality, trying to reconcile that with mindfulness was just another form of overthinking. Buddhist philosophy also teaches that internal states shift. There is no need to cling to one or the other.
As long as after the gym you are able to let calm arise again, then your body and your system are just doing just what they are supposed to.
Not overthinking also means letting states come and go. And strength training is the perfect encapsulation of that. It’s tiring and frustrating, it can make you angry or activated.
But that can be said of a lot of things in life. The only difference is that in the gym, the demand is right there in front of you, it’s the weight. And so, the limit of overthinking becomes most apparent.
If you are overthinking, check out our blog posts on Running and getting unstuck
