Why Is Lifting Weights Objectively More Fun?
Takeaway Points:
Resistance training is the most fun and empowering way to train because strength gains are more immediate, noticeable, and can be easily tracked.
Progress and results that are more nebulous and subjective do not give the same sense of accomplishment, which is why making fitness goals around something that constantly fluctuates like bodyweight is generally unsatisfying.
Strength training and other skill based exercises can help people live the lives they want to, and it’s important to find what works best for your life and body.
When I was a kid, I was terribly depressed, and I’ve dealt with anxiety issues my entire life. For me, getting into lifting weights was one of the biggest factors in my recovery, because it made me feel like a superhero - I became absolutely obsessed with training, and it’s been a major factor in my life ever since. It’s now been about fourteen years since I started lifting, and I’ve rarely gone more than a few weeks without working out. I initially got into the fitness industry because I wanted to help others to experience the same empowerment that I had.
Which brings us to an important question - why is lifting weights objectively the most fun and empowering way to train?
There have been plenty of studies on the topic of resistance training and its numerous psychological benefits. Resistance training has positive effects on:
Anxiety
Pain Management
Osteoarthritis
Fibromyalgia
Cognition
Sleep Quality
Depression
Fatigue
Self-Esteem
Self-Efficacy
Admittedly, a lot of these benefits can be experienced with virtually any method of exercise. However, I’ve found that personally, and in many of my clients, resistance training is just objectively more enjoyable, and tends to help them feel like absolute badasses. I have some theories on why this is.
First of all, weight loss is not actually generally empowering to people. Yes, some people may find that their sense of bodily image improves significantly if they lose weight, but often the difficulty involved with losing weight, plus the vagueness of the accomplishment, makes it hard to enjoy.
I’ve met plenty of lean people who think that they “just need to lose 5 more pounds” to be happy - when of course, the reality is that they don’t want to lose weight, they just want to look better, and in this case, it may actually be better for them to focus on gaining weight instead.
Weight loss is nebulous - our body weights fluctuate constantly due to changes in water weight, and this can make it difficult and frustrating to track progress consistently. Even when you do succeed, you often don’t feel any different. You may have lost a few inches off your waist, but this doesn’t become incredibly obvious until your clothes start to fit differently, or until someone compliments you on your appearance. A five or ten pound difference may be practically unnoticeable, and so it’s only possible to see big changes in the very long term.
This haziness of progress is also a problem that occurs with running. While you can certainly get better at running and see clear progress, it’s something that takes a lot of time to make serious progress in, and it’s hard to tell the difference in the short term. When you can run a mile in ten minutes, train for a bit, and can now run it in nine, this doesn’t feel like much of a difference unless you’re timing it in a race. Similarly, you can see progress in terms of being able to run greater distances in a single stretch, or feeling better able to keep up a good speed without losing your breath so quickly, but this is all relatively hard to measure without a lot of fancy gadgets and trackers to help you out.
Strength gains, on the contrary, tend to be almost immediate, and very easily noticeable. A consistent trainee on a solid strength training program can see strength gains of 20-30lbs per month for the first few months on major lifts, and continue to see very concrete gains for a very long time. When you can bench a hundred pounds more than you could a few months ago, that’s a very noticeable change.
Muscle mass, sadly, is a bit more nebulous in the same way that weight loss and endurance training can be. It can be hard to see gains in muscle mass without taking regular measurements, feeling your clothes fit differently, and so on. It also takes a bit longer to start seeing consistent results - while strength gains can occur rapidly in the first month of training, muscle mass can take a few months of consistent training to kick in and start to really ramp up. Luckily, however, muscle mass and strength often go hand in hand, so you can focus on strength gains and muscle gains together, and they complement each other - strength gains keeping you excited to stick to it in the long run and start seeing muscle gains.
I’ve worked with plenty of clients who were absolutely astounded by the difference in self-perception that a little strength can create.
Once, I worked with a client who was recovering from a serious car accident which left her with a back injury and a terrible fear of movement. We had to take a lot of her training very slowly, focusing on flexibility and stability as much as strength and muscle, using very high rep sets and very light weights, and only pushing her when she felt comfortable and confident in doing so. But with several months of working together, she was absolutely shocked to discover that she was now able to start deadlifting with a decent weight, a thing that was absolutely impossible to do without straining her back a few short months earlier.
In another instance, an older couple came to me with a problem. They had both seen their strength and function decrease so much with age, that it made it hard for them to get up and down flights of stairs. As a result, they basically never used the second floor of their house, because it wasn’t worth it to spend so much time and effort to get up the stairs. When they had family visit, their family members would stay in the rooms upstairs, but otherwise they had written off the top half of their house, and just focused on living on the ground floor.
Within a few months of training, of course, they had gotten to the point where they were able to easily get up and down their stairs again - and they were astounded because they had been afraid that they would never be able to. Gaining a bit of strength made a huge difference in their ability to move in, and interact with, their environment - and that felt awesome.
Being able to do a movement that you couldn’t do before - that feels a lot more empowering than being able to run a bit more efficiently, or losing a bit of weight.
And of course, it doesn’t just have to be lifting weights. Calisthenics, powerlifting, gymnastics, CrossFit, strongman, olympic lifting, dance, fencing, martial arts - there are plenty of methods of learning and practicing new movements that don't involve plain old weights. Mastering any new kind of movement falls into the same category - it’s possible to really clearly and visibly see improvement.
Bodies are a weird and confusing thing! They aren’t easy to inhabit, and don’t always do the things that we’d like. One of the most powerful effects of exercise is that it can treat exactly this problem, by enabling us to feel like bodies are, well, a little less confusing and uncomfortable.
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached hundreds of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
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