Sometimes people resist going to the gym, saying something like: "Oh, I lift enough weight on my job already!" Today I'd like to discuss why going to the gym is good even if your job already involves lots of lifting.
CALIBRATE HOW MUCH YOU'RE LIFTING
The beautiful thing about the gym is that you know exactly how much weight you're lifting. The dumbbells and plates are exactly marked. If you don't know how much the bars themselves weigh, just ask someone- but in any one gym, all the bars of the same type will have the same weight. The point is, there's no doubt about how much you're lifting. And this is good because it lets you calibrate.
Calibration means adjusting your lifting weight until it's just perfect. When you lift, you want to lift just about at your limit, just enough that it's hard, but not so much that you can't do it.
And once you've calibrated yourself to lifting the right amount, the thing you should do is gradually raise the amount, over a course of weeks, months, years. Again, at the gym you can do this because you know exactly what you're lifting. Most lifters keep some kind of record about what they've been lifting, be it on paper or just in their heads. I like to keep a record in a journal, which makes it easy to gradually increase the amount of weight I lift.
In a journal (or in your head if you've got a good memory), just record what you lifted last time, and how hard it was. If it was pretty doable, then go ahead and try throwing on some extra weight. Sometimes it'll turn out you aren't ready for the extra weight, afterall, but there's no harm done, just return to where you were before.
When you're getting into large amounts of weight, you have to increase the weight bit by bit in very small increments. For example, if you're deadlifting 200 pounds, and you're ready to move up a notch, it'd be pretty reasonable to go up to just 205 pounds. In comparison, that seems like a tiny raise, but it's those tiny raises which will eventually take you from a 200 pound deadlift to a 300 pound deadlift.
LIFT CONSISTENTLY AND HIT EVERYTHING
Now, in most jobs, you just don't have this much control over what you lift. In many jobs where you lift things, you'll be lifting different weights every day. What's more, you very likely won't even know how much weight you're lifting. When you're lifting high amounts of weight, and need to throw on just an extra tiny bit to progress to your next level, like in the deadlifting example above, that's probably not gonna be very easy to pull off if the weight consists of boxes or hay or whatever it is you're moving around. Neither will your boss appreciate you taking time off to make careful notes in a lifting journal!
Another thing about the gym is that it has equipment to let you hit various different muscles. In a given manual labor job, you'll be working some muscles and neglecting others. That just isn't good enough if you want to be healthy overall. Part of lifting is learning about what exercises hit what muscles. Even some lifters in the gym don't quite get this part. You'll see guys with huge arms, and puny bodies, because all they ever do is curls.
A personal trainer or a more experienced lifting buddy can help you figure out what muscles you need to be hitting, and what lifts will hit them. If you don't have these, you can do research online, or just ask guys in the gym.
MEETING PEOPLE
That's another thing: the gym is a great place to meet people and network with people. A lot of exercises require having someone "spot" you, so they can relieve you if it turns out you chose too much weight. That's a great way to meet people. It's easy, just find someone who's resting and ask them to give you a spot. Almost always, they'll readily agree. It's the unspoken protocol of the gym, if someone asks you for a spot, you give a spot. Of course that works both ways, hang out in the gym long enough and you'll be asked to spot others too. If you don't know how to spot that particular lift, that's cool, just say so. They might even teach you how.
You can also ask other lifters to check your form, if you're new to a particular lift. Form is extremely important in some lifts like the squat or the deadlift. Get the form wrong and you might hurt yourself.
The people you meet in the gym are typically going to be very cool people. After all, they've made the decision to go improve themselves. Some of the most awesome people I know, I met from working out. With coworkers at the job site, you have the job in common, but that's the only guaranteed commonality. And anyway, who wants a job as a commonality? You don't wanna talk about the workplace while knocking back drinks, do you? Unless you have a job you really love, in which case, I tip my hat to you.
HAVE MORE FUN LIFTING
With the gym, you can vary things up, and make it more interesting. In any particular manual labor job, there's only so many types of physical labor you can do. And when you're having less fun, your body won't grow as well, so even if somehow you managed to calibrate the boxes at work and hit the right muscles with them, just sheer boredom would degrade the quality of the workout.
MAKE WORK EASIER
Now here's a really cool benefit of working out at the gym even if you have a manual labor job. If you only get your workout from the job itself, you'll reach the point where you can do the job with effort, but you'll never get further than that, because your muscles won't be strained by the work any more. But, go to the gym and advance to an even higher level, and suddenly work becomes a piece of cake. Imagine effortlessly hoisting stuff around at work while others are sweating away. Talk about increasing your work quality. Perhaps counter to intuition, in the long run you'll actually have more energy every day because of investing some of the energy in a gym workout!
SUMMARY
There are lots of reasons why the gym is a good place to work out, even if you already have a manual labor job. Here are a few of the benefits, in list form:
Here are some other articles I wrote. Writing these articles gave my fingers a great workout, I guess now I don't need to do any finger lifts anymore :P
Getting Motivated To Go Lift Weights
Fighting Music Addiction: Week 1
Air Force Core Values: Excellence, Integrity, and Service Before Self
The Throw: Reactivity Vs. Responsiveness
CALIBRATE HOW MUCH YOU'RE LIFTING
The beautiful thing about the gym is that you know exactly how much weight you're lifting. The dumbbells and plates are exactly marked. If you don't know how much the bars themselves weigh, just ask someone- but in any one gym, all the bars of the same type will have the same weight. The point is, there's no doubt about how much you're lifting. And this is good because it lets you calibrate.
Calibration means adjusting your lifting weight until it's just perfect. When you lift, you want to lift just about at your limit, just enough that it's hard, but not so much that you can't do it.
And once you've calibrated yourself to lifting the right amount, the thing you should do is gradually raise the amount, over a course of weeks, months, years. Again, at the gym you can do this because you know exactly what you're lifting. Most lifters keep some kind of record about what they've been lifting, be it on paper or just in their heads. I like to keep a record in a journal, which makes it easy to gradually increase the amount of weight I lift.
In a journal (or in your head if you've got a good memory), just record what you lifted last time, and how hard it was. If it was pretty doable, then go ahead and try throwing on some extra weight. Sometimes it'll turn out you aren't ready for the extra weight, afterall, but there's no harm done, just return to where you were before.
When you're getting into large amounts of weight, you have to increase the weight bit by bit in very small increments. For example, if you're deadlifting 200 pounds, and you're ready to move up a notch, it'd be pretty reasonable to go up to just 205 pounds. In comparison, that seems like a tiny raise, but it's those tiny raises which will eventually take you from a 200 pound deadlift to a 300 pound deadlift.
LIFT CONSISTENTLY AND HIT EVERYTHING
Now, in most jobs, you just don't have this much control over what you lift. In many jobs where you lift things, you'll be lifting different weights every day. What's more, you very likely won't even know how much weight you're lifting. When you're lifting high amounts of weight, and need to throw on just an extra tiny bit to progress to your next level, like in the deadlifting example above, that's probably not gonna be very easy to pull off if the weight consists of boxes or hay or whatever it is you're moving around. Neither will your boss appreciate you taking time off to make careful notes in a lifting journal!
Another thing about the gym is that it has equipment to let you hit various different muscles. In a given manual labor job, you'll be working some muscles and neglecting others. That just isn't good enough if you want to be healthy overall. Part of lifting is learning about what exercises hit what muscles. Even some lifters in the gym don't quite get this part. You'll see guys with huge arms, and puny bodies, because all they ever do is curls.
A personal trainer or a more experienced lifting buddy can help you figure out what muscles you need to be hitting, and what lifts will hit them. If you don't have these, you can do research online, or just ask guys in the gym.
MEETING PEOPLE
That's another thing: the gym is a great place to meet people and network with people. A lot of exercises require having someone "spot" you, so they can relieve you if it turns out you chose too much weight. That's a great way to meet people. It's easy, just find someone who's resting and ask them to give you a spot. Almost always, they'll readily agree. It's the unspoken protocol of the gym, if someone asks you for a spot, you give a spot. Of course that works both ways, hang out in the gym long enough and you'll be asked to spot others too. If you don't know how to spot that particular lift, that's cool, just say so. They might even teach you how.
You can also ask other lifters to check your form, if you're new to a particular lift. Form is extremely important in some lifts like the squat or the deadlift. Get the form wrong and you might hurt yourself.
The people you meet in the gym are typically going to be very cool people. After all, they've made the decision to go improve themselves. Some of the most awesome people I know, I met from working out. With coworkers at the job site, you have the job in common, but that's the only guaranteed commonality. And anyway, who wants a job as a commonality? You don't wanna talk about the workplace while knocking back drinks, do you? Unless you have a job you really love, in which case, I tip my hat to you.
HAVE MORE FUN LIFTING
With the gym, you can vary things up, and make it more interesting. In any particular manual labor job, there's only so many types of physical labor you can do. And when you're having less fun, your body won't grow as well, so even if somehow you managed to calibrate the boxes at work and hit the right muscles with them, just sheer boredom would degrade the quality of the workout.
MAKE WORK EASIER
Now here's a really cool benefit of working out at the gym even if you have a manual labor job. If you only get your workout from the job itself, you'll reach the point where you can do the job with effort, but you'll never get further than that, because your muscles won't be strained by the work any more. But, go to the gym and advance to an even higher level, and suddenly work becomes a piece of cake. Imagine effortlessly hoisting stuff around at work while others are sweating away. Talk about increasing your work quality. Perhaps counter to intuition, in the long run you'll actually have more energy every day because of investing some of the energy in a gym workout!
SUMMARY
There are lots of reasons why the gym is a good place to work out, even if you already have a manual labor job. Here are a few of the benefits, in list form:
- You can precisely calibrate the weights and keep track of your lifting with exact numbers.
- You can increase the weight by tiny increments, allowing you to nudge your way past difficult plateaus.
- Your workout is consistent, it doesn't depend on how many widgets the customers ordered
- You can get total body fitness, hitting all the major muscles instead of just the ones your job uses.
- You can meet really cool people, and learn from them.
- You can vary things up a little to keep the workout from getting boring.
- And you can go above and beyond the strength you need for work, making work easier and making yourself more productive.
Here are some other articles I wrote. Writing these articles gave my fingers a great workout, I guess now I don't need to do any finger lifts anymore :P
Getting Motivated To Go Lift Weights
Fighting Music Addiction: Week 1
Air Force Core Values: Excellence, Integrity, and Service Before Self
The Throw: Reactivity Vs. Responsiveness
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