The Essential Life Lessons for Success that I learned from Bodybuilding
Consistency is the Key
When you first start out in the gym your muscle gains come very quickly and very easily. Your body is not accustomed to the level of stress that proper weightlifting imposes on the muscles and so your body adapts almost immediately to this novel and hitherto unknown pressure. But, after a few months of consistent weightlifting, your body eventually hits a plateau. This is the point where most people give up. They stop seeing progress and this ultimately saps their motivation to continue. The work is hard, the results are minimal and so the vast majority of people quit because they conclude that any marginal successes, invisible to the naked eye, are not really worth the effort. What they fail to realize is that they are making progress. They just don’t see it. And they end up quitting before the massive changes in their physique become clear and obvious to them and to others.
Experienced natural weightlifters may gain only about 1-2 pounds of lean muscle mass every month even if they do everything right, namely eating and lifting weights optimally and consistently. This is hardly an obvious and conspicuous difference in one’s physique in the short term. But extrapolate that difference over a ten-year period and the results are astounding. Muscle maturity takes consistent effort over a long period of time. Top bodybuilders spend decades sculpting their physiques before they ever win the Olympia.
Outsized success requires long term consistency – incremental and progressive steps over a long period of time in a single direction. So often we are fooled into thinking that monumental success happens overnight. It is easy to come to this conclusion because it appears that way on the surface. What people see is the glitz and the glamor and all of it seems to come suddenly and without any rhyme or reason. What people don’t see are the countless failures that preceded the success. They never get to see the countless hours spent on trial and error where every error that diminished the enthusiasm to continue was met with a fortitude equal to the task. It is exceedingly hard to be consistent – to pour out one’s heart and soul into a task only to meet with failure again and again. But the ones who ultimately succeed are the ones who continue to grind no matter how disheartening it gets.
Peter Kaufman wrote this, “Nobody wants to be constant. We’re the functional equivalent of Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain. You push it up halfway, and you go, ‘Aw, I’ll come back and do this another time.’ This is the human condition. Whenever you interrupt the constant increase above a certain level of threshold you lose compounding…. You have to be constant. How many people do you know that are constant at what they do? I know a couple. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Everybody wants to be rich like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger. I’m telling you how they got rich. They were constant. They were not intermittent.”
Mr. Beast, perhaps the greatest YouTuber ever, was asked once what his advice would be for those just starting out in their YouTube career. His response, “I would just say fail. A lot of people get analysis paralysis and they’ll just sit there and plan their first video for three months…. If you have zero videos on your channel, your first video is not going to get views period. Your first ten are not going to get views. I can very confidently say that. So stop thinking for months and months on end and just get to work and start uploading. All you need to do – this applies to people who have not uploaded videos but have dreams of being a YouTuber – is make 100 videos and improve something every time. Do that and then on your 101st video we’ll start talking like maybe you can get some views.” No views for 100 videos? Most people fail because they cannot stay consistent for 100 videos. They cannot press on with maximum effort because right around video 54 they quit because they see no success. Consequently, they never make it to their 101st video and now they never will.
What people fail to grasp is the fact that incremental progress compounds over time. With each step you get slightly better. With each video your skills sharpen. Every ounce of effort pays dividends and whether you can actually see those dividends is largely irrelevant to the broader question of progress. Perception only alters motivation, it has nothing to do with progression’s reality.
A person possessed of the fortitude and the wherewithal to simply put their head down and consistently put forth maximum effort, regardless of whether or not the payout is obvious, is the person ultimately poised to succeed in the end. Those who keep going never really fail and their odds of outsized success rise exponentially the more they compile incremental wins.
Failure is Necessary
The vast majority of people who go to the gym and lift weights look the same year in and year out because they refuse to lift to failure. They do the same rep scheme and they lift the same amount of weight, even though they have already succeeded in lifting that same weight that same number of times week after week. They come in and do the same routine expecting a different result. Why? Because pushing past one’s limits risks failure and failure hurts. It is deeply unpleasant. But, the truth of the matter is that if you do not take your muscle to a place it has never been, it will never grow. Muscle growth is the body’s way of adapting to novel stress. If you do not take your muscles to the place of failure there is no novel stress for your body to adapt to.
The same is true in life. All failures hurt and they hurt at every level. They hurt so much in fact that most people would rather opt to occupy that liminal space that only nominally separates suboptimal from failure. People spend lifetimes there, but no success is possible if failure is not. Outsized success requires the risk of failure. A person cannot grow without failure. A person cannot learn without failure. And adaptation to failure enables a person to learn the lessons necessary to succeed. Every failure teaches a person what not to do. Those lessons are hard, but they are the cost of doing business. Every successful person can look back at their lives and point to infinitely more failures than successes.
Take Breaks with an Eye to the Long Term
When you first start out lifting weights your enthusiasm compels you to lift seven days a week. This is a mistake. Your central nervous system gets taxed beyond capacity and you’re at greater risk of injury when your body is overtrained. Recovery is just as important to muscle growth as is the weightlifting itself.
Dorian Yates uses this analogy frequently when he speaks at conferences. Imagine you take sandpaper and rub it against the palm of your hand until your hand starts to bleed. If you allow enough time for your hand to heal properly, the skin will grow tougher and more calloused. This is the body’s adaptation to novel stress. But if you do not allow enough time for your hand to heal properly and you rub your bloody hand again the next day with the same sandpaper, then you just end up with a bloody hand.
There are very successful people who work constantly. They eschew balance and they are viewed universally as the standard bearers for those who truly want to succeed. But, without adequate recovery and rest, eventually something will break. Their health, their family, their businesses. Nobody can withstand constant stress over an interminable period of time. Outsized success requires the long view. A genuinely successful life is a well rounded one and those who work nonstop never seem to achieve that.
Suppose a person builds a billion-dollar business from the ground up working nonstop. But they have no friends, no family, and they have invested nothing of themselves into the lives of others beyond the bottom dollar. They never take a vacation, they have no memories of the softer side of life, and they have cultivated no intimate relationships with anyone. Would anybody deem such a life a success?
Enjoy the Process or Endure it for a Greater Purpose
It is easy to go to the gym on the steam of initial enthusiasm. When everything is new, hope springs eternal. A few months into the journey and missing workouts becomes more and more routine. A year or two goes by and elongated lapses in gym attendance become commonplace. For most people. Longevity and consistency over a longer time horizon requires more than what initial exuberance can bring to the table.
For many who go to the gym consistently, they genuinely enjoy the process. Lifting weights is an avocation they love – for stress release, for the challenge of pushing past limits, for the consequent joy and self confidence that comes from the results of an aesthetic pursuit.
But, for many others, consistency comes from a different place. They hate working out and they abhor lifting weights. But they endure it for the sake of their health, for the sake of their family, or perhaps out of a morbid fear of death.
In the end, the motivation ultimately matters very little. Longevity and consistency are dispositive. Success cannot be had without them and, in my estimation, there are two ways to persevere in any task long enough to attain outsized success: (i) Passion or (ii) Greater Purpose.
For most people, passion is what is sought after first. Gurus, motivational coaches, those who have already succeeded all typically advise that everyone on the up and up pursue this course first. As the adage goes, “Find what you love, and you won’t work a day in your life.” There is an inherent logic to this. If you enjoy what you do, then longevity is a given. Perseverance is an afterthought because no amount of hard labor and setbacks will keep a person from doing what they love. Following your passion is ideal. Your reach should exceed your grasp. But let’s be realistic for a moment.
Anything can become a chore when you have to do it all of the time. Some people love to cook. They’re quite passionate about it. But, put them inside a commercial kitchen nine to five, seven days a week and cooking becomes a job. What is perhaps more problematic still is that the things many people really love to do are unfortunately not the sorts of things that other people are willing to pay them for. Some people love to watch television. They would do it all day every day if given the opportunity. The difficulty of course is finding someone to pay them to do it.
For the vast majority of people, longevity and long-term consistency must come from a greater purpose. David Goggins hates to run. This sounds odd for a man that runs marathons and ultramarathons like it’s a bodily function. But it’s true. He has admitted as much. What is so puzzling then is why he continues to do it. He is long past the point where he does it for the money. He does not run to compete or to write more books. He is financially well established, and he has achieved all that a person can possibly set out to accomplish in the field of endurance and the testing of human limits. And so all of this naturally begs the question: Why continue to do it then? He continues to run because the man he created (“Goggins”) inspires millions of people.
If a pursuit becomes drudgery with no greater purpose, then longevity and consistency and the success they engender are impossible. If you can’t enjoy the process, then you have to find a way to endure it for a greater purpose. The future of your children or your grandchildren perhaps. Maybe personal legacy. Financial independence. Philanthropy. Whatever that greater purpose is, we have to find a way to harness it and ultimately leverage it to propel us forward when the last thing we want to do is endure another day.