Go lift.

I should just leave this post at its title.

But then what would the purpose of blogging be?

It's is almost cliche to claim that lifting has changed my life. It may also sound a little melodramatic. Reality is, everything you do changes your life to a varying degree. So put your preconceived notions of what you think I am going to talk about away.

 How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?  A multidimensional question. Fear is one of the greatest killers of men. Men fear what they do not understand because they don't know how it may threaten them. Men also fear what they lack the potency to combat.

Consider fear to be a flaw in the iron. If you make a sword without properly tempering it, it will be brittle and fail under the slightest amount of stress. If you use poor quality stock, you can temper it all day long, but it will only hold a certain edge.

Consider learning about the things you fear to be improving the quality of your stock.
Consider also action in direct opposition to your fear to be the tempering.

Through preparation you increase the chances of success, through execution you gain victory.

One of the first things you learn when you begin your journey is failure. Yes, you learn failure. Failure in this context is not the opposite of success, bur rather the earning of it. Failure is the process. Embrace the Suck. You will never be able to lift all the weight and you will never be able to lift it all of the time. The purpose is the journey; perfection is an ideal. When you begin your life of lifting you will grieve. You have made a decision to kill yourself in favor of creating a new and improved self. Most people never get past the first stage:

 Denial and Isolation. you are too skinny/fat to go to the gym, you don't have time, your dog ate your car keys, Obama is president... Unless Socialism has caused your gym to close (/hint**find another one**) or you are deployed to a F.O.B., you really have no valid excuse. That voice in your head isn't really you. What voice? THAT VOICE! THE ONE THAT JUST ASKED YOU THAT VERY QUESTION IN YOUR OWN HEAD.
It is not there to help you and if you haven't noticed, it is the one thing that has always held you back or talked you out of things.

Anger. This is too hard. I can't lift compared to the guy next to me. I want to be lean/built/huge already. I am not seeing results after the first week, etc. Relax, step back and evaluate your expectations. If you can't form proper realistic expectations, then go get a personal trainer to help you, or make friends with a lifter and apprentice. Chanel all that energy into your lifts.

Bargaining. This was my favorite part of my process. The iron will never lie to you, nor love you, nor hate you. It will always be fair and unyielding in equal proportions. It cannot be bargained with which leads us to:

Depression. This is the distance between your first rep and the first positive sign you see in your progression. It may be hitting a milestone PR, dropping a certain amount of weight or getting a positive response from the opposite sex. This is the void where your efforts are unrealized and achieving your goals is uncertain. Persist, it wont be like this for long.

Acceptance. Boom! you look in the mirror and you give yourself a chubby. You catch a woman staring or adjusting her body language to accommodate yours based merely on your physical fitness indicators. You leg press 1,100 lbs. People start acting more accommodating based merely on the fact that they now lack the potency to defeat you. The greater you is arrived. The old you has perished, never to return.

In the process you have learned your physical limits, tested them and increased. You have honed your body into an edifice worthy of respect. To take either from you would require someone to kill you. It bears repeating: "Strong people are harder to kill"

These are a few of the secrets the iron keeps. It will share them with you if you are willing to persist to earn them.