What Motivates Us To Keep Training
Weight training is far more beneficial than the individual will ever realise.
On the face of things people go the gym to look muscular and attract members of the opposite sex, this tends to be the view of people who don't go the gym but ask someone who does go the gym and you will often get a very different response.
Myself, for instance, first entered a gym as I didn't like being too skinny.
There was a two-fold reason behind this, one personal and one sport related.
I was never happy with being referred to as skinny by my friends and family or hearing people comment 'there's nothing of you'.
This often offended me; however no one was ever being offensive; I was simply a slight build.
The second reason was sports specific and this was that although a very talented footballer playing county standard and at a few centre of excellences in the United Kingdom I did often get out muscled off the ball by bigger built centre backs.
I always beat them for pace but if we had to go shoulder to shoulder I very seldom won that battle.
When I first went into a gym I remember only being able to bench press the Olympic bar on it's won, a measly 20k.
Within 3 months this was 60k and all of a sudden a few slabs of meat covered my chest and my t-shirts started to actually get tight on my arms - I loved it.
I found that the natural competitiveness that I had and used to propel me to very decent heights in Football could be applied to compete with myself in weight lifting.
The thought of beating my previous self the week earlier spurred me on and I found that I had a natural aptitude for lifting more weight.
This desire to lift more was not driven by muscular size but be the desire to get stronger, and this was no longer to improve Football, it was simply because I liked getting stronger and stronger.
Weight training had made me discover the pleasure of performing better physically, there was no financial reward or reward in interest from the opposite sex, it was simply a young man enjoying developing physically.
An entirely intrinsic motivation to improve can be taken with you in life to improve your career, improve you as a person or improve any aspect of your life.
I am simply just one person who has benefited in one way from entering a gymnasium, there are many more and for every person who has trained with weights for a number of years, they have a story as to why they started and as to why they will continue to train.
On the face of things people go the gym to look muscular and attract members of the opposite sex, this tends to be the view of people who don't go the gym but ask someone who does go the gym and you will often get a very different response.
Myself, for instance, first entered a gym as I didn't like being too skinny.
There was a two-fold reason behind this, one personal and one sport related.
I was never happy with being referred to as skinny by my friends and family or hearing people comment 'there's nothing of you'.
This often offended me; however no one was ever being offensive; I was simply a slight build.
The second reason was sports specific and this was that although a very talented footballer playing county standard and at a few centre of excellences in the United Kingdom I did often get out muscled off the ball by bigger built centre backs.
I always beat them for pace but if we had to go shoulder to shoulder I very seldom won that battle.
When I first went into a gym I remember only being able to bench press the Olympic bar on it's won, a measly 20k.
Within 3 months this was 60k and all of a sudden a few slabs of meat covered my chest and my t-shirts started to actually get tight on my arms - I loved it.
I found that the natural competitiveness that I had and used to propel me to very decent heights in Football could be applied to compete with myself in weight lifting.
The thought of beating my previous self the week earlier spurred me on and I found that I had a natural aptitude for lifting more weight.
This desire to lift more was not driven by muscular size but be the desire to get stronger, and this was no longer to improve Football, it was simply because I liked getting stronger and stronger.
Weight training had made me discover the pleasure of performing better physically, there was no financial reward or reward in interest from the opposite sex, it was simply a young man enjoying developing physically.
An entirely intrinsic motivation to improve can be taken with you in life to improve your career, improve you as a person or improve any aspect of your life.
I am simply just one person who has benefited in one way from entering a gymnasium, there are many more and for every person who has trained with weights for a number of years, they have a story as to why they started and as to why they will continue to train.
