The Best Weightlifting Advice I’ve Received

The illusion of weightlifting is that progress is linear. We often expect to add weight to the bar week after week.

If we fail to lift a weight that we previously lifted, it’s a short jump into the story that “something’s wrong:”

I’m regressing. I’m not making progress. My technique is failing. Do I even have good technique? My friend Paulette — a CrossFit coach, personal trainer, and one of the strongest women I know (physically and otherwise) — shared this insight with me:

The body doesn’t know numbers. It only knows stimulus.

It’s a great reminder when lifting.

In an environment where the default focus tends to be on lifting heavier as the ultimate sign of progress, it’s easy to get caught up in the numbers and lose connection with the body.

Progress isn’t linear. Our bodies aren’t the same every day. Factors like sleep, hormones, and stress can impact our strength.

I’ve had plenty of sessions where I couldn’t lift weights that I had previously lifted.

I’ve also surprised myself by lifting a weight far more than I thought was possible — usually it was because I didn’t actually know what was on the bar.

The numbers are in the mind. They are a product of the ego.

We can make the same statement about time.

Just like with weightlifting, it’s easy to get caught up in linear notions of time — such as timelines and deadlines — and our beliefs about how long things should take.

This perspective on time is a function of the mind.

The ego relishes in how quickly it could achieve a result. But the body does’t know anything about minutes, hours, and days.

Time is an experience: we feel it through sensations and emotions.

What defines a “short time” versus a “long time” is not the number of minutes but the quality of the experience.

Whether we’re lifting weights or navigating life, it’s not the numbers that define our experience. It’s the stimulus — what we feel, how we navigate it, and how it moves through us.