At the health club I attend, folks are constantly taking turns using the 20lb and 25lb weights. There are many sets of these, and they look worn out and sometimes broken. And yet, people keep fighting for them.
At the other end of the rack, you can find the heavy dumbbells. Those weigh between 80 to 150lb. There’s just one set of each weight. Yet nobody fights for those. They just sit there, waiting.
They are there waiting for the folks who train the hardest. Those people just walk in and grab the shiny weights, while the rest of us fight for the beat up ones.
I have found that life tends to be like that as well. The scarcest, shinier things tend to be available for the taking, only if you have worked hard enough to be in position to make use of them.
Keep working hard, keep getting better, keep working at excellence. Then stroll in and grab your shiny weights.
4 replies on “The Shiny Weights”
In my late twenties, when I was more regularly lifting weights, I couldn’t *wait* to get beyond the 20#-ers. I remember starting out at the 3# level, then gradually moving up to 20 for things like bench presses and tricep curls and all that good stuff. It took me about a year to get to the 25# level, mostly because my real focus was on running. And then life took a major turn (moved to a different state, backpacked for several months overseas, new job, new relationship, etc etc) and I never really went back. I’ve only recently gotten back to lifting weights more regularly again, and — who am I kidding — am back to starting at 5#’s but can already tell that I will soon be ready to move to the bigger weights.
Why in the world someone would want to stay at the same weight — even after it’s clear that it no longer challenges their muscles — is beyond me. It’s like staying at the same job that bores the hell out of you…there are lots of perfectly valid reasons to stay at an unfulfilling job (family to support, bad economy, need to upskill, etc) but if the *only* reason is because you’re comfortable and don’t want to push yourself, that’s painful and despairing to think about.
You are an inspiration to me, Marjorie! Thanks for modeling intentionality, hard work, and grace under pressure. You’re awesome.
I think people stick with the light weights because they’re always just starting. They start, they stop, they come back a month later, a year later, and join all the other folks just forever “starting.”
They start, they stop, they come back a month later, a year later, and join all the other folks just forever “starting.”
That makes total sense (because I’ve done it myself!) but maaaan, isn’t that just the most frustrating thing?
I do it too. Not quite ready for the shiny weights, but trying to be consistent 🙂