Resistance Leads to Growth in Many Ways!
Resistance is defined as the opp
osition offered by one thing to another. In bodybuilding, resistance isn’t something we’re supposed to run away from. In fact, embracing resistance is critical to our success. It’s resistance training that makes us who we are. Resistance is our catalyst for change. The physiological adaptation to resistance training is what triggers hypertrophy, and what transforms a former Division-1 point guard with no chance of ever sniffing an NBA roster into a three-time Mr. Olympia.
With the right mindset, and under the right set of circumstances, bodybuilders can turn resistance into the building blocks for a world class physique – much like amino acids from protein becomes the building blocks of our muscle.
On the flip side, for all of the wonders resistance and resistance training can bring our physique, it’s resistance in life that can often derail our success and prevent us from fulfilling our potential. Resistance can sometimes seem like a remorseless predator that stalks us at every turn, just waiting for the opportunity to pounce and feast on our failure. Sometimes it manifests as something simpler, something we’ve all fallen victim to, procrastination.
Resistance tells us to wait, to put it off until later, that other things are more important than chasing some silly dream. It comes to us in the form of injuries; tears, strains, sprains, and pulls that come when it’s most inconvenient, and doesn’t seem to give a shit how we feel about it. At other times she com
es as that little voice in the back of our heads. Her call starts our barely audible, but soon turns into an all-out roar – like the sound of a crowd watching the climatic end to a World Series game.
That voice tells us to go ahead and have a few extra bites, cut our cardio session a few minutes short, or convinces us that one extra cheat meal won’t matter in the end because we’re ahead of schedule. But it does matter. It always does.
So, how do we simultaneously embrace and reject resistance? In short, DO THE WORK. Understand that as we get closer to achieving our goals and reaching our dreams resistance will be at its greatest. We must remain undeterred and boldly optimistic that we will succeed no matter what setbacks present themselves.
Embrace the fact that we are not infallible. We will make mistakes. We will fall down, get derailed, and lose focus of where we are in our journey from time to time. In those instances it’s important that we view and use life’s resistance the same way we do resistance training. We use those moments, the moments that tear us down mentally and emotionally, as life hypertrophy moments. We grow from them!
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