Picking up girls and picking up weights

Guest Post by Ara Shirinian

I’ve been weightlifting for somewhere around the past ten years. Peopleusually think of the amount you can lift as something that changes only gradually, with great effort and consistent practice over time. This is

true, much in the same way it’s true for any other endeavor that involves
learnable skill, like pick-up.

What is also true, and essential to understand is that your ability can
also improve dramatically in the space of a fraction of an hour. In fact,
your improvement within such a small space of time becomes more and more
dramatic the more experienced a weightlifter you are. This is also
something you can not fully appreciate unless you have been weightlifting
for several years.

This is so because of the nature of what your muscles are and how they
work. When you first start your workout session, your muscles are cold.
They cannot do a lot of work. This is one reason why the “pyramid”
structure of lifting is so popular with bodybuilders. Your first set is
used with low weight, it is intended to warm your muscles up to prepare
them for the next set with greater weight, and so on with each successive
set. The most successful bodybuilders don’t just do three sets at the same
weight or even increasing weight, they do more and more sets, adding
weight every time until their muscles are totally exhausted and cannot
lift the weight even one more time. This is called lifting to failure.

When you have a lot of muscle mass, the feeling of how much you can lift
between when your muscles are cold and several sets into your workout when
they are fully warmed up is even more dramatic, and especially so when you
are doing the most challenging movements like squats or deadlifts. When I
do my first set of squats, it’s hard and unpleasant. It doesn’t feel good.
The body does not want to move. The weight is so heavy. The body says stop
and go home. On my second set, it starts to feel better. Even though I am
using more weight, it’s getting easier. By the time I am several sets into
the exercise, it has transformed into a self-reinforcing act. I want to do
more. I want to see if I can break my record. It feels great. In the span
of ten or fifteen minutes, I have given my body the time it needs to pump
all the blood into my muscles and bring their temperature up to the level
they need to perform at their best. The activity itself is the warm-up.

Your brain works in a remarkably similar way to your muscles. It needs the
same kind of time to engage in whatever activity you are doing to get into
the groove of things and work smoothly. It is the same way when you are
performing any creative activity, which includes socializing and talking
to stranger women. The parallels with bodybuilding are deep and subtle
enough that a successful relationship with your workout routine can teach
you things about your relationship with the practice of improving your
social and pick-up skill. Pick-up has a few more challenges, because the
iron will not talk back to you as emotionally as girls will. Nevertheless,
successful struggle in one area of life has the power to catalyze the same
in another area.

If you concern yourself about how well you are doing, you might not get
past the first couple steps, because everything about the feedback your
body tells you says to stop and go home. Have the emotional maturity to
understand that this is just part of the process, and it will happen every
time. Instead of looking inward, look outward and focus on commiting to
the action. It isn’t about how you feel, it’s about how you take action.
Analyze later, not while you are performing. Only through this action on a
consistent basis will you bear the fruits of how you wish to feel.

http://www.shirinian.net/