Weight lifting can be fun. Maybe not
wearing-a-lampshade-on-your-head fun, although I suppose that keeping the
lampshade balanced would improve posture while lifting weights, but fun. Here’s why:
You get to feel like a superhero. Wonder Woman has to practice with
that magic lasso to develop the muscle memory to throw it accurately. Spiderman needs strength as well as
sticky feet to climb up those skyscrapers. It would be a pretty poor rescue if Superman swooped up to
catch Lois and didn’t have the arm strength to hold her. (And maybe if Lois had worked out a bit
more, she would have been able to pull herself back over the parapet of that
tall building, preventing the need for rescue entirely!)
So your regular life may not
require those superhero skills, but you may need to carry the 35-pound sewing
box your son made you or a giant pile of packages or the 15 bags of groceries
required to feed the family. If
you happen to be getting older (hey, every day we all do!) and you want to be
independent, making sure you can squat and stand will allow you to maintain
that superhero independence far longer.
I think we would all prefer to be self-rescuing.
You get to look good in your jeans. Or out of your jeans! There are a couple of reasons for
this. Weight training increases
your lean body mass. That lean
mass burns more calories and takes up less space. Even thin people can be flabby; training the muscles gives
the body the beautiful toned shape we admire in art, fashion, and posters of
scantily clad rock stars/models/etc.
You get to try lots of things. Because we have so many muscles, we get to do lots of
different exercises to target the various groups. If you have a short attention span—hey! What’s that?—you don’t have to worry
because pretty soon you can stop doing squats and move on to hammer curls (or,
as I call them, Drumming Monkeys).
There is always something new to try, which is good for your brain as
well as your body.
And if the lampshade helps, by
all means use it!
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