One More Rep

One More Rep

Education has been one of the main ways that I have learned how to read and write, but certain aspects of it have also been reasons for me to become disinterested in reading and writing. Some teachers that were very fond of specific writing styles that I was not discouraged me from writing the way I wanted to, and how I felt that I personally wrote the best. While gaining a broad sense of the different styles of writing does create a well-rounded writer, it was almost detrimental to my writing skills to have an entire semester of high school dedicated to writing poetry. While this is a respectable type of writing, it is not what appeals to me at all, and does not hold much value to my individual preference in writing styles. I would much rather see my words play out over a page rather than in very skewed misinterpreted lines of text.

One of the most inspirational and helpful places I have ever been to in my life is the gym. It is where I go to process big things that happen in my life, work off excess emotions like anger or sadness, it is where I go to have fun, and it is also where I go to reflect. Many things that happen in the gym can be used in some form or another as an analogy for things that happen in our lives. Becoming a good writer doesn’t happen overnight, just like a good football player isn’t made in a day, and real improvements in the gym won’t be seen in a week. What can be said however is that with dedication and determination a star football player can be born, and improvements can be seen in the gym. It is all encompassed around the phrase “one more rep.” One more rep is a phrase I have heard a lot in the gym as naturally it seems that the gym or a training field is the only place where a phrase like this would apply. This is completely false. One more rep is an analogy for any large obstacle in ones life, or a seemingly impossible task that somehow gets accomplished again and again.

One of the main ways that I live my life is through the gym. In the small amount of time that I have been lifting, my life has changed for the better. When I had first started lifting again over the summer of my senior year in highschool, I was barely 180 pounds soaking wet, and could hardly use half of the machines in the gym. When I first got into the gym I was not completely sold on it. I had been trying to teach myself good exercises to do while in the gym, but as any newbie to the gym will tell you; it is much harder and less effective to learn how to lift by yourself. I had tried for about a month to lift on my own without seeing much results. Finally, I caved and paid for a personal trainer to help establish my goals in the gym and get me on the right path to learning how to lift. As much as I love working out now, I did not particularly like what I was doing back then. The focus for me had been getting my body fat as low as I could before I actually started piling on muscle, which obviously involved a lot of cardio. I was seeing progress, but not in the direction I was looking for.

When I started my first semester at Western Carolina, the first thing I did as soon as I got the chance, was sign up for flag football. It had been so long since I had played football and I was extremely excited to get back into it. I had no idea who was going to be on the team, or whether or not we were even going to be any good but I was excited nonetheless. This was when I first met my friend that helped me on the road to building muscle and a love for lifting weights. We did not actually talk that much for the first few games, but eventually we ended up scheduling a time to go lift together. This is when everything changed for me. Lifting was awesome, I was having so much fun every week my weights were going up and I was getting more, and more confident. I was benching, squatting, deadlifting, all of the things I had wanted to do but had no idea where to start. Eventually I started lifting with my friend from football and a few other guys from the gym regularly and through the course of a bunch of heavy lifting, and a lot of heavy eating I went from a scrawny 180 pounds to a whopping 230 pounds. It was great I had gone from lifting 225 pounds in my deadlift and squat to 450 pounds on my deadlift and 375 on my squat. Seeing these kind of improvements are what make the gym so much fun to come back to. The same can be said for ones writing style and skill; if you see progress and improvement, it can do wonders to your confidence which can in turn help to get the best results possible.

There are some things however which can hold a person back in the gym, as well as life. Lifting alone for example can be preferred by some, but in order to improve physically and mentally it is generally better to have a group of people, or at least one person to progress with. The primary problem with lifting alone is that it limits how much you can push yourself. If you have no one to spot you then there is no encouragement that if you fail, there will be someone to catch you. Similarly, when writing a paper, if you try to get through it without the help of your peers whose to say that it is the best work you can produce.

Another reason in which I particularly enjoy lifting, is that it helps to express to the people around you that you do care about your health and the way that your body looks. By sitting on the couch all day watching television and eating pizza, many people may internalize that behavior as lazy, and unmotivated. However, if someone is consistently maintaining a healthy lifestyle by incorporating proper diet and exercise it conveys the sense that the individual cares about the state that their body is in. For me, lifting and living a healthy lifestyle is a great way to find an activity that will always be challenging. There will never be a point in which the weights get to light, or you have done every single exercise to perfection. It is a constantly evolving sport that you must continually train to get better and better at. Not only does it enhance your mental clarity, but exercising is an amazing way to express yourself, meet new people, and improve your health. While weightlifting will probably be something I will do forever, I also consider writing similar to this. It will never get too easy, and it is something you must work to modify and perfect for your entire life.