You Don't Have To Love It

Are you struggling to find the motivation to strength train? Feel like you should be lifting weights, but you just don’t want to? Scrolling through Instagram reels of ferociously fit gym fauna in their natural habitat probably isn’t helpful. Nor is listening to your neighbor gush about crushing it at CrossFit. The thing is, those folks actually enjoy lifting weights.

Don’t place that burden on yourself.

You don’t have to love it.

I don’t especially enjoy brushing my teeth. It’s tedious. (Also, the farther north of fifty I get, the less I want to park my pores in front of a well-lit mirror.) But in the interest of avoiding tooth decay and social ostracism, I brush my teeth twice a day, every day, regardless of how I feel about it.

I make it more palatable by using minty fresh toothpaste and waxed floss, and I recently got an electric toothbrush that buzzes every 30 seconds to alert me to move to a different quadrant of my mouth. These things improve the experience, but it’s still a drag. Which is fine. I don’t have to love it, but I do have to do it.

Strength training, like brushing your teeth, is basic self-maintenance. It improves the health of your muscles, bones, and connective tissues so you can move well through the world for as long as possible. You can commit to performing a basic strength program twice a week for 30 minutes without having to love it. It doesn’t have to spark joy, or sing to your soul, or generate Instagrammable moments. It doesn’t have to become your next great passion.

Maybe it will, and if so, that’s marvelous! If not, you still have to brush your teeth.

But you don’t have to love it.