Category: Character

Independently Strong

Three years ago I read a weight training book that was more influential on me than I expected.

Muscle

According to the book, called “Training for Mass” by Gordon La Velle, weight training is best done at high intensity. You might think all weight training is high-intensity. High-intensity training (HIT) is a particular flavor of weight training that advocates deliberate, intense action, in a short workout, to stimulate muscle growth. While some people who lift weights may spend hours at the gym, several times per week, with multiple sets per exercise, Training for Mass says this is overkill. It’s unnecessary at best, and may cause burnout or injury at worst. What’s needed is just one “work set” per muscle group, once per week. But it must be very intense.

“The higher intensity, the greater the growth stimulation. Within the realm of weight training, where muscular growth itself is the objective, the ability to generate a high level of intensity is the most critical factor under your control.” (p. 33)

Contrast the objective of muscular growth with the objective of appearing strong. If my goal is only to appear strong, there are certainly ways to fake it:

Assisted repetitions — An assisted repetition is when your friend helps you lift the bar. “If someone is helping you lift the weights, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. in physics to deduce that the weight you’re lifting is equal to the mass of the weight minus the force being applied by the helper….” (p. 111)
Cheating — Cheating is to use bouncing, or momentum, or a change in your body position to lift more weight than normal. Not good. “[There] should be no bouncing, swinging, or using any other deliberate technique meant to increase the momentum of the lift. Any momentum present in the lift should come only from the simple linear movement of the weight.” (p. 107)

(Technical note: There is a place for assisted reps and cheating — on the very last repetition. Because it’s harder to raise weight than to lower weight, our muscles burn out on the raising part of a repetition (“concentric contraction”) before they burn out on the lowering part (“eccentric contraction”). When you can no longer lift on your own, assistance or cheating, if it can be done safely, can be used to raise the weight one more time, and then you should lower the weight entirely on your own.)

If your goal is muscular growth and you’ve been using assists or cheats (for more than the last rep), it’s better to reduce the weight, and the *appearance* of strength, and use a weight you can actually lift on your own.

“Why don’t these lifters just go lighter and lift the weight themselves, at least before reaching failure? This seems like it would make a whole lot more sense. Inflated egos might be the culprit here, since the lifters may want to appear to be lifting heavier weights.” (p. 111)

Character

Suppose we think of our character as a muscle. How could the above principles change our mindset about the development of character?

One of my favorite quotes of all time is from D. Todd Christofferson:

“[God] is endeavoring to make us independently strong — more able to act for ourselves than perhaps those of any prior generation.”

To me, “independently strong” is different from “appearing to be strong” or “strong when assisted.” I don’t know that we can expect to have character that’s chiseled and solid without actually lifting heavy weight. When the weight is heavy and it feels like there’s no Trainer assisting, maybe that’s on purpose.

A friend recently told me that 2013 has been the hardest year of his life. If we had been leaving the gym, and he had said this was the hardest *workout* of his life, I would have congratulated him. Maybe hard days and hard years are cause for congratulations. If you’re having the hardest year of your life, maybe you’re becoming the strongest you’ve ever been.

UPDATE on May 17, 2014: Elder David A. Bednar has an excellent talk on burdens: Bear Up Their Burdens with Ease

Tags weight training

Character Main Principles

You’re Already in the Best of All Possible Situations

Post author By Richard K Miller
Post date March 13, 2008
8 Comments on You’re Already in the Best of All Possible Situations

Last month I finished reading Bonds That Make Us Free by Terry Warner. Though I found it repetitive in some spots, overall I liked it. My favorite concept from the book was that you are currently in the “Best of All Possible Situations.”

This idea might be traced to Søren Kierkegaard’s parable of The Two Artists:

Suppose there were two artists, and the one said, “I have travelled much and seen much in the world, but I have sought in vain to find a man worth painting. I have found no face with such perfection of beauty that I could make up my mind to paint it. In every face I have seen one or another little fault. Therefore I seek in vain.”

On the other hand, the second one said, “Well, I do not pretend to be a real artist; neither have I travelled in foreign lands. But remaining in the little circle of men who are closest to me, I have not found a face so insignificant or so full of faults that I still could not discern in it a more beautiful side and discover something glorious. Therefore I am happy in the art I practice. It satisfies me without my making any claim to being an artist.”

…the second of the two was the artist.

Referring to our forgiving the offenses we sometimes take from friends, family, and coworkers, Mr. Warner puts it this way:

Unless we change in our hearts toward the people we struggle with here and now, we are condemned to struggle with whomever we may find ourselves associating with.
…
It doesn’t say that our situation could not be better. Many of us have serious needs, like too little to eat or broken health; even those of us who are fairly comfortable could benefit from positive changes in our circumstances. What the principle says is, in matters that affect our happiness, we are in the best of all possible situations.
…
We cannot be liberated from our burdensome feelings toward certain people unless we forgive these very people; without this, we leave unfinished the task by which we ourselves can be transformed. For wherever we go, we will remain accusing, self-excusing individuals who, fantasizing, think a change of circumstance will make a fundamental difference. Instead of leaving our problems behind, we will take them with us.

When happiness is the issue, the best possible situation for us is the one we’re in now, and the people around us are the best we could be with. (pp. 307-9)

You’re an artist if you realize that you’re already in the best of all possible situations.

Character Getting Things Done Main

Saying No

Post author By Richard K Miller
Post date December 7, 2007

I received a phone call that impressed me. It was like this:

“Richard, I’m afraid I can’t help with the project like we had planned. Some things have come up, and I no longer have the time. I just wanted to let you know. If I can help in the future, I’ll call you again.”

Flakiness is so common, but here is a guy who didn’t flake out. He communicated “no” just as clearly as he had communicated “yes”. I no longer had to wonder.

“No” isn’t mean or rude. If you can’t realistically commit, “no” is courteous.

“No” is a way of prioritizing. If you say “yes” to everything, you haven’t prioritized.

As someone who tends to say yes and overcommit, I’m impressed by this example of saying no.

Tags communication no

Character Main

Lesser Things

I recently read similar passages from two very different books.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, chapter 5, “The End of Time Management”:

Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.

What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is useless unless applied to the right things.

Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness — lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.

Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective — doing less — is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.

Men of Valor by Robert L. Millet, chapter 2, “Have Done with Lesser Things”:

…drawing closer to my Heavenly Father, serving the people about me, and growing in gospel scholarship — along with devoting as much time as I could to my wife, children, and extended family — were the actions that had long-term, even eternal implications. Yet in reality I had spent the bulk of my time the previous week shuffling from one … activity to another.

More than once my friend and mentor, Robert J. Matthews, said to me, “Robert L., be careful not to spend your life laboring in secondary causes.”

…”have done with lesser things.” Lesser things do not satisfy. They do not fill the hunger of the human soul. They do not bring peace and rest. Lesser things do not build the family unit, bring harmony into the home, or fortify relationships that are intended to be everlasting.

Until yesterday, I thought the phrase “have done with lesser things” referred to frugality or resourcefulness, like “make due with less.” But these five words, in a bit of antiquated style, mean “be done with lesser things.”

Character Main

As a Man Thinketh

On my flight from SLC to OAK I read James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh. It’s over 100 years old, but I found it very timely and inspirational.

“As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,” not only embraces the whole of a man’s being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of his life. A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.

By the aid of self-control, resolution, purity, righteousness, and well-directed thought a man ascends.

Because the text is in the public domain, it can be read entirely online. Good read.