Why Do You Do It?

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Today’s guest post is by Mark Marotta, long-time reader, Strong College Kid, Competitive Powerlifter, and a Canadian, to boot, eh? I edited out all the funny vowels.  – Jacob

The first thing to consider, when talking about motivation, is “WHY?” You have to figure out WHY you want to do this – what fuels you to do five or even eight sets of squats in a row? What could possibly make you want to take a barbell on the ground and throw it straight over your head 10 or 20 times a day if you’re a weightlifter? What justifies walking away from a heavy deadlift seeing stars with a face full of burst capillaries? If you’ve been training for more than a year or two, and reading this site on the regular, this probably won’t be the same reason you first picked up a dumbbell/barbell/cable machine handle, but it’s important to know WHY.

Personally, I started lifting dumbbells as a dweeby little 9th grader figuring “If I get all jacked, all the pretty girls at school are gonna wanna smooch me.” Yep. That was my motivation. I’d go to the gym 5 mornings every week, in a tight tank top and black, fingerless workout gloves, and that was why. Inevitably, between realizing things aren’t that simple, and ‘driving my dick in the ground,’ as Justin would say, with a Typical5DayBodyBuildingSplit.xlsx program, I changed my tune. Eventually I stumbled onto Starting Strength, and my motivation became being stronger than all my peers. This not being much more mature than my past goal, I moved on from it as well. Now one portion of my motivation is becoming better. Not becoming better than someone else; simply becoming better than I was. It’s the physical equivalent of picking up a physics textbook and reading it. Not because you’ll get a better job from knowing physics, or do better in school, but because you want to know physics. I want to become stronger, to find a current limit I have, and take a step past it, then next week, go a step further. Another part is that if, as an adult human being, you don’t have something to work towards, short or long term, inside or outside of training, something that’s more than a hobby, you’re most likely gonna be pretty miserable. For me, and I’m sure quite a few of you, training is that something. Finally, out there somewhere for each of us there are some asymptotic values for our squats, presses, pulls, snatches, whatever, that are a finite limit. What motivates me most is chasing that limit.

Now, I figure there’s probably a fair sized group of readers on this site who lift just because it’s something to do, and that’s fine if you only see lifting as a hobby, but by taking that attitude you put yourself in a cage if you ever want it to be anything more. If you intend to put up serious numbers, you need a serious reason to push yourself to do it. You need to figure out what in your life, hell, in the universe makes you want to get as strong as you feel you should be. For some of you it might be competition in weightlifting, powerlifting, or another sport. It could be that you think training will improve the general quality of your life (it more than likely will). Whatever your reason is, you need to identify it, and furthermore understand it and think about it every time you step into the gym.

Which brings me to the dedication side of things. You need to apply yourself to the reason(s) that you lift. You need to understand that if you don’t put everything you have into it, you can never get everything back out of it. Since I started training properly, I have never ‘skipped’ a workout: sick, inconvenient, tired, doesn’t matter. I have done PR sets of 5 squats where I coughed/sneezed between each and every one of my reps. I know that if I skip out on lifting, I’m saying my goals aren’t that important to me. Well, they are. Of course there are scheduled weeks off, deload weeks, etc. I’m not talking about that – I’m talking about taking the attitude of “My program is to do ‘X’ today; I’m doing ‘X’ today.”

You cannot take the attitude that it’s an option. If you give yourself a choice to opt-out, then at least once, and probably more, you’re going to take it. You need to use the reasons that you lift to alter your view of training into something that you need to do. You need to make it a part of your life. Those words weigh more heavily on me every time I think about them. You need to dedicate yourself to the level that if you don’t train on a day you’re supposed to train, or skip out on a few sets and leave early, you’re fucking up. Once you can take that attitude for training, that it’s either succeed or fail, you can know, definitively, that you’re putting everything you’ve got into your training.

So in summary, what I want you all to do this week is reminisce about why you started lifting, and after that, let your mind wander about why you lift now, and how you can turn that into motivation to keep pushing forward. Once you motivate yourself, dedicate yourself to lifting for your reasons (whatever they may be) and adopt the attitude that this shit is not an option. “This is why I lift, this is why I can’t fuck this up.” Until you understand why you’re training, and dedicate yourself to it 100%, you can never take things to their full potential.

If by some chance you can’t think of a reason yourself…

Feel free to discuss the reason(s) that you train in the comments.

40 thoughts on “Why Do You Do It?”

  6. Lifting more weightz. I want to be the strongest guy my size that people know with a little jackage to boot. Very motivated by lifting heavier weights.

    Balance in life is important as well though. Obligations and commitments can be misconstrued as excuses. If you mess that up, you may lose your testosterone factory when your pregnant wife has you by the balls!

    We’ll see how she is thinking and feeling towards days end…

    • Need arm pics to evaluate, Stroup … clothes off pose off

      I am undoing 3 decades of being skinny af. I’m up 35 lbs over the past 4 years, and I want to be strong. I want my kids to be strong. I want them to yell Suns’s Out Gunz Out down the hall of elementary school.

      Oh, and I got *Thick. Solid. Tight* last night at the gym at work. When you work with skinny enginerds, the bar is low for what’s considered swole. Cya

  8. For the thrill of competition.

    Played competitive sports through college and professionally for 2 years after, and the monotony of daily life without having something to strive toward just isn’t plausible. Training keeps me sane, motivated and organized.

  9. This kind of fucked my shit up because I can’t find my happy thought. I simply do it because I enjoy it. But that doesn’t really explain my compulsive approach to it. Now I’m going to be pondering all day “what’s the point?”, and I may not come up with an answer other then just liking it.

    • I’m right there. I don’t know a lot of it beyond the fact that it gives me joy. And maybe that it constantly reinforces that challenging things often have the greatest returns. But there’s no finite goal, bw, or total I’m sure I’d be happy with.

    • There truly is no better reason to do ANYTHING than the plain and simple realization that you just enjoy it. If you take a few steps back from lifting, and just think about any activity you do in your life, hopefully at the root of your choices is the truth that you just like it. That’s the whole point of living – to be happy, however you define that. I know that I’m euphoric after hitting a new PR. It’s useful to have goals to motivate you, but honestly I believe doing something for the simple enjoyment of that activity is important.

  10. I have a variety of reasons why I train. I have been in sports my whole life. I compete at everything I do because I love to! Training for strongman lets me. I want to be the best I can be at Strongman. As a 5’7, 36 yr, I love competing and destroying guys that are bigger and younger than me. I know I have the potential to make PR’s everday, to better myself everyday and I bust ass trying. What got me started training was that I am going to be a man! I am not a metrosexual (we didn’t have those when I was a kid, but we still had sissy’s and pussys), scrawny, soft hands, pretty, glove wearing, needing to be “ripped”, weak girlman. I am a calloused, beat-up, scarred, manual labor loving (even though I am a teacher), beard toting, hairy, strong, man and that it what I have always wanted to be, physically! I have wanted to look like the 70’sBig guys since I saw my first WSM in Vernon, NJ back in the 80’s. Training lets me acheive those goals!

  11. I train because last year I got injured (ACL tear + something). It was shit. I didn’t realise how much I depended on being able to run/cut/jump until I couldn’t do it. It made be miserable and appreciate it.

    The three months after surgery even more so. Three months of walking on crutches not able to bend my leg properly really makes you want to make sure there’s as little chance of anything like that happening again as possible.

    I train because I owe it to my sanity to keep healthy. Anything else isn’t an option.

  13. I do it because i SAID MY VOWS TO MY BROTHERS.

    Night gathers, and now my lift begins. It shall not end until full range of motion. I shall take no roids, hold no crossfit affiliations, father no SPFers. I shall wear no multiply and win no glory. I shall live and die at my squat rack. I am the jackedguy in the darkness. I am the watcher on the squat depth. I am the fire that burns against the jump shruggers, the light that brings the protein, the horn that wakes the slackers, the shield that guards the realms of lifters. I pledge my life and honor to the Lifter’s Watch, for this squat night and all squat nights to come.

  14. Why:

    I wanna be the very best
    Like no one ever was
    To lift them is my real test
    To train hard is my cause
    I will travel across the land
    Squatting with pride
    Each powerlift to understand
    The power that’s insiiiidddeeeee!

    Deadlifts gotta lift em all!
    It’s you and me!
    I know it’s my destiny!
    Deadlifts! Oh you’re my best lift!
    In a competition we must win!
    Deadlifts, gotta lift em all!
    A lift so true
    Our back will pull us through
    You lift me and I’ll lift you
    DEADLIFTS!

    Every weight along the way with courage I will face
    I will lift them every day to claim my rightful place
    Come with me, my form is right
    There’s no better team
    Hands around the bar tight and we’ll win the fight
    It’s always been my dream

    Deadlifts gotta lift em all!
    It’s you and me!
    I know it’s my destiny!
    Deadlifts! Oh you’re my best lift!
    In a competition we must win!
    Deadlifts, gotta lift em all!
    A lift so true
    Our back will pull us through
    You lift me and I’ll lift you
    DEADLIFTS!

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  16. I’m doubly disappointed in the implication that lifting for women is wrong and then ending with a picture of an attractive girl, and THEN missing out on an opportunity to use the actual “Do it for her” Simpsons quote. For shame.

    As for why I lift? It’s pretty simple at this point: I’m a junkie. I’m constantly chasing the adrenaline high of hitting a new PR or going 9/9 with 3 PRs in a competition or finally reaching a goal that I’ve spent hundreds of dollars and countless hours on. I left my band because I wasn’t training enough. I’ve turned down dates because I wanted to sleep well for the next day’s training. I’ve spent money I shouldn’t have on extra food, shoes, knee sleeves, belts, and gym passes. I’m addicted to lifting heavy weights.

    • yeah on a srs note, this. When I first started lifting I was undoing a ton of fat kid psychology, then I undid some lazy kid mental stuff, now I am just trying to add as many 5lb PRs on my big three as much as I can for as long as I can.

      Fitness quotes can be annoying but I always liked “I do it, because one day I WONT be able to.”

  18. So I’ve been thinking about this post since it first went up, and what my answer is, and yesterday it clicked. Ultimately I lift because it helps me stay sane. Getting stronger is awesome, but more than that going in and destroying myself for an hour is the best release I’ve found. It may go against what this site is about, and I’m fine with that, but I don’t have a burning desire to get stronger (I would like to, but it’s not what really drives me). It’s that hour where I am just in my head, battling demons with a bar and plates, and come out physically drained but mentally and emotionally ready to be a husband and father.

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