There are a few certainties in life: it will end, you will pay taxes, and things won’t always go your way. We can’t control any of these, but we can control how we respond to them, and that’s where resilience becomes essential.
When things don’t go as planned, we face a choice. Either fold like a deck chair (my personal favorite) or get back on the horse that just threw us off.
Resilience is the ability to recover from challenges or adversity. Resiliency is the capacity to adapt to stressful situations and maintain psychological well-being during tough times. It’s not about being unaffected by hardship, because it always leaves a mark.
But it’s being able to cope and keep moving forward.
One of the central tenets of strength training is that your body can recover from and then adjust to the challenges you give it. Hey Presto, you just got stronger. Strength involves facing adversity (weight) and overcoming it. Building this resilience in the gym often has a positive influence on other areas of life.
Let’s examine ways to develop resilience through fitness.
A Story Of Resilience In Action
Weak things break. I don’t mean that to scare you, but to remind you that strengthening your body and mind is essential. Because, after a while, folding like a deck chair isn’t fun.
My recently retired client, Jane (not her real name), has been training with me for 10 years. For 10 years, she has become stronger by focusing on the fundamentals. Which is a good thing, as she puts her body through the wringer. Sometimes, she would begin our online sessions with a weird and wonderful way she’d hurt herself.
If you imagine the strange injuries professional baseball players get, then you’re in the same ballpark.
But earlier this year, this particular story took the cake. Jane described tripping and falling down a flight of stairs, her body banging and crashing on each step until she reached the bottom. Her husband and grandchildren saw the fall and stood there in stunned silence.
“Are you alright, Grandma?”
“Yes,” she said.
All she sustained was a scratch on her elbow and a few bumps and bruises. No broken bones or torn muscles. She trained with me a few days after the incident occurred. Can you imagine if she hadn’t strengthened her muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones? What would have happened?
I shudder at the thought. Weak things break. Strong things are more likely to survive.
Building Resilience Through Fitness
Regular cardiovascular training improves the efficiency of your heart and lungs in transporting oxygenated blood to your working muscles and removing deoxygenated blood to get more of the good stuff. By stressing your cardiovascular system, you’re building internal resilience, which reduces your chances of heart disease and enhances your ability to do more fun stuff.
The physical benefits of cardio are great, but so are the mental benefits. Having the inner confidence that comes with increased energy, being able to do more fun stuff for longer, is fantastic. And knowing you’re making a positive impact on your health boosts your confidence even further.
When you need to go at a moment’s notice, whether it’s running to catch the bus, ball, frisbee, or to catch your hightailing child who got away, the resilience built through regular cardio allows you to do that.
Lifting weights not only builds muscle, which acts like a suit of armor to withstand life’s slings and arrows. You’re building internal strength and resilience that allow you to bounce down the stairs without a scratch, and the confidence to get up and walk back up them. Because it’s not about falling down, we all do that. It’s about getting up.
By embracing the discomfort of lifting weights, you train to push through it, and this mental grit transfers into resilience when life throws you curveballs. You’re building supersized discipline as regular strength training requires consistency and patience.
In the gym, failure is part of the process.
You miss a lift, you adjust, and come back stronger. That mindset change, from seeing failure as final to viewing it as a learning opportunity, helps build emotional resilience outside the gym. Strengthening your body gives you a physiological edge in managing stress and anxiety in daily life.
Action Steps
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger” is attributed to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and it’s fitting here. Because when it comes to lifting weights and doing cardio, it doesn’t always feel good. Lifting weights and getting sweaty doesn’t tickle. It may feel like you’re dying, but it’s making you stronger.
So, how do you build resilience and put it to good use?
You do it bit by bit.
If you’re getting 4000 steps a day, aim for 5000.
Show up at the gym, even if it’s twice a week, and pick up and put down a weight a few times.
If you feel you’re not getting anywhere in the gym, try adding one more rep to a particular exercise. Boom, you got stronger.
Try doing something that makes you uncomfortable. It could be walking backwards on a treadmill. Or, in my case, it’s working out in a small, hot space where my weights are, and getting after it.
Showing up consistently and doing a small amount over the long haul, hopefully, will make you stronger outside of the gym. Since lifting weights, my deck chair has become stronger.
Now, it is your turn.
Work With Me Online
Whether you’re just starting or you’re tired of piecing together random YouTube workouts, my online coaching is built to help you succeed with:
Customized workouts you can do at home
Mobility routines to reduce stiffness and move better
Expert guidance and progress tracking that fits your lifestyle
Real accountability
Click here to get started today.
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