Hypertrophy

I genuinely hated working out until I learned how muscles are built. I remember a passage from a novel I read once describing very violently and in vivid detail a physical transformation of one of the characters and how muscles must experience damage – tearing – in order to rebuild themselves stronger and bigger than before. I’m sure I learned about that in school, but reading it in an unexpected way stuck with me, and I can push through the pain at the gym when I think about it as the beginning of a process of growth.

I can take straight pain and I have a pretty high tolerance; I have several tattoos and a whole lot of other scars to show for it. It was the aching that follows that always made me rethink a heavy workout, the slight discomfort that lingers for a few days and you can’t seem escape it. Why is it that it is so awful for us to sit with the dull aches of the past? Even now, it’s hard for me to allow my body to rest, recover, and as I learned, rebuild. The aches send me back out into the street for a run, or back into the gym just to keep moving. Also, sometimes – like following the last good workout I had – once I sit down I literally can’t get back up again, so I keep moving because I think I have to. But the growth happens in that stillness. That is when we repair and rebuild.

You said I was a good writer, and that I should get a place to write down all my thoughts. Well, here it is and here they are. I will keep getting stronger. And so I sit here wondering if the aching pain in my abdomen I’m feeling right now is from the hour-long targeted workout I did yesterday, or if it is from other recently sustained bodily trauma. Either way, I hope I have a sick six-pack to show for it.