I haven’t held back the fact that I’m still skinny. Since beginning strength training I have put on a bit of weight and certainly become stronger, but there’s no doubt that I resemble a stick figure more closely than Schwarzenegger.
And, if you’ve read some of my other writing you may know that I’m a Buddhist, and one of the core fundamentals of Buddhism is being content with your current situation; to understand it’s inherent imperfection, but still feel at peace with your circumstances.
This seemingly contradicts with the desire to build strength, and perhaps it does, which is why I started pondering recently, how would I feel if I was skinny for the rest of my life? And you know what? It actually didn’t seem so bad.
I think us skinny guys can fall into the mindset of “being skinny is bad,” probably after being told that by an aggressor, but we never take the time to sit back and just think about it – is it really that bad? There are plenty of successful and happy people who don’t have huge biceps, why is that?
I’m not saying to give up on strength training.
The health benefits alone make lifting weights worthwhile, but all this self-reflection made me realize I don’t need to be in a rush to be a huge muscular monster. I can just sit back, enjoy my life, do my training 3x per week, and work at eating enough food to maintain my energy levels (which is really the most important thing).
In this way, you can find contentment with your current situation without sacrificing the natural desire to seek continual improvement and adapt to the world we live in.
I get that this sounds like new-age trite, but let me assure you, once I asked myself this question after not thinking about it for so long, it felt like a huge weight off my shoulders. Suddenly the “need” for strength went away, and the process of strength training – each individual session and milestone reached – became more important than any supposed destination in the distance.
