Pumping iron
My first weights, when I was a teenager, were some nylon adjustable dumbbells which I hefted home on the bus from the Argos in town. I must have been mid-teens. I used them occasionally, with little idea of what I was doing. I bought a copy of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s incredible The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, which weighed almost as much as my weights, and studied it frequently.
However, weights were only one of my interests, and it never occurred to me to go to a gym, so this is not a story of how I became a champion weightlifter in my twenties.
Instead, what happened was this: I went to university, taking my adjustable dumbbells with me. At some point, I upgraded to a heavier set of York cast-iron dumbbells. Between weights, walking and swimming, I managed to maintain a relatively buff physique without any routine per se.
In my early twenties, I bought more weightlifting equipment and installed it in the spare room, quietly hoping the old beams would take the load. With a bench, a rack, an Olympic barbell, and some other bars and weight plates, I got into a more consistent routine, and my muscles got a lot bigger. However, conventional wisdom held that rest days were very important. So, I would always allow 2-3 days between workouts, which meant workouts were regularly missed because I was too busy on the day I was supposed to have one and decided to forgo it rather than bump it to the next day, lest it interfere with the next workout.
Back then, it didn’t take much for me to build muscle. The occasional heavy workout did the job. However, not having a strict routine meant that during my thirties and for much of my forties, I would often let months go by without touching my weights, which by then were out in the garage. When you only do something sporadically, it is easy to let it slip.
Something else I found, as I got older, was that I could no longer pick up the heaviest bar possible, do a few reps, and expect my biceps to rip through my shirt sleeves. Part of the reason is that as we age, form becomes far more important due to the risk of injury. Also, we just don’t build muscle in our forties the way we do in our twenties.
Late last year, I decided to get back into doing weights properly after a long hiatus. I went into the garage, picked up an EZ bar, did a few heavy sets and couldn’t move my arms the next day, which is what I expected. My muscles soon got back into the swing of doing weights once or twice a week, but something was off. I had pains where I hadn’t had pains before, and I was getting increasingly concerned about causing myself damage.
Something had to change. I decided I needed to reduce the weight and focus on strict form, rather than doing what I did in my twenties: throwing around the heaviest weights I could manage and seeing the gains roll in.
Switching to strict form rather than chasing the heaviest weights imaginable proved very beneficial. But I felt I was in a rut, doing the same exercises once or twice (at most) per week. I decided to do some research.
It turned out that the old advice to take days off between workouts had been proved incorrect. Yes, certain muscles need a rest of 48 hours or so between heavy targeted workouts, but that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t work out with weights every day. This was a completely new way of thinking for me.
To extend the variety of exercises I could do, I bought a pair of excellent adjustable dumbbells called Nuobells. These are nothing like the dumbbells I had in my youth. I decided to use weights every single day. My thinking being, even if I don’t really feel like it one day, or I am very short on time, it is better to pick up my weights and do something, even for just a few minutes, than nothing at all.
The results have been remarkable, far better than I ever imagined as I head towards fifty.
Using weights every day (except when I am travelling) has led to a critical shift in mindset. It has become a habit. If I don’t feel like working out, I want to keep going as soon as I start my weights. Making it a daily habit makes it much easier to overcome any inertia; indeed, my mindset is “I work out every day,” so that’s the momentum. Not working out now feels more of a mental challenge than working out does. If I am genuinely very short on time, two minutes of weights is vastly better than nothing. Although the reality is, none of us is ever that short on time. Or rarely. Think about how much time you spend looking at your phone.
What I accidentally stumbled upon with daily workouts is the power of forming habits.
As James Clear says in his book Atomic Habits, the key to getting into good habits, like working out, is to form gateway habits. With my weights, the gateway is picking the weights up. After that, the rest is easy.
This way of thinking is an effective way to change your mindset and make the habits you want part of your routine. If you have your own business or want to build one, the power of forming relevant habits is one you should harness.
To give an example, I have just launched caesar.co.uk for my legal practice and have decided to make it writing-led. Which means I need to write. This is my new daily habit.