The Quiet Work Behind the Lift

Since June, I have been working out with an honest objective: get stronger and bulkier, mostly to scare off the boys who are after my daughter. What I did not anticipate was how much would change in my head along the way.

The work nobody sees

Past attempts at "getting in shape" had failed, so this time I set ambitious goals. I also had a period of ADHD hyper-fixation that helped. I kept my macros, hit my protein every day, took my vitamins and minerals, and never missed a day of creatine.

The first week was a real test. A few days in, I left for a student mission trip where I was a leader, which meant holding to my macros would be hard and finding time to work out even harder. It got done anyway. The mental firmness and resolve made that possible.

It would have been easy to give in to the thought, "I will just start over next week when I get home, so why not take the Chick-fil-A sandwich?" Being hyper-fixated on my macros worked in my favor here. I had very little hesitation saying, "No, that does not work with my macros."

After the first couple of days, the people on the trip came alongside me. They would say things like, "Hey, heads up on dinner, it's going to be tough to keep your macros, so here is something different."

When the resolve wore thin

I set my regimen at five days a week, with weekends as rest days. The workouts happen after my wife leaves for the day and before I start work. Early on, there was little moaning and groaning about the schedule. As long as it fit the time slot I had set, it was fine.

The first month went well. After that, I noticed my resolve had waned. Some mornings my body did not want to work out. It did not want to lift heavy. It did not want to walk 3.8 mph on a 15% incline for 35 minutes. Some days I did not feel like the effort was worth it, and the temptations showed up: "wait until tomorrow," or "just rest today, yesterday was hard."

That was the difference between what the body wanted and what the mind demanded.

The treadmill

Somewhere along the way I realized I was not only overcoming weight limits and physical endurance. A certain mental fortitude was building each day. I was telling myself no to things I used to desire, and telling myself that no matter what my body felt like, I still needed to move it. There is a reason for the saying "mind over matter."

I do not remember the exact day, but sometime in August, while I was on the treadmill, it clicked. What I had been experiencing was discipline, actual discipline: denying the body what it wants now for what it needs most. Sacrificing for what matters most.

That is also when it dawned on me how biblical the idea is. Paul puts it plainly:

I discipline my body and keep it under control.

1 Corinthians 9:27

And he tells Timothy:

While bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way.

1 Timothy 4:8

The physical version I was living out on that treadmill is what Scripture has been asking of us all along. It made deeper sense than it ever had.

Discipline is not a diet

Once I understood discipline properly, I could see it carrying over into marriage, fatherhood, friendship, leadership, perseverance, integrity, church, and godliness. The shift was in defining it correctly.

Discipline is not temporary, and it cannot be treated as if it were. It is a lifestyle change, a paradigm shift at the core of who you are.

If there is any flexibility at all, any wavering, the foundation of the discipline starts to crumble and eventually disintegrates. I think that is where most people fail. They treat discipline like a diet, a temporary means to a goal, and when it slips they go back to their old habits.

What if I am traveling?

You may disagree, or you may be asking about all the "what ifs." What if I am traveling? What if I am not at home? My honest answer is, "So what?" Devotion to the discipline has to be greater than the circumstance.

In July, my family and I traveled to Tennessee for three days. That took me out of my normal routine, but not off my schedule. The hotel had a small gym that met my requirements, so I adapted. It may seem unreasonable, or even rigid, to most people. I am fine with that. To me, that is the difference between a discipline and a diet: a lifestyle shift versus something gained temporarily.

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Takeaway

I am now working on month five of my physical fitness, and the biggest return so far is not physical. It has shown me that I am able to start a discipline, develop it, and then stack additional necessary disciplines on top of it. That is the next step in the progression: continuous improvement and betterment, with each discipline building on the last.

For me, the next disciplines are reading my Bible daily and praying daily. Underneath both of those is learning reliance and dependence on God, and that is where I believe this progression has been leading all along.

If you are reading this, pick one area where you have been treating discipline as temporary and decide ahead of time that circumstances do not get a vote. Start with something small enough to do on your worst morning. Once it holds, build the next one on top of it.