The Question

What's the most important life lesson you can learn in the gym or from lifting weights?

Charles Staley – Strength Coach

Training teaches us that there's a direct, unmistakable causal relationship between hard work and reward.

You work hard and good things happen. You don't work hard, and good things fail to happen. Much of life is "fuzzy" – sometimes you get lucky and experience rewards that you haven't really earned. But this will never happen in the gym because the weight doesn't give a flip about anything other than whether or not you actually lift it. And when you lift a weight that you've never lifted before, it's unmistakable proof that you're now better than you ever were before.

These experiences teach us to value work ethic and give us the confidence to apply it outside the gym as well: in our careers, our relationships, and in our various interests in life. The gym is a laboratory for life. – Charles Staley

Dani Shugart – T Nation Editor

Building muscle makes you better at life. It works that way for me at least.

Your entire body becomes more proficient. It's phenomenal. Heavy things feel lighter, hard tasks feel easier, big meals get used instead of stored. Moving your own body around becomes a natural, simple thing. You don't even realize your own physical capability if you've had muscle for a long time and have been taking it for granted. But when you go from not lifting to lifting, your body turns into this unrecognizable machine.

My very first taste of this was in high school when weight training made me go from the slowest girl on the cross country team to the fastest in a couple years. I didn't know the science behind it, but when everyone on a hill was slowing down, I could shift gears and pick up speed. It was a dramatic athletic transformation. And when it happened, I knew that building muscle was the key to living in the body I'd want.

(read more HERE)