Where Will Your Habits Leave You?

By: Terry Brown

What is it to be strong? Is it a big total at a powerlifting meet? Maybe it is lifting more than your buddies at the local gym? For some, it’s the ability to walk up the stairs again, play with grandchildren, or just get out of bed to use the toilet in the middle of the night without needing to rely on someone else for assistance.

Strength looks different to people depending on their circumstances. When you are young and healthy, you take it for granted. Like most worthwhile things in life, you don’t realize its true value until after it’s gone.

Not long ago, I had to visit an elderly friend in the hospital. He had gone in for a routine test to get a niggling pain in his leg looked at, having finally been nagged into submission by his wife and kids. I remember seeing a frail woman outside the hospital door with an oxygen bottle on one of those little trollies. She was fumbling with a lighter as she attempted to light a cigarette. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

When I got to the section of the hospital my friend was in, I tried to find a nurse or staff member to assist me in locating his bed. Maybe they were off dealing with some emergency elsewhere. Looking through the little windows on the doors, I eventually found my friend and could see that he was in some distress. After some coaxing, he told me that he needed to use the bathroom but just couldn’t muster the strength to get out of bed. I smiled at him and helped him out. “No big deal. Let’s get you sorted,” I said. At that moment, one thing really struck me. I could see a look of shame and regret in his eyes.

After the bathroom excursion, we sat and talked for a while. He told me how the pain in his leg turned out to be stage 4 cancer. Apparently, it had originated in his lungs and spread throughout his body. The irony of this was he had quit smoking a couple of years previously, but it was just too little too late. Life likes to kick you in the balls every once in a while.

The illness had left him weak and feeble. Everyday necessities, the kind that we all take for granted, were transformed into mammoth tasks that he just could not manage alone. “We are the sum of our habits, and those little bastards will catch up with you,” he said.

That was the last conversation I had with my friend before his passing. As I turned to leave his room and head home that night, I said, “Look after yourself. I’ll see you again.” He nodded and said the same to me, but we both knew it wasn’t true.

On the drive home, I thought to myself, “What are my habits, and where will they leave me?”

Let’s face it: Nobody makes it out of this life alive, but what quality of life can you expect from your habits? Will you slowly decline as your body atrophies until daily activities are too much to handle? Or, maybe you’ll do what you can to prevent this. Maybe you will continue to train and challenge yourself, to gain strength and build healthy, useful body mass for as long as possible. When we train for gradual strength improvements over time, we are actively fighting against the natural physical decline that all people encounter.

We’ve all heard the phrase “age gracefully,” but what does this mean? Do we just accept our inevitable decline with “grace,” or do we wake up each day and fight to hold on to our quality of life? Surely, maintaining your independence as you age is about as graceful as you can be.

How do we do this? We can take basic human movement patterns and load them: the ability to squat down and stand back up, pick things up off the floor, put things above your head, and push things away from you. These are fundamental movements that we do every day. By training the squat, deadlift, overhead press, and bench press you get stronger for everyday life.

Strength is also a persistent adaption. The strength you build today will be there for you tomorrow. Most of us have pensions and savings accounts in place for the future, right? Don’t neglect the greatest asset you have. Without the basic strength to function when you retire, that financial cushion won’t do you much good.

At the beginning of these ramblings, I asked the question, “What is it to be strong?” For me, being strong is the ability to live the kind of life I want to live—on my own terms—as much as reasonably possible. That is worth investing in.

It doesn’t really matter what your current situation is. If you still have the basic functionality to squat down and stand back up, pick things up off the floor, put things above your head, and push things away from you, you can improve on them. We adapt to stress. It’s in our DNA. It’s basic human physiology, and it’s why we are still here.

Start the process. Apply a little stress to these basic movement patterns. Eat and sleep enough to recover and adapt. Build your habits now, because one day those little bastards are sure to catch up with you.