I was in the workout park the other day. After multiple sets of pull ups, I decided to do one last set to failure. Once I'd reached failure, I took a 15-second rest and did another set to failure. After 20–30 seconds of rest, if that could be called rest, I decided to do one final set. I did 4 reps. And I struggled with each one. The last two looked really ugly.
After I was done, I remembered a lesson I learned a long time ago. So I would like to share it with you.
I think it’s not arrogant to say that, after years of consistent and hard training, I have developed a physique that most men would be happy to have. It is visible that I am a physically fit person.
Now, having that in mind, imagine this situation for a moment. The park where I was working out is almost always full of people. The section of the park with pull-up and dip bars is located between two tracks: one for running and one for walking. There were at least a handful of people who were passing by and were looking at me while I was doing my last set of pull-ups. They saw me struggle with doing 4 reps.
If I wasn’t a visibly fit person, any person who is in good shape could look at me and say, "Look how weak this guy is."
Since I am visibly fit, they could let their imaginations run wild.
"Look at this guy. He has built muscle using some shortcuts, but is struggling with a fundamental exercise that shows if you are actually fit or not."
"Look at this guy. He has built muscle and is now not even trying anymore. He should be able to pump out 20 or more reps with that body. He might have muscles, but he is still mentally weak. He doesn’t know how to push himself."
Without having any context about what my actual workout looked like and seeing just that final set, there are countless things that could come to their minds to underestimate or judge me.
Without knowing how much energy I spent before they came across me, they cannot understand or appreciate the struggle that they are seeing.
You could say that people are there to walk, run, and exercise. They don’t care that much about how many pull ups I did.
True. The vast majority of them don’t.
But this is also not a story about pull-ups. It just so happens to be the case that many years ago, I learned this life lesson, like many others, through physical training.
How many times have you judged or underestimated someone without having any context about who they are and what they’ve been through?
Maybe you see someone being affected by a life event way more than you think they should be. They are weak, you think to yourself. This situation is not that big of a deal. They shouldn’t be affected by it this much. And, objectively speaking, you are right. Their situation shouldn’t be able to crush a person. However, there is nothing objective about being hit by life. What you don’t know is that this situation was the straw that broke the camel's back. You don’t know that the person in front of you is strong. But even the strongest crack after being hit enough times. Maybe what you are seeing is not weakness, but strength being pushed to its limits.
And you might say, "Not me. I have never judged someone in that way."
Well, I have. More times than I would like to admit.
And no matter how ridiculous it sounds, training to failure was a major factor in me learning not to judge others. It helped me understand that what you are seeing in a person is often not their true strength, but the strength that they have left after spending most of it.
So, when I write that you shouldn’t judge because you don’t know what someone has been through, maybe I’m actually addressing myself. Maybe I selfishly wrote this whole thing as a reminder to myself not to judge others. Because, even though I learned that lesson, I really don’t believe that any lesson is learned once and for all. Every lesson worth learning needs to be repeated and, more importantly, put into practice.
Still, I hope that this reminder to myself will be valuable to some of you as well.
But, most importantly, if you are on the other side of this conversation and you are someone who is afraid of being judged for what looks like weakness, know this: There is at least one person out there who knows that you are way stronger than you appear at the moment. There is at least one person out there who is able to respect and appreciate your struggle.
Thank you for reading.
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Pushing to failure when working out or running kills the ego! It’s that darn ego that gets in the way of loving others and not judging them. Fasting has been a powerful tool in killing the ego as well as that feeling of weakness in failure. Looking weak among others is good for us! Lol
We would like to hear more about detaching