Mental Strength

When it comes to staying healthy, many people turn to working out to maintain fitness. One major hurdle that many people come across can be physical capability. For example, you can show up to a weight room to work on your upper body strength, but you can’t lift the heaviest weight in the gym. You decide to just stick to one that you are able to lift, and continuously use that weight to work out from then on. Though you may break a sweat while consistently doing this, you are not actually building your strength.

Strength isn’t always measured in the physical force that one can exert. So, in the previous example, say you decide to set a goal; at first, you can only curl 15 pounds 30 times, but in 1 month, you want to be able to curl 25 pounds for the same amount of reps. In order to properly build this physical strength, you will need mental strength. Mental strength is the ability to set goals and do everything in your power not to give up on them. In this case, we will say that 25-pound curls at the end of the week is your long term goal. In order to achieve long-term goals, you need to set short term goals as well. So, as you’ve decided that you want to end at 25 pounds in 4 weeks, you will need to set weekly goals of scheduling exactly when and how long you will work out, and how to increase your weight by small increments as your weeks progress. It will take mental strength to make yourself abide by the plan you’ve made to achieve our goals. If you don’t have the mental discipline to schedule workouts or increase weight over 4 weeks, you will see no progress to get where you want to be in physical strength. This can apply to any health goals you want to achieve such as dieting, putting on weight, running, getting better at a sport, etc. In order to build physical power, endurance or skill, you need to have a lot of mental power, which can only be determined by yourself.