An open letter to my students

So you’ve discovered the weight room.

I can see it in the way you approach the bar, unsmiling yet with eyes ablaze, or the way you load a little more weight when you think no one is looking. I hear about it when other teachers describe you asking for time for one more attempt before you leave for your next class.

I don’t need to explain these things to you because I can tell you understand them, too. It’s true that our teachers introduce weightlifting’s nomenclature and model its programming to all students, but not everyone inhales these things the way we do. The sweat, the chalk, the sounds, all of it. You are entering a community open to all but joined by very few.

I almost don’t know if I should say I’m sorry or you’re welcome. The latter wouldn’t even be entirely accurate; at some point the barbells and plates alight with something approaching a force all their own. As a teacher I feel I merely make the introductions. The rest is between you and the weight.

I’m not sorry, either, because I know (or at least have a hint at knowing) what is to come for you. It’s not going to be easy. Deep down I would never want to do you the injustice of removing those challenges from your future, much as I may wish to shield you from them now. May you continue to suffer and struggle and battle, uncomfortable as it may be to witness for those who care about you.

The weight room can be cruel and unrelenting. Play team sports, and the level of competition drops collectively as you age and join less competitive leagues; meanwhile the cold numbers of the weights never budge. They are unaccommodating, and they are incapable of lying.

More specifically, you have now met the barbell and discovered in it the potential for speed and grace. This is called power. You can measure one version of it, but that’s not the one that sticks with you. The barbell is the pinnacle of strength, the perfect implement. To others, the barbell is a tool. You have begun to sense that it’s actually a teacher with lessons all its own, and you have started to form a bond, started to listen. Like any relationship of value, it will reveal secrets to you - if it has not already - that find you at times you need them most.

You will learn to intone each barbell’s spin and knurling, its whip and rhythms. You will begin to identify others who can hear this same song. These people congregate on platforms in the back of public gyms, and you will never again be able to ignore them. In college, it will become nearly impossible for you to work out with friends who cycle through body-part splits and cardio machines - your attention will inexorably be pulled to the platforms, where bars fly and crash and real wagers are made and collected.

The stakes are higher there, the misses less forgiving, the made lifts more euphoric. Power is beautiful and undeniable, even if it looks brutish to the uninitiated. Once you can see it you can never unsee it.

That force will lead you away from the leg pressing and the ellipticals, back home to the barbell if you had managed to drift away. Aside from that I don’t know what your lifting journey will look like. The other beautiful part of weightlifting is that everyone’s trajectory is different, and yet somehow the same. Stand over a bar you are not sure you can make, and you are everyone who has ever stood there. Contained in that moment is an exhilarating, haughty, intoxicating fear. It will always follow you. It is always waiting. You can find it as easily in a crowded gym as late at night on a piece of plywood in a basement. Fear is a fire, and it keeps us alive.

You will go through stages of life. Perhaps you will buy a bar and a rack to lift at home. I would recommend that. At one stage you will probably sense that the type of lifting you are after is too private to share with others. It is too difficult to explain and it requires too much of you to continually justify the obsession. It begins to feel sacrilegious to have to wait for others to finish their haphazard and unserious sets to begin a task that feels to you as one that is approaching something pure. As much as weightlifting can be unifying, it can also be isolating. Even surrounded by others, it is clear to you that it is always just you and the bar, forever.

Maybe life will take you away from that bar in your garage, or yard. It can become, for a time, a place to hold dust or drying laundry. But you will never be able to forget what it really is. You will never be able to walk by it without hearing its imperceptible whispers: Who are you? And, Are you still brave?

The barbell will always be there. It is always patient. It does not tire. If you are still brave, you will return to it when the whispers grow too loud to ignore, even if those around you by this time have managed to silence the unique influences in their lives that used to wake them with a jolt in the middle of the night. You will learn anew that the numbers never really mattered. The fear, the doubt, and the pride that follows - the barbell will always deliver if you return to it.

It will teach you lessons you will never repeat to anyone else, and it does not matter if by this point you are an expert or still a novice. The pride that you wagered so long ago still hangs in the balance.

Those who offer nothing of themselves garner nothing in return. They remain tourists to the gym. They lift when they have the time, or until they achieve a certain physical appearance. They avoid the big, frightening lifts, the only type that test and reveal. I can tell already that you have transcended the line separating the tourist from the willing. A part of you will always live on the other side. When the barbell sits on your shoulders there is a melding. It reminds you who you are. You could walk away from lifting for years at a time but you will never again be able to ignore the lesson of the weights the way others do.

On the other side there are shadows, sometimes. Neither I nor anyone else will ever really know where your mind goes when you are truly nervous or frightened or ambitious. It is possible that you will never tell anyone. Those shadows provide refuge for a part of your authentic self.

Lifts requiring such speed and aggression require a commitment that is cousin to violence. To become familiar and comfortable with that is to evolve. You will never forget that that part of you exists, nor will you ever be able to hide it from the few others who are able to see it in you.

My final advice, then, is to learn to navigate those shadows, and you will gain a great gift that will insulate you against superficial niceties. Don’t fight this, for the world is not organized around comfort or politeness. It is bent toward struggle, and those who understand this intimately are best prepared to help others. This is the ultimate calling. So extend your hand to help, and you will find it calloused and strong.

All this time, you imagined you were fighting the weight on the bar; it is my great hope that someday you will find that you are fighting only the weakness within yourself.

It is so hard to be happy in the world. Continue to press forward, toward strength to serve. Such an effort is and has always been our only chance.