In praise of 'slow lifting'

If exercise has been defined by one aspect in the last few decades, I would say it’s “frenetic activity.” Running farther and faster; trying to follow the Zumba teacher’s kick-ball-change; even the yoga or Pilates holds were so often about trying to transcend a pain threshold, marching us through hitting one pose after another after another until we are breathless. If I ever took a class, it felt like there was barely time to try and contort my body to imitate what the instructor and students around me were doing before we were onto the next thing.

I loved this piece from Shannon Palus from a few months ago about the joys of slow running, just putting one foot in front of the other to log the miles without worrying about achievement or any particular kind of trajectory. Too often, we conflate “making exercise happen” with “needing to be good and talented at it,” and those two things simply need not be related at all. You don’t need to make publishable contributions to the field of running in order to just do it for a little bit of time periodically.

But when I map this onto lifting, the message changes a little. There is no real dimension of “speed” in lifting; doing the movements faster, or finishing the workout in record time, is not the goal.[^1] But that doesn’t stop people from trying to transfer the values of most other recreational exercise onto lifting. They feel like if they don't stay constantly busy, if they focus on form, if they only do a few reps at a time, if they rest, if they take time to warm up, they are not doing enough.