Push the Ground, Pull yourself Up

Somewhere around the age of 56, I decided enough was enough. My knees were sending out distress signals—loud and clear—and I knew it was time to lighten the load.

I started simple: lose weight. Be kind to the knees. Move without sounding like a creaky door hinge.

What began as a weight loss mission soon morphed into something bigger. Somewhere along the way, I realized that just being lighter wasn’t the answer. I needed to be stronger. Not just in body, but everywhere else too.

Enter: weight training. Enter: discipline. Exit: casual excuses.

By early 2024, my routine was locked in. Office work wrapped up by 3:30 p.m., gym bag in hand, heading out like a woman on a mission. No lingering chats, no “five more minutes,” no late emails. Just the steady walk to the gym, the process, and my instructor, Ajay, waiting with that “today there are no shortcuts” look on his face.

That first year ended with a moment I won’t forget: lifting 100 kilograms off the ground. It wasn’t just the barbell that was heavy—it was the years of sitting, delaying, postponing, all bundled into that one lift.

Victory. Small fist pump. Slight limp out of the gym. Worth it.

For 2025, the goal is to lift 120 kilos. Will I get there? Maybe. Maybe not. But honestly, it’s no longer about the number. It’s about showing up for the process—sweaty, cranky, sore—and doing the work anyway.

What weight training taught me, in ways life hadn’t quite hammered home yet, is that success isn’t some grand, magical moment. It’s the boring, repetitive, almost annoying commitment to the fundamentals.

Take the deadlift. It looks simple—bend down, grab the bar, stand up. How hard can it be, right?

Turns out, very.

Deadlifting isn’t about yanking a bar up like you’re starting a stubborn lawnmower. It’s precision: centering yourself at the bar, planting your feet, fixing your gaze, taking a deep inhale like you’re about to dive into cold water. Arch the back—not too much, not too little. Fill your core with air until you feel like a human pressure cooker. Push the ground away with your legs, pull the bar toward you, and hope all the little moving parts inside you cooperate.

You don’t lift the barbell.

You lift Yourself

That’s when it hit me—this is life in a nutshell. Every project, every crisis, every damn Monday morning: same principles.

You have to center yourself. Breathe. Get the basics right before you even think of lifting the heavy stuff. You push the ground away with your legs—your base, your foundation—and pull the weight with your will.

There’s no substitute for that.

No fancy hack. No shortcut.

You either build the strength to lift your life, or you don’t.

And when you fail—and trust me, you will—it’s not because life was too heavy. It’s because the form and technique cracked somewhere.

When you deadlift wrong, your body tells you instantly. A tweak here, a pull there, and suddenly you’re googling “Can I live without a lower back?”

Life’s no different. Rush things, fake your stance, forget your core, and the damage is real.

Ajay keeps reminding me, in his delightfully annoying way: “It’s not about how much you lift. It’s about how you lift.”

And honestly, that one line deserves to be tattooed on every office wall, family WhatsApp group, and government policy.

Whether it’s a sumo deadlift (wider stance, shorter pull) or a rack pull (partial lift to focus on strength at the top), weight training breaks down big tasks into small, manageable parts. It’s about mastering where you are before you try going where you aren’t ready to be.

If that’s not life advice, I don’t know what is.

This discipline—the sheer boring beauty of it—has seeped into other parts of my life. I find myself breathing consciously before tough conversations. Centering myself before important meetings. Bracing my metaphorical core when things get unpredictable.

There’s a certain magic in knowing that you can carry your weight.

That your spine—real and metaphorical—can hold.

That you can ground yourself, push through, pull through, and stand up taller than when you started.

 

Of course, not every day is heroic. Some days the weights feel glued to the floor. Some days the bar feels like it has its own gravitational field.

Life, too, will have those days when just getting out of bed feels like trying to deadlift a small planet.

But the training teaches you:

You show up anyway.

You go through the form. You control what you can.

You pull. You push. You breathe. You stand.

Weight training hasn’t just made me physically stronger.

It has made me understand the deeper contract I have with myself: to carry my own weight, whatever it may be.

And to do it well. Not perfectly. But well enough to keep going, to keep lifting, to keep laughing through the sore muscles and the stubborn days.

The goal isn’t just lifting 120 kilos this year.

The goal is to keep lifting, period.