The Resistance Is the Rep (Part 2 of 3)

In my last post, I talked about what lifting taught me about leading myself. How discipline, intention, and presence became tools—not just for the gym, but for my life.

But leadership isn’t a one-time breakthrough. It gets tested—daily.

When your mind tells you to quit.

When pain shows up before progress.

When the weight—literal or emotional—starts pressing back.

That’s where this next lesson was forged.

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In the Gym: Where It Started

Anyone who’s ever trained seriously knows the growth doesn’t begin with the bar moving. It begins the moment it wants to stop. The sticking point. The moment your legs shake under the bar. The point where you think, “I don’t know if I’ve got this.”

That’s the rep. Everything before that? That’s just warm-up.

I remember missing lifts, grinding out half-reps, feeling like I had no business going after that next plate. But I also remember the day I hit that ugly, slow, shaking PR—and it changed something in me.

Not because it looked clean.

But because I didn’t stop when everything inside me screamed to.

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Outside the Gym: Resistance Is Everywhere

I’ve felt that same resistance outside the gym too—worse, honestly.

Coming back from injury.

Losing my sense of identity after the military.

Going through days where motivation was dead and copious amounts of caffeine was the only gear I had.

At first, I treated resistance in life the same way I used to treat it in lifting: something to push past, power through, or avoid altogether. Just grind harder. Just go numb and outwork it.

But that doesn’t work forever.

Eventually, the pain leaks in.

The progress stalls.

The cost adds up.

What changed was this: I stopped trying to escape resistance, and started learning from it.

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The Shift

Resistance is feedback.

It shows you where your weak points are. Where you’re growing. Where you’re still alive and in the fight. It hurts, yes—but so does strength training. And like time under tension builds muscle, time under struggle builds resolve.

I started noticing the shift not just in training, but in how I moved through the rest of life:

• I leaned into therapy instead of numbing out.

• I took more responsibility for how I handled stress.

• I stopped seeing discomfort as failure and started seeing it as friction—necessary growth.

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The Real Rep

What I’ve come to believe is this:

The resistance is the rep.

Not the result.

Not the clean PR.

Not the highlight moment.

The part where you’re trembling, unsure, questioning everything—that’s the part that counts.

We don’t grow in the comfort zone.

We grow in the space between the reps—where the pain shows up and we choose to keep moving anyway.

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The Series Continues

This is part two in a three-part series on the lessons lifting taught me about life.

Part three drops soon.

And if you’re in the middle of your own heavy rep—keep pressing.

You might be closer to growth than you think.