Does Lifting Weights Make You Smarter?

Beast-like strength.  A humongous, visually stunning physique.  Explosive power for sports.  Weight training has numerous benefits, but here’s one you might not have considered: lifting weights makes you smarter.

There’s a ton of evidence to directly support that claim, as well as the more general: exercise makes animals smarter (their brains work better) and more effective at navigating their environments (their bodies work better).

What about specific, practical evidence of this revelation?  Actually, why should it be considered a ‘revolution’?  It’s pretty clear that the mind and body work together.  Until very recently, we relied almost entirely upon our physical prowess for survival in the wild.

Here’s a really easy example from my life:  I fall down a lot less and am generally able to perform both delicate and more brutish placement of objects now than I was before I started training.  In English: I’m better at moving and manipulating objects in space than I was before I started lifting weights.  My numbers in the five main barbell lifts plus dumbbell and kettlebell variations, really every single movement I do now is stronger, and the process of moving these weights has both physically and mentally prepared me to more carefully move (objects) through space.

So lifting heavy shit makes me stronger and more coordinated, both because my body is better capable of holding and moving things, and that my mind goes through a sort of checklist (shoulders tight, thumb over the bar, valsalva, sit back . . . bend over while standing on your left foot, twist your torso over the dryer corner, use the wooden spoon to bat those treats back toward the front).

That last example is a good one, cos it shows that although I’m certain that weight training has been instrumental in this progress, I also realize that by using good form (read: the appropriate amount of full ROM work, which can vary greatly depending on experience) and the mobility work I do every workout has kept me basically injury free (although two of the callouses on my left hand tore off during a record rack pull today).

Then again, my martial arts instructor was impressed with my ability to consistently roll out of throws and fall practice where I appeared to be in major neck-injury-risk territory.  I probably owe that to all the hours I spent in the back yard and my basement wrestling with friends.  But I played literally thousands of hours of basketball in college, and there’s definitely a difference over the past couple of years.  I have studied weight training and nutrition far more than I ever listened to my coaches as a kid, so that probably has something to do with it too.  In effect, weight training has taught me to slow down, organize and prioritize my plan for action, and achieve the goal by adding confidence to my physical performance on par with my intellect.  I sound like a frickin douche bag if you read that wrong, but I hope you understand that I’m a work in progress and this is just a little something I want to pass along to the readers: recognize that the step-by-step processes in weight training can boost your ability in pretty much every single thing you go to do.