Ken Coleman reflects that effective workouts — and a well-lived life — require reaching exhaustion. He argues that pushing to the last fatigued reps maximizes muscle breakdown for growth and that daily life should similarly leave one "spent" mentally, spiritually, relationally, and physically after giving everything to family, work, and faith.
Chapters
I'm working out, I'm in the gym. And one of the things I'm learning is that a good workout is when you finish at exhaustion. A good quality workout is where those last two reps are almost sheer exhaustion. You're barely getting it up. And that was new to me. I didn't realize that, but it makes a lot of sense. And the idea is, is that if I'm exhausting the muscle, if I'm going to exhaust in the last two reps or everything I got left, then essentially I am maximizing that muscle growth by getting the most resistance, the most tear down of the musc so I can build back up in life too. I think that if you are getting at the end of the day and you got a bunch of energy and you can't hit the bed, then you need to change your life because you should be spent mentally, spiritually, relationally, physically. You should have nothing left. That's a life well lived. I don't mean to wear your fried, I mean like in that workout, that's an intentional workout. And then I got nothing left. And so I have given everything to my family, I've given everything to my job, I've given everything to my creator. You know, that's the idea.