This is going to be a long one, mainly directed at those of you who are new here, or for those who aren't getting what they know they can.

If there is one thing TheRedPill community is known for, it is known for putting the importance of lifting over almost everything else. We also get a lot of flak for this, because a lot of people who don't actually understand the benefits of lifting say that we tell people to lift and everything else will fix itself, and to an outsider, the confusion is understandable; there can't possibly be ONE thing you can do that will magically fix your problems.

And guess what? They're right.

Lifting will not automatically fix all your problems. Don't expect after the first time you lift that your approach anxiety is going to vanish and you're going to start banging 10's. But, after a few weeks you will begin to experience the indirect benefits that lifting provides; increased motivation and drive. With these, everything else will be extremely easy to get into place, and in many cases, lifting will naturally give you boosts you don't really need to "manually" work on. Your confidence will increase, frame will become easier to hold, social anxiety will naturally decrease, your desire to partake in other activities that will aid in your development that may not have been enjoyable to do before, will become something you strive to do, your posture will improve, eye contact becomes a breeze; the list goes on and on.

I'm a 19 year old in my freshman year of college and have known of TRP for the past 3-4 years, yet have had immensely low success in almost all aspects it aims to improve. I've known of the benefits of lifting since I learned of the pill, but due to a combination of having limited access to a weight room coupled with more than enough excuses to last a life time, my high school years were nothing like they could've been, and in college, I vowed to change that. A few days before I was to move in, a very serious medical condition was discovered and until I could have surgery, I was barred from most physical activity, including lifting. I had surgery in mid-December and was recovered by early January and began lifting a few weeks later. I was very apprehensive to start and was nervous about going into the gym and being seen starting all of my exercises with just the empty bar. As someone who hadn't done any serious level of physical activity since the end of my senior year, and also had little experience lifting, I decided to start with StrongLifts 5x5, so I could have a structured and straightforward way of building strength. At the time of writing, I have just finished my third week, but I can tell you things are different now. Rather than getting nervous about going into the gym like I had the first time, I get very excited about going, and wish our bodies could rebuild muscle in just a few hours so that I could go everyday.

One of the most satisfying feelings that I experience now, is opening the StrongLifts app, looking at the graph page and literally seeing my improvement. As stated earlier, I have just finished my third week of the program and still have a long way to go, but being able to go from being nervous about what people would say that I'm benching only the bar, to getting pumped every time I go to the gym, is a great feeling.

THAT, is the essence and importance of lifting. Being able to get excited about something that will constantly make you a better version of who you are, and reaping all of the benefits it provides, is something that you have to witness firsthand. In time, you will begin to notice yourself change. With this newly invigorated sense of motivation and drive to improve, you will start to build levels of confidence you thought were never possible, start conversations with people you previously never had the balls to do, wake up with a more positive mood everyday and start to engage in things and activities that will positively affect you. You start caring about yourself to a degree you never had imagined you would before, while also no longer giving a fuck about what others think.

One of the hardest things about the pill is finding the motivation to get started with it all, to go talk to that girl you've been eyeing up, to get out of bed before the sun does, to workout multiple times a week, to start eating healthy, to put the damn Xbox controller down and get off your ass. It's hard as hell to find the energy to start these things and stick to them, we both know that. But trust me when I say that lifting is the key ingredient that you've been missing. Do me a solid and make starting StrongLifts you're number one priority next week. You only have to go to the gym three times a week, and the starting weights should only really keep you in there for about half an hour (the time will increase to 45 minutes to an hour as the weights increase). If you're in high school or college, you will have free access to a weight room, so you have no legitimate excuse to say you can't go. Take my word for it and know that no one will give a tenth of a shit that you are squatting only 45 pounds, and even if they do, that person isn't worth a tenth of a second of your time. Go in, get focused, hit it as hard as you can, then continue on with your day. Keep with this schedule and in a few weeks, your entire world will change. Sounds too metaphorical or too good to be true? Just do me that solid and stick with it for a few weeks and I guarantee you'll never look back.

Moral of the story: lifting will put you on the path to greatness and will ignite the flame inside of you that you never could before figure out how to light. It won't do everything for you by itself, but will give you the energy and drive you need to fill in what it isn't able to naturally.

Tl;dr: Fucking lift already!!! Stop making up BS excuses and just do it. Also, download the StrongLifts 5x5 app (Apple and Android are both supported) if you are new to lifting or haven't in a long time and wish to get a very simple way to get (back) into it. Also, even though the app is free, buy the $10 Power Pack for the app. It will add a lot of great functionality to it, will support a great guy for making such an awesome tool and will be greatly beneficial to you for at least 3 months, probably more, until you are ready to graduate to a more advanced program.

Edit: People are clearly not liking my endorsement of StrongLifts very much, for reasons mainly along the lines that it isn't effective as other programs or doesn't deliver great results. I completely agree that it isn't going to make you huge (or in many cases will change your physique very little), but my recommendation is due to how simple and structured the program is put together, how it's a great way to perfect your form with weights that aren't going to kill you right off the bat and will definitely give you measureable strength increases if you've never lifted before or haven't in a very long time (such was my case). The idea is that after the first 12 weeks or so, you move onto something more advanced such as GSLP or PHUL/PHAT to really get you to start seeing size gains. The portion of telling people to go out and start with StrongLifts could've been made more general, but being as this post was written mostly for new people here or folks who have never lifted before, I wanted to get the idea across that you really just need to go out and start with something, and being that lifting can be very intimidating when you first start, StrongLifts will "hold your hand" in a sense, until you can figure out what you get the basics figured out and start customizing/modifying other, more complex programs to suit your needs.