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People often give up too soon when they’re trying to learn a new skill.
They don’t realize that it takes time and practice to get good at anything.
With weightlifting, for example, it’s not uncommon to feel like you’re not making any progress.
But if you stick with it and keep practicing, you’ll start seeing results.
These 111 motivational weightlifting quotes will inspire you to keep going even when the going gets tough.
Table of Contents
111 Motivational Weightlifting Quotes
“Each workout is like a brick in a building, and everytime you go in there and do a half ass workout, you’re not laying a brick down. Somebody else is.”
Dorian Yates
“Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but don’t nobody wanna lift no heavy ass weight.”
Ronnie Coleman
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
Mahatma Ghandi
“When you push past the pain that’s when you find out what you are truly made of.”
Rob Dial
“Most champions are built by punch the clock workouts rather than extraordinary efforts.”
Dan John
“The resistance that you fight physically in the gym and the resistance that you fight in life can only build a strong character.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Training Gives us an outlet for suppressed energies created by stress and thus tones the spirit just as exercise conditions the body.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Just remember, somewhere, a little chinese girl is warming up with your max.”
Jim Conroy
“You have to push past your perceived limits, push past that point you thought was as far as you can go.”
Drew Brees
“So much of lifting heavy weights is mental and having the confidence to push yourself to new levels is critical.”
Steve Kuclo
“Weight lifting is about lifting the impossible, overcoming the unachievable.
If you don’t lift things that are hard, and only do things that you can do, it’s only going to get boring.
Unless you want to lift beyond your limits to get stronger, to achieve new goals, and to be satsified, you got to lift past these challenges, and still lift the things you think are impossible to really understand how your true strength will show.
Lift how I lift, see how I lift, watch how I lift, learn how I lift, and your true strength will come forth and be revealed.”
Chasers Holmes
“Hard work and training. There’s no secret formula. I lift heavy, work hard, and aim to be the best.”
Ronnie Coleman
“What makes a weightlifting program successful? Your hard work and dedication.”
Greg Everett
“I do it as a therapy. I do it as something to keep me alive. We all need a little discipline. Exercise is my discipline.”
Jack LaLanne
“Some people are born to lift heavy weights, some are born to juggle golden balls.”
Max Beerbohm
“Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.”
Lou Holtz
“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”
Socrates
“I dedicate myself and work hard in the weight room and treat every practice as if it were a game.”
Adrian Peterson
“Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.”
John F. Kennedy
“Most powerlifters share some common defects, as a whole for whatever reason, love to punish, beat, and torture ourselves beyond the limits of mind and body. It is our spirit that prevails.
This defect of intelligience and sensibility pushes us onto the next level. Makes us better and stronger.
We all have lifted sick and badly hurt.
When this subject comes up with normal people and other meatheads, we all have the prideful smile when we talk about lifting with a 100 degree temperature or a torn groin.
Thank god that therapy doesn’t work on us.”
Kirk Karwoski
“If you’re training hard and heavy with the goal of lifting something awesome, something is always going to hurt.
Whether it’s your wrists, elbows, knees, hamstring, or even something ridiculous like a serratus muscle, one bodypart or another is always going to be giving you some bullshit.
The elite athletes train in spite of or around those injuries.
Sometimes they get worse, sometimes they get better, and sometimes they just get supplanted by another recalcitrant bodypart.
Any way you cut it, something’s always going to be bothering you.
Suck it the f*** up and keep going.”
Jamie Lewis
“Physical fitness can neither be acquired by wishful thinking nor by outright purchase.”
Joseph Pilates
“Don’t be scared to lift heavy! You won’t get huge and bulky, you’ll get amazing results.”
Jessie Hilgenberg
“Working chest, delts, tris, and biceps works approximately 10% of your overall lean body mass.
Working hard on deadlifts (bent legged, trap bar, or sumo) or squatting (not necessarily at the same time) works more like 70% of your musculature at once and sends a strong message to your body to get better at growing now!”
Wesley Silveira
“My strength did not come from lifting weights. My strength came from lifting myself up when I was knocked down.”
Bob Moore
“I always won in my imagination. I always hit the game winning shot, or I hit the free throw. Or if I missed, there was a lane violation, and I was given another one.”
Mike Krzyzewski
“The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion.
That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“If you think lifting weights is dangerous, try being weak. Being weak is dangerous.”
Bret Contreras
“Heavy lifting doesen’t need to be heavy spending if we do the job right.”
Buzz Aldrin
“Discipline is the bridge between your bodybuilding goals and bodybuilding success.”
Felicity Luckey
“If you start lifting weights, you will expect to put weight on, as muscle is heavier than fat.
But you have to look more at your body shape, you will get heavier, but you might get smaller and heavier at the same time, which is fine.
And it doesen’t really matter what you weigh as long as you are happy with your shape and size.”
Victoria Pendleton
“It’s all about mechanics; all the weight-lifting in the world can’t help if you’re not running correctly.”
Ron Bramlett
“The only place success comes before hard work is in the dictionary.”
Vince Lombardi
“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.”
Jim Rohn
“Excuses don’t burn calories.”
Anonymous
“When you hit failure your workout has just begun.”
Ronnie Coleman
“To feel strong, to walk amongst humans with a tremendous feeling of confidence and superiority is not at all wrong.
The sense of superiority in bodily strength is borne out by the long history of mankind paying homage in folkore, song and poetry to strong men.”
Fredrick Hatfield
“Forget mistakes. Forget failure. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day.”
Will Durant
“Keep your blood clean, your body lean, and your mind sharp.”
Henry Rollins
“Your health account, your bank account, they’re the same thing. The more you put in, the more you can take out. Exercise is king and nutrition is queen. Together you have a kingdom.”
Jack LaLanne
“I always felt that my greatest asset was not my physical ability, it was my mental ability.”
Bruce Jenner
“You have to remember something. Everybody pities the weak. Jealousy you have to earn.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“I’m the strongest bodybuilder who ever lived, I think.”
Franco Columbo
“Some people like to live without too much risk. They’re satisfied leading a safe existence.
This attidude of caution infiltrates into their goals. Every successful athlete, or business person, enjoys taking calculated risks.
You have to.
Especially in the gym when you’re squatting 500 for reps and you can’t get one more, but grunt out ten.
Your nose starts bleeding, you fall into the rack, and that’s set one.”
Tom Platz
“If I listened to my instincts. I’d be down at the pub chasing women, not under a 400 pound bar squatting.”
Dorian Yates
“The single biggest mistake that most beginners make is putting 100% of their effort into the positive part of the rep, while paying no attention to the negative segment.”
Dorian Yates
“Don’t be afraid to fail or look like a fool. These are necessary milestones on your way to the top.”
Louie Simmons
“Don’t have $100 shoes and a 10 cent squat.”
Louie Simmons
“There are grass eaters and lions who’ll eat the grass eaters.”
Louie Simmons
“You can have results or excuses. Not both.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“My instinct was to win, eliminate anyone who is in competition, destroy my enemy, and move on without any kind of hesitation at all.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“As a kid I always idolized the winning athletes. It is one thing to idolize heroes.
It is quite another to visualize yourself in their place. When I saw great people, I said to myself, I can be there.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“I started lifting heavy weights and became addicted to it and before I knew it I won the title of the worlds strongest man which is very cool.”
Brian Shaw
“If something stands between you and your success, move it! Never be denied.”
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson
“Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there.”
Bo Jackson
“Intensity builds immensity.”
Kevin Levrone
“Bodybuilding isn’t 90 minutes in the gym. It’s a lifestyle.”
Lee Priest
“Skill is only developed by hours and hours of work.”
Usain Bolt
“If I have to die tonight, if this weight is going to kill me tonight, so be it! I’m dying where I wanna be.”
Kai Greene
“I never think about losing.”
Lou Ferrigno
“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Mediocre athletes that tried like hell to get good are the best coaches.”
Mark Rippetoe
“They can crack jokes. They can sit back and analyze and criticize and make all the fun they want. But I’m living my life, I’m doing it. What are you doing?”
Kai Greene
“The road to nowhere is paved with excuses.”
Mark Bell
“15 minutes a day! Give me just this and i’ll prove I can make you a new man.”
Charles Atlas
“Tough times don’t last. Tough people do.”
Robert H. Schuller
“The application of consistent, logical effort, over a prolonged period is the key to reaching your physical muscular potential.”
Craig Cecil
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
Ayn Rand
“The wolf on the hill is not as hungry as the wolf climbing the hill.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“A champion is someone who gets up when they can’t.”
Jack Dempsey
“I have found the iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.”
Henry Rollins
“In my weight lifting I am trying to show that if you pray and meditate, you can bring to the fore your inner strength. Now, if somebody is really inwardly strong, he is always at peace.”
Sri Chinmoy
“The chief difference between big-game fishing and weight lifting is that weightlifters never clutter up their library walls with stuffed barbells.”
Ed Zern
“Thinking is like exercise, it requires consistency and rigor. Like barbells in a weight lifting room, the classics force us to either put them down or exert our minds. They require us to think.”
Oliver DeMille
“I do not compete with anybody else; I compete only with myself. You saw my capacity a few minutes ago.
Now I am competing with myself. When I do weight lifting, my body is my world.
If I can improve myself, if I can go beyond my previous achievements, then that is my goal.
My own previous record is always what I am competing with.”
Sri Chinmoy
“Once you have commitment, you need the discipline and hard work to get you there.”
Haile Gebrselassie
“Strength is the product of struggle, you must do what others don’t to achieve what others won’t.”
Henry Rollins
“Self-belief and hard work will always earn you success.”
Virat Kohli
“If you’re capable of sending a legible text message between sets, you probably aren’t working hard enough.”
Dave Tate
“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”
Lance Armstrong
“Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible.”
Frank L. Gaines
“If you have discipline, drive, and determination, nothing is impossible.”
Dana Linn Bailey
“He who says he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right.”
Confucious
“If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life.
There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”
Bruce Lee
“Dream more than others think practical. Expect more than others think possible. Care more than others think wise.”
Howard Schultz
“Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.”
Henry Ford
“Gold medals are made out of sweat, blood, and tears, and effort in the gym everyday.
Gabby Douglas
“Courage is looking fear right in the eye and saying, “get the hell out of my way, i’ve got things to do.”
Unkown
“Compared to the challenges of raising an autistic child, weight lifting is a relief.”
Melanie Roach
“I attend to my fitness. I go to the gym every day and try to maintain my physical fitness; without that, it is tough to take challenges on the chess board.”
Viswanathan Anand
“Passion trumps everything.”
Dave Tate
“Get off the treadmill of consumption, replication, and mediocrity. Begin lifting the weights of creativity, originality, and success.”
Ryan Lilly
“Don’t ask for a light load, but rather ask for a strong back.”
Unknown
“Intensity is just another word for pain. You should feel that intensity every time you pick up a weight.
If I don’t feel the sensation of this intensity down to my bones, I know that I have to increase my focus and weight. It gives me great satisfaction.”
Claude Groulx (sportsfeelgoodstories.com)
“Good is the enemy of great. Greatness is reserved for the truly hungry.”
Phil Heath
“Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.”
Kevin Durant
“To enjoy the glow of good health, you must exercise.”
Gene Tunney
“My workouts are based on very heavy, fast movements using weights, the science behind it being that the faster you move a weight, the more fast-twitch fibers you rip and then repair.”
Eddie Hall (wealthygorilla.com)
“There is no such thing as overtraining, just under nutrition and under sleeping.”
The Barbarian Brothers
“There is no reason to be alive if you can’t do the deadlift!”
Jon Pall Sigmarsson
“It’s a brand new day and it’s time to lift some heavy ass weights!”
Gym Quotes
“Bodybuilding saved my life because I overcame the nerd stage. I got picked on.
I was fascinated with power, and then I decided to take that direction because I knew that would make me feel good about myself.”
Lou Ferrigno
“I don’t do this to be healthy, I do this to get big muscles.”
Markus Ruhl
“Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.”
John Wooden
“I’m not the kind of guy who tries to run between the drops. Sometimes you gotta get a little wet to reach your destination.”
Erik Fankhouser
“Biceps are like ornaments on a christmas tree.”
Ed Coan
“Sell yourself short on nutrition and you’re selling yourself short on maximizing your physique development.”
Ernie Taylor
“My old routine was McDonald’s on the way to the gym, coffee during my workout, Burger King and Copenhagen post workout.”
Dave Tate
“If a man tells you he doesn’t lift because he doesn’t want to get too bulky, then his testicles have been removed.”
Paul Carter
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumpth of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“If you aren’t begging for rest. Then you aren’t training your best.”
Unknown
Lifting weights is a challenging and rewarding sport that can help you achieve great things both physically and mentally.
As you start your weightlifting journey, it’s important to have the right mindset and stay motivated.
I’ve collected some of my favorite motivational weightlifting quotes to help keep you on track.
Quotes like these can inspire you to push yourself harder and achieve your goals.
So next time you’re feeling down or doubting yourself, read through this list of quotes and remember why you started lifting weights in the first place.
And check out my other list of inspirational weightlifting quotes to inspire you!
Weight Lifting Motivation Video
Weight lifting and achieving powerlifting or bodybuilding success takes consistent hard work, along with extreme discipline and dedication.
Sometimes getting some motivation to refuel your discipline levels is required.
This particular video is over eight minutes long and features some truly incredible weight-lifting footage.
But it’s not just the raw strength on display that makes this video so motivating – it’s also the heart and dedication of the people involved.
Throughout the video, we see various athletes overcoming obstacles, pushing themselves to their limits, and ultimately achieving their goals.
It’s an inspiring sight, and it’s sure to leave you feeling motivated to achieve your own weight-lifting goals.
So if you need a little motivation, make sure to check out this amazing video.
It just might be the push you need to reach your full potential.
