It Doesn’t Get Lighter, We Get Stronger

I was hanging onto the bar, feeling my grip give out.

It wasn’t just my grip, though — my arms and back had nothing left. No strength to pull me up. I felt like I was holding on for dear life, but gravity wasn’t going to let me win this one.

Thankfully, I was just at the gym, hanging off the pull-up bar. My feet could touch the ground. It wasn’t like I was dangling from a tree 30 feet in the air.

The moment I stepped away from the bar, I realized exactly what had happened. I’d made a serious miscalculation. Now, my usual pull-day routine starts with deadlifts, followed by pull-ups, then dumbbell rows, and finally curls. That order works. But lately, finishing with curls had been brutal. By the time I got to them, my arms were wrecked. My whole body was fatigued, making curls feel like a full-body effort just to finish the sets.

So I thought, “Let’s mix it up this time. Do curls earlier, save pull-ups for last. That’ll make things easier.”

Turns out, I was both right and very, very wrong.

Deadlifts? Nailed them. Even went up 10 pounds on my work set. Dumbbell rows? Crushed it. Curls? Honestly, they felt amazing. I was knocking them out and thinking, “I could probably push for two more reps per set.”

Then I walked over to the pull-up bar, full of confidence — and reality hit me like a freight train. I couldn’t even do one rep.

As I stood there reflecting on what went wrong, it hit me: I was looking for an easier way to get the same results. I wanted to avoid the grind — the pain, the struggle of pushing through heavy weight. I thought rearranging the order would make it all easier. And sure, it did for curls. But pull-ups? They showed me no mercy.

Here’s the thing about lifting: there’s no shortcut around the hard. Muscles grow under stress. They need to be broken down and rebuilt stronger. And honestly, life works the same way.

If we want to grow, we have to face the hard head-on. It’s in the struggle, in the moments when we don’t feel capable or confident, that we grow the most. It’s in those reps where we feel like we’re failing that we’re actually building strength.

The same principle apply to buying apartments and investing in commercial real estate. It’s hard to find a deal. It’s hard and can feel terrifying to raise capital. It’s hard for this, hard for that. It’s hard.

But life. is. hard.

The funny part? As we lean into the hard, it’s weird…The weight at the gym doesn’t get lighter. We just get stronger. The pressures in work, business, and life? They don’t ease up either. But over time, we increase our capacity to handle more.

We can handle heavier weight. We can handle another deal. We can handle another call with an investor. We can handle another capital raise.

It does’t get easier, we get stronger.

If you’re ready to get stronger in real estate, let’s talk. If I can do it, you can to.