Why Strength Builds Confidence

2 days ago
9 min read

There are moments when you suddenly notice that something you used to do without thinking now requires a little more thought. You hesitate before carrying the heavy box downstairs. You wonder whether you can lift the suitcase into the overhead compartment. Getting up from the floor feels less automatic than it once did. Maybe you hand someone else the stubborn jar or think twice before taking on a project that involves climbing a ladder, moving furniture, or spending the afternoon working in the yard.

None of these moments seems particularly important on its own. They are simply small negotiations with your body. But as those negotiations accumulate, they can begin changing something beyond what you physically do. They can influence what you believe you are capable of doing. That is where a conversation about muscle unexpectedly becomes a conversation about confidence.

Confidence Likes Evidence

We often talk about confidence as though it begins entirely in the mind. Believe in yourself. Think positively. Stop doubting yourself. Be more confident. Those ideas can be useful, but they overlook something important about how confidence actually develops.

Psychologists use the term self-efficacy to describe our belief in our ability to accomplish a particular task or handle a particular situation. One of the strongest ways that belief develops is remarkably straightforward: we successfully do something.¹ Instead of trying to convince yourself that you’re capable, you have an experience that demonstrates it.

Think about what happens when you lift something that once felt heavy, complete a few more repetitions than you could a month ago, carry all the groceries inside without needing to stop, or stand up from the floor without pushing against the furniture. None of those accomplishments is likely to transform your life in the moment. But each provides your brain with a small piece of evidence: I can do this.

That message is different from encouragement. Encouragement asks you to believe something about yourself; accomplishment gives you a reason to believe it. Research examining physical activity and self-efficacy has found that these successful physical experiences—often called mastery experiences—can strengthen people’s belief in their own capabilities.² Strength training provides an especially interesting setting for this because progress can become remarkably tangible. Resistance that felt difficult several weeks ago becomes manageable. A movement that felt unfamiliar becomes comfortable. Your body is providing evidence that something has changed, and your mind gets to witness it.

Your Body Quietly Teaches Your Brain

Imagine someone beginning a basic strength program at 55. During the first few workouts, nearly everything may feel uncertain. They are thinking about where their feet should go, whether they can lift the weight, whether they’re doing the movement correctly, and perhaps whether everyone else in the room can tell that they don’t know what they’re doing. Even simple exercises can make someone feel surprisingly vulnerable when the experience is unfamiliar.

Then, gradually, the experience changes. The exercises become familiar. The weights begin moving more easily. Five repetitions become eight. Getting out of a low chair starts feeling different. A bag of mulch that once required help can suddenly be moved across the yard without much thought. What began as deliberate training starts showing up in ordinary life.

Those changes aren’t confined to the muscles involved. The person now possesses experiences that contradict an older assumption about themselves. Something they thought would be difficult wasn’t. Something they couldn’t do before is now possible. Something they assumed was simply part of getting older turns out to be changeable.

That matters because we don’t experience aging only through birthdays. We also experience it through changing perceptions of our own capability. When the list of things we hesitate to do begins growing, it can quietly narrow the way we see ourselves. Research in older adults has found relationships among physical activity, exercise self-efficacy, and perceptions of control.³ Becoming stronger can introduce a very different experience into that process. Instead of repeatedly noticing what feels harder than it used to, you begin noticing that there are still things you can improve.

The Mirror Isn’t the Only Measure

For decades, strength training has often been marketed through appearance. Bigger arms, flatter stomachs, more defined muscles and dramatic before-and-after photographs have shaped the way many people think about lifting weights. It is understandable, then, that we might assume any increase in confidence comes primarily from becoming happier with what we see in the mirror.

There may be some truth to that. Research suggests resistance training can improve several dimensions of body image for some people, although the strength and quality of that evidence varies.⁴ But appearance tells only part of the story, and perhaps not even the most interesting part for someone moving through middle age and beyond.

Consider the confidence that comes simply from feeling physically useful. You can carry something that needs carrying. You can push yourself up from the ground. Your legs feel dependable underneath you. You feel steady while navigating stairs, uneven ground, luggage, groceries, grandchildren, yard work, travel and all the other physical demands hidden inside ordinary life. Those experiences don’t require anyone else to notice that you’ve changed.

There doesn’t need to be a compliment, a smaller clothing size or a dramatic transformation photograph. Capability can be private evidence. For someone who has spent years thinking, I’m getting older, so I suppose this is just what happens now, becoming stronger introduces another possibility: Maybe I am still adaptable. That realization reaches considerably further than the number written on the side of a dumbbell.

Strength Can Change the Question

When people begin feeling less physically capable, everyday situations can slowly become questions. Can I get down there and get back up? Can I keep up with everyone? Can I carry that? Can I travel comfortably? Can I do this without hurting myself? None of those questions necessarily means the person has actually lost the ability. Sometimes uncertainty arrives before inability does.

That uncertainty can influence behavior. We may start avoiding an activity because we’re no longer sure we can handle it, and avoiding it means we never get the opportunity to discover whether our assumption was correct. Over time, the world can become a little smaller without there ever being a conscious decision to make it smaller.

Researchers have observed a version of this relationship in studies involving balance and falls. Fear of falling can contribute to activity restriction among older adults, while exercise interventions can improve measures of balance confidence alongside physical function.⁵ The important point isn’t simply that stronger muscles make certain tasks easier. Feeling more capable may also influence whether we’re willing to attempt those tasks in the first place.

Think about how different those two experiences are. One person encounters a staircase and immediately evaluates whether they can manage it. Another simply starts climbing. One looks at a heavy box and searches for someone to help. Another decides to see whether they can move it. The physical difference between those people matters, but so does the expectation each person carries into the situation.

Strength can begin changing that expectation.

You Don’t Need to Become “Strong”

There is an easy trap hiding inside any conversation about strength. Someone reads the word and immediately pictures a person who already looks athletic, confidently lifting heavy weights in a gym. If that becomes our definition of strength, most people will decide the conversation isn’t about them before they’ve even started.

But confidence doesn’t require reaching somebody else’s definition of strong. It develops through recognizing changes relative to your own starting point. For one person, progress might mean adding weight to a squat. For another, it might mean standing from a chair without using their hands. Someone returning from years of inactivity may feel genuinely different after discovering they can carry two grocery bags instead of one. Another person may simply realize that stairs don’t command the same attention anymore.

The psychological value lives partly in the contrast between what you believed you could do and what you just discovered you can do. That makes the starting point important. If everything were already easy, there would be nothing new for you to discover about yourself.

Perhaps that’s why small physical accomplishments can sometimes feel disproportionately satisfying. The accomplishment isn’t only the repetition, the weight or the movement. For a moment, you’ve encountered an old assumption about yourself and produced evidence that it may no longer be true.

What Strength Really Gives You

Resistance exercise has been associated with benefits beyond physical strength, including reductions in symptoms of anxiety and depression across a variety of adult populations.⁶˒⁷ Those findings deserve attention, but they shouldn’t be turned into a promise that lifting weights will solve every difficult feeling. Mental health is far more complicated than that, and confidence itself can be influenced by countless experiences beyond exercise.

What strength can provide is something more concrete: repeated opportunities to experience yourself succeeding. Today you lift something that you couldn’t lift before. Weeks later, something in everyday life feels easier. Eventually, you may notice that you’re approaching physical challenges differently—not because you deliberately decided to become more confident, but because your recent experiences have given you a different expectation of what your body can handle.

Maybe you volunteer to carry the box instead of waiting for someone else. You get onto the floor without calculating how you’ll get back up. You take the stairs without giving them much thought. You agree to the activity instead of wondering whether you’ll be able to keep up. None of those moments announces that your confidence has changed. You simply begin behaving like someone who expects their body to be capable.

And that may be the deeper relationship between strength and confidence. We often assume we need confidence first—that believing in ourselves is what allows us to attempt difficult things. Strength gives us another route. Sometimes we do the difficult thing, discover that we’re capable of more than we expected, and allow our perception of ourselves to catch up with the evidence.

Sometimes confidence isn’t something you have to find. It’s something you build proof for.

Did You Catch It? (Answer Below)

What is one reason becoming physically stronger may help build confidence?

A. Stronger people naturally become more outgoing

B. Physical progress can provide evidence that you are capable of improving

C. Strength eliminates uncertainty about getting older

D. Other people tend to notice physical changes

Catch Yourself Being Capable

Sometime in the next 24 hours, watch for one ordinary physical task that you complete without much thought. It could be carrying groceries, getting up from the floor, moving something around the house, climbing stairs, opening a stubborn container, working in the yard, or simply keeping up during a busy day.

When it happens, don’t turn it into a test. Just take a second to register it: My body allowed me to do that. Then keep watching throughout the week.

What to Notice

Pay particular attention to moments when you almost ask for help, avoid something, or assume a task will be difficult. What happens when you try it?

You might also notice the opposite: something that used to require effort now feels surprisingly ordinary. Those moments are especially easy to miss because once our bodies become capable of something, we tend to stop thinking about it.

There is nothing to count and no goal to reach. You’re simply looking for evidence of what your body already helps you accomplish—and perhaps a few places where you’d like to become more capable.

What You Might Discover

We tend to notice our bodies when something hurts, feels difficult, or doesn’t work the way we’d like. This week offers a chance to notice the other side of that relationship. You may find that capability has been quietly showing up in your life far more often than you’ve been giving yourself credit for—and once you begin noticing it, you may start seeing strength a little differently.

Did You Catch It Answer:

B. Confidence can grow through mastery experiences—moments when successfully doing something gives you evidence of your own capability. Strength provides opportunities to experience that firsthand: something that once felt difficult becomes easier, reminding you that your abilities aren’t necessarily fixed.

References:

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McAuley E, Szabo A, Gothe N, Olson EA. Self-efficacy: implications for physical activity, function, and functional limitations in older adults. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2011;5(4):361-369.
Neupert SD, Lachman ME, Whitbourne SB. Exercise self-efficacy and control beliefs: effects on exercise behavior after an exercise intervention for older adults. J Aging Phys Act. 2009;17(1):1-16.
SantaBarbara NJ, Whitworth JW, Ciccolo JT. A systematic review of the effects of resistance training on body image. J Strength Cond Res. 2017;31(10):2880-2888.
Liu-Ambrose T, Khan KM, Eng JJ, Janssen PA, Lord SR, McKay HA. Resistance and agility training reduce fall risk in women aged 75 to 85 with low bone mass: a 6-month randomized, controlled trial. J Am Geriatr Soc.2004;52(5):657-665.
Gordon BR, McDowell CP, Lyons M, et al. The effects of resistance exercise training on anxiety: a meta-analysis and meta-regression analysis of randomized controlled trials. Sports Med. 2017;47(12):2521-2532.
Gordon BR, McDowell CP, Hallgren M, Meyer JD, Lyons M, Herring MP. Association of efficacy of resistance exercise training with depressive symptoms: meta-analysis and meta-regression analysis of randomized clinical trials. JAMA Psychiatry. 2018;75(6):566-576.