Beyond the Physical: The Enduring Power and Meaning of Muscles

"Flex your muscle."

From as early as five years old, I knew I had to stretch out my arm and contract my bicep. My father, passing by the room, would squeeze my arm and laugh. "Very good," he would say. Then he flexed his own muscle and asked, "Am I in shape or what?" It became a familiar family joke.

My father, who moved from Hong Kong to New York in his early twenties during the late 1960s, was more of a Bruce Lee devotee than a Jack LaLanne fan. Yet, for years he was a dedicated student of what I call the Muscle Academy. From practicing judo, taekwondo (earning a brown belt), and karate (black belt), to immersing himself in American training culture—watching bodybuilding competitions on TV, subscribing to Muscle & Fitness magazine, and sketching famous athletes. By day, he was a professional artist who, among many achievements, designed the advertising posters for the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo for ABC, glorifying athletes as modern-day gods on Earth. Above my bed in our Long Island home, I hung my favorite from that series: a figure skater captured mid-spin, all fury and speed.

Our home always had a makeshift gym stocked with a varied collection of weights, hand grippers, pull-up bars, as well as martial arts weapons like nunchaku and chaku sticks, jump ropes, and heavy punching bags. For as long as I remember, my brother and I were drafted to join our father’s workouts. A recently unearthed Polaroid shows us incredibly tiny in diapers, only a year apart, standing next to our impressively fit father in swim trunks, all proudly smiling with arms raised in superhero poses. It was 1979, the height of the Superman movie craze. We only needed three capes to complete the look. "Am I in shape or what?"

Every afternoon in the garage, the three of us moved in unison: front kicks, side kicks, spinning kicks. Our father asked us to hold his legs as he did sit-ups, or my brother and I would hang from his biceps like baby monkeys while he lifted and swung us around. After dinner, under the yellow glow of neighborhood streetlamps, we accompanied him on nightly jogs to the parking lot behind our pediatrician’s office, a mile and a half away. We chased fireflies—and our father.

Exercise was fun in our household because my father was a perpetual child himself, delighting in play. Certainly, there was some vanity involved. With a vivid imagination, as he shaped us into miniature versions of himself, he reveled in the fantasy of living forever through us, his modest experiment in immortality. "Pick a sport," he said. We first tried soccer, which didn’t stick, then swimming, which did.

What did we learn from this early training as children? That being strong was a good thing for both of us. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the physical education my brother and I received from our father was that he trained us equally, regardless of size, age, or gender. He pitted us against each other for sparring practice. If one of us kicked or punched the other until tears flowed, he’d shout, "You forgot to block!" Then he’d release a hearty laugh, give fierce hugs, and make us go another round.

I grew up believing that physical strength had value and that in this realm, I had no limits.

In his own way, my father tried to teach us that muscles deserve more respect than we usually give them. We often think of muscles as separate from intellect, even opposed to it, as if one drains resources from the other. Over recent years, while writing a book about muscles, I’ve discovered that the truth is far more intertwined: our brains and muscles are in constant dialogue, sending electrochemical signals back and forth; our long-term brain health depends on our muscles—and moving them—especially as we age. Yet the connection between muscles and mind is not only biological.

As both a writer and lifelong athlete, I can’t help but notice how revealing language is. Muscle means much more than the physical entity itself. We are told we need different metaphorical muscles for everything: to study, socialize, compete, and show compassion. And we have to exercise those muscles—use them regularly—to keep them functioning effectively and reliably.

We flex muscles to demonstrate power and influence. We have muscle memory—a nod to the knowledge embedded in our bodies, encompassing all sensory, physical, and spatial experiences. We rise and leap in joy. We push through challenges, showing courage. Even when it’s hard, we try.

Muscle growth occurs by breaking yourself down. Muscle fibers sustain damage from tension and stress, then repair through activating special stem cells that fuse with fibers to increase size and mass. You become stronger by surviving each set of small breakdowns, allowing regeneration, renewal, and regrowth. Muscle is one of the most adaptable tissues in the human body. It responds to environmental changes, growing when we exert effort and shrinking when we do not. After illness or injury, it can remember how to recover. Research confirms that even those who start exercising late can transform remarkably.

When we speak of what moves us as human beings, it is muscle. At the most fundamental level, muscle propels and animates our existence.

We move our bodies through the world, and our minds follow. Artist Paul Klee described visual art as a record of movement from start to finish: "A drawing is simply a line taking a walk." For example, a drawing of a dancer is made by a wandering hand capturing the dancer’s motion, and the finished work is appreciated later by the viewer’s eye, which always follows (with the help of extraocular muscles).

The notion that robust physical health supports strength in other areas of life dates back to antiquity: Seneca and other Stoic philosophers wrote about the interconnectedness of a sound body and mind. Physical work to build muscle can bring a sense of flourishing and autonomy. Today, this idea underpins scientific literature endorsing weightlifting as an effective intervention for post-traumatic stress. In an era where virtual technology and society conspire to separate mind from body and isolate us from others, simply moving together in shared space can remind us of our common humanity—a phenomenon the psychologist Dacher Keltner, drawing on Émile Durkheim, calls "collective effervescence." As humans, we are made to move; as social creatures, moving together carries deep meaning.

"Flex your muscle." We have all been asked to do this at some point to demonstrate a range of qualities, tangible and intangible: strength, flexibility, endurance. Show me you’re fit. Show me you are a person of action. A character grounded in something you can feel. It is a way to affirm presence. To say: I am here, conscious, embodied, alive.

I want to live according to this muscle philosophy. Physical fitness does not guarantee anything, of course. Exercise is no cure for death. My grandfather died of a heart attack at 64. After that, the discipline of exercise suddenly became clear as a daily foundation, not oriented toward the future but rooted in the present. Watching him taught me the importance of exercise as practice—not of becoming, but of being.