Starting Strength, by Mark Rippetoe

How to lift barbells and be happy.

One of the 5 best improvements to my lifetime wellbeing was when I started lifting weights -- it's really hard to exaggerate what a beneficial effect it's had on me, it's one of the very few things that I believe has lifted my baseline mood and just made me overall happier as a person.

There isn't really a word for it, but when I think about lifting I both feel incredibly grateful that I started when I did also sad/frustrated/resentful that I didn't start 10 years sooner. And I believe the reason I didn't lift weights before was that people who lifted were not like me: it was purely aesthetic, the aesthetic of people who lifted seemed like an aesthetic I couldn't get into, and therefore lifting was Not For Me. But this is insane. My dearest friend / intellectual inspiration has written about this, and is simply right: the jocks were right about lifting, and not-lifting because you're not a jock is silly.

Of course, the way I eventually overcame this was not that I learned to do things that make sense for me regardless of their aesthetics, it's that weightlifting became more popular in my broader community. The friend who got me into it works in tech, I think it's not a coincidence that she's a woman and that when she raved about lifting and said she would teach me I did not automatically reject it as being bro-ish.

Anyway. I'm never sure what % of other people would benefit from the small handful of things that have brought great joy to my life, or if everyone's just different, but if you've never lifted I really recommend it, let me know if I can help you start....