As you may have gathered from this column — or know for certain because you’re a former student of mine — I sometimes cite quotations to support a belief. Personally, I use quotations to motivate me and validate my seemingly ascetic lifestyle.

The next time, for instance, you wonder if getting up at 4:15 a.m. to work out is taking this health and fitness stuff a bit too far — or once you get up all you want to do is go back to bed — recall the quotation I have affixed to the wall in front of my stationary bicycle. “It is one of the strange ironies of this strange life that those who work the hardest, who subject themselves to the strictest discipline, who give up pleasurable things in order to achieve a goal, are the happiest men.”

I’ll read those words by Brutus Hamilton a few times as I increase the pace of my warm up. When my mind’s right, reading those words makes me feel as if I just knocked back a double espresso with a Red Bull chaser.

A second quotation is posted besides Hamilton’s serves a different purpose. It’s one I created to give myself permission to deviate from the ride I am scheduled to do that day.

“You never know. That’s why you feel.”

I’ll say that one out loud to keep me from making the one mistake I still keep making after all these years: riding hard on a day when the signals when my body tells me to ride easily.

The last time I looked at that quotation, I realized it was also well-suited to strengthen the key point to last week’s column: that in some way, shape, or form, weightlifting is something you can and should do.

When I ask people who don’t lift why they don’t, frequently they say they are not sure what movements to do, how to do them, or that the effort is not worth the risk of injury.

While it’s always best to receive instruction from a certified trainer, it’s not necessarily essential even if you’re a beginner. What is essential, however, is to lift very light weights at a slow pace and keep that quotation that I created foremost in your mind to best tax the targeted muscles.

Lifting light weights is not only the safest way for you to begin lifting weights, but it is also the best way to create the mind-to-muscle link that allows you to feel the movements of the muscles. As a result, even veteran bodybuilders occasionally reduce the weight, increase the reps, and devote a few workouts to honing the link between the mind and the muscles.

To experience the mind-to-muscle link, let your arms dangle naturally at your sides. If you’re right-handed, put the fingers of your left hand on your right biceps (the muscles at the front of your upper arm).

While keeping your right elbow stationary, slowly raise your hand. Supinate your wrist. (Twist the wrist so that your pinky is the closest finger to your torso.)

What you should feel is a contraction of the biceps muscles, especially when you twist your wrist. Do this a few more times in order to really feel the muscles contract.

After you’ve done that a few times, make a tight fist, close your eyes, and do it again. Now you should be able not only to feel the contraction but also that the biceps muscles are taxed the most as the wrist ascends and that the stress lessens once the forearm goes past the point of being parallel to the floor.

Now do you understand why lifters who lift more weight than they really can handle jerk the dumbbells and throw the pelvis forward while performing the exercise called the dumbbell biceps curl? They are using momentum — as well as muscles besides the biceps — to move the weight through the part of the lift that puts the most stress on the targeted muscles.

You now also have the reason why some many lifters take the dumbbells past parallel and touch the shoulder. It’s actually a way to give the targeted muscles a break.

Now do the aforementioned motion one more time, but squeeze your fist together as tightly as possible before your start. And as you start, do more than keep the elbow stationary.

Drop it slightly by pressing down at the shoulder. Immediately you should sense additional stress on the biceps muscles.

That’s why some of the lifters at the gym who have the best developed muscles don’t lift as much weight as the less-developed ones. They know ways to make the targeted muscles work harder.

To conclude, consider the arm-raise-to-feel-the-biceps-muscles experiment again. It’s why you can know very little about weightlifting, yet still lift weights successfully and safely.

Because if you begin with light weights, move the weight slowly, and concentrate on feeling which muscles get affected the most, and doesn’t matter if you “know.”

You never really know. That’s why you feel.