I used to hate sports, although I tried many: (table) tennis, swimming, fencing, soccer, judo, the list goes on. There is a competitive element in all of them: YOU vs SOMEONE. I dislike that. Don't get me wrong, I like competitive sports, but as a hobby to practice I did not like getting hurt and being under pressure.
When I was about 15 I quit almost all sports. Honestly, I was just "done with sports" and it stayed that way for some years. Later, in university I had a friend who was doing "Crossfit". He was very amped about it, and his enthusiasm excited me too. Once I started being open to the idea of expending effort to get strong, he had moved on from Crossfit to Powerlifting - so I started to that with him.
The program we started on was fairly simple: 4 basic barbell movements in different combinations on 3 days in a week AND every week you add 5 kilo to the bar. This is called:
Starting Strength
Starting Strength is the most effective way to get stronger. Strength being the force you can generate against an external resistance. If you squat, say 60 kilo, you need to generate the force against gravity to lift the weight. It is basic physics and biology.
In order to get stronger you must stress your body. It has to be pushed out of homeostasis - the comfort zone of your body in which no new muscle is built up. The increase in weight (5 kilo each week) insures enough continual stress on the body to make it grow stronger, while not fatiguing the body to the point where it cannot recover.
I recommend the following video series to anybody that wants to get started with the Starting Strength program. It is Mark Rippetoe - the inventor of said program - that explains the exercises and philosophy behind it.
How Starting Strength has changed my life
The approach to the program is very scientific. In the gym, every lift is documented. Hence, the progress can easily be tracked - and boy, oh boy, do you have progress in the beginning. It is very motivating to see results from lifting just a month or two.
Remember how I started off by telling you that I did not like the "You vs Someone" mentality of most sports? Well, in lifting there is only "Self vs Self". The competition is within you. Most always it is a do-able challenge you set yourself on. Every day in a program is thought out and designed to be achieved. The challenge in something like this has also a bigger picture. It is a 3-8 week time commit to embark on a program. So the consistency element enters the picture: In addition to the lifts, you actually have to make the time and go into the gym.
I have grown immensely on this challenge. The benefits have also seeped into other aspects of my life - for example writing (more or less frequently) articles for Steemit.