Should Everyone Lift Weights?

When you look at research studies on weightlifting, you often see positive outcomes: subjects gain muscle mass, power, etc.  Yet this is all "on average."  If you dig a little deeper, you find that 1) some subjects dropped out of the study, 2) some subjects got no benefit from weightlifting, and 3) some subjects occassionally have negative responses to weightlifting.

I'm wondering if people should be more encouraged to "go with their genetic flow" when it comes to exercise.  If a person has no response (or a negative response) to weightlifting, isn't that saying something?  Perhaps that person should not be lifting weights at all.

It is easy to imagine that hunter-gathers did different physical things based on their genetic strengths.  As I've mentioned, genetic talent is often overlooked in explaining top performances.  Perhaps a tribe had a couple of really good runners, men who could run great distances to find new game.  Other tribe members may have been better at strength activities such as butchering game.

It is doubtful that each hunter-gatherer excelled in all these physical areas.  If all men could run, lift, or throw things with the same ability, this would make the women's task of finding a man with good genetics very difficult. 

You can see that many modern sports are set up to allow people with different genetic gifts a chance to shine.  Football has a variety of positions, and these positions all require different degrees of strength, speed, agility, and throwing ability.  Very few players are "interchangeable"; only a few genetic marvels can excel at multiple positions (at least at the NFL level).

So if you try to lift weights and continually burn out, perhaps lifting weights just doesn't suit your genetic profile.  Conversely, if running distances doesn't agree with you, then that activity may not be worth pursuing.  It may be better to go with the flow and engage in activities you naturally excel in to some degree.