Flowers do not come up in our conversations—unless they are strong.

Even plants have “muscles.” In the early 1970s Soviet scientist Lyubimova discovered a contractile protein similar to myosin in the leaf stems of mimosa.

Nikolay Ozolin, one of the fathers of Soviet sports science recounts a fascinating experiment that followed.

If you touch a leaf of a certain species of mimosa, it folds. Scientists attached a microdynamometer to one such leaf, touched it, and measured the force it generated when it rolled up. Then they secured a thin thread to the leaf and hung a small weight on it. The leaf was touched a few hundred times a day to prod it to “lift weights.”

The weight was increased daily. A month later the team measured the leaf’s strength again. It had increased 400 times! Not 400% but 400 times.

“Why am I telling you this?” asks Prof. Ozolin. “So you would tell your students about the miraculous ability of every living thing to change and improve…so you would give them the confidence in the possibility of achieving high athletic results…quite often athletes who were considered unpromising at first achieved extraordinary results. They literally changed themselves by being persistent.”

This Valentine’s give your loved one a gift of strength. Sign her or him up for a StrongFirst Instructor Certification (kettlebell, barbell, or bodyweight). That would beat even the strongest flowers you could buy.