(side note: This up above is not fitness. It is something entirely different)
Lately I’ve restarted a particular home fitness program which I will not name because if I do, I want to be sponsored by them and get lots and lots of money. But until then, let me just say: I restarted a home fitness program. Now, I’ve done other programs by the same company that tended to focus on cardio, but this one focuses on strength training, which I'm finding WAY more effective for my goals right now.
Strength training is a very different beast. In cardio, momentum is your friend. Imagine trying to go for a run but always having both feet on the ground, or running in slow motion. Hard work, yes, but not your traditional running exercise.
Strength training is different. You only get strong by lifting or pushing or having resistance against you. Momentum, basically, is the end of resistance. It makes things easier to accomplish. It’s like trying to push a car. If you push it downhill, it will roll, and there it goes. If you push it uphill, you’re going to have a much harder time because, well, you're pushing a car uphill, so momentum is not on your side.
Odd as it sounds, when you want to get stronger, you want to push that car uphill. You want all the resistance you can handle.
I recently attended a hiring seminar for another fitness company which advocates “slow training,” where traditional strength exercises are performed for 20 seconds each repetition. Compare this to the average 4 or 5 second rep of normal strength training, and you’ll see a massive change in resistance. No longer is exercise about how many can you do, but rather, how few.
Without momentum to help you, your joints can’t take any of the payload (which they shouldn't anyway). You can’t drop yourself into the bottom of your range of motion, then push back out (which one should never do anyway.) Instead, you’re just doing good, old fashioned, honest work. No momentum. No gimmicks. Just work.
After applying some of these slow training principles to my workouts, everything changed. I was so sore for three days I almost got sick, my body was wrecked. It took me 11 hours of sleep one night to even come close to recovery, which lots of sleep in otherwise (9 hours, 7 hours).
But now I feel awesome. I feel like I could move mountains. I feel proud that I managed to work so hard and stay conscious while doing it. Not literally conscious, but figuratively conscious, aware of my body and what it was doing. Lots of great spiritual teachers talk about body awareness, staying centered in the body, and using it as a grounding place. I feel like these efforts of conscious training improved my spiritual life as much as my physical well being.
A lot of lessons have come out of this fitness quest.
1) Slow down. If you want to build something sturdy, lasting, or worthwhile, do it slowly. That way, what’s doing the building is you. Not momentum. Not bad form. Just your work, your discipline, you will power to be comfortable with discomfort and maintain good form. I’m not sure yet how this applies to other areas of life, but with fitness, it’s ground-floor, 101, easily overlooked but totally essential knowledge.
I think it gets overlooked because of ego, which brings me to point number 2.
2) Get your ego out of it. I don’t care if you think you should be able to do 100 pull ups. You can only do as many as you can. For instance, I, right now, can do zero. And I hang on that bar and I struggle and I sweat. I put my feet on the floor for support and try to just hold 10% of my bodyweight with my arms, or 20%, or (at the beginning of the workout when I feel good) 100%, but, lord help me, I cannot do a single pull up right now. Right now. But with steady, consistent work, with accepting where I am instead of trying to pretend I’m somewhere I’m not, the change can come. In time. Slowly. But as soon the ego gets involved, I think “why can’t I do a single pull up? Yes I can! I can prove it.” And there goes form. There goes strength. There go my gains, and in comes my injury.
People want to look good, look strong, look like the people doing 100 pushups or weighted pull ups or whatever, but be honest with yourself: can you actually do it? No? Then why are you trying to look like you can? And why are you trying to convince yourself you can? It’s not that you won’t ever be able to, but right now, you can’t. There’s nothing wrong with working toward a goal, but you have to know where you are to know where you’re going.
I’m not working out for anybody else. I’m not working out to prove anything. I’m working out because it’s healthy for me. I’m working out to work out. It’s a lot more fun that way.
Speaking of fun…
3) Quality over quantity. That was the tip of the day in today’s workout, and it applies to EVERYTHING in life. Exercise, food, even words. Would you rather never stop talking, or only say what you mean, only say what’s in your heart, only say what matters (as much as anything can matter)?
Lately I’ve restarted a particular home fitness program which I will not name because if I do, I want to be sponsored by them and get lots and lots of money. But until then, let me just say: I restarted a home fitness program. Now, I’ve done other programs by the same company that tended to focus on cardio, but this one focuses on strength training, which I'm finding WAY more effective for my goals right now.
Strength training is a very different beast. In cardio, momentum is your friend. Imagine trying to go for a run but always having both feet on the ground, or running in slow motion. Hard work, yes, but not your traditional running exercise.
Strength training is different. You only get strong by lifting or pushing or having resistance against you. Momentum, basically, is the end of resistance. It makes things easier to accomplish. It’s like trying to push a car. If you push it downhill, it will roll, and there it goes. If you push it uphill, you’re going to have a much harder time because, well, you're pushing a car uphill, so momentum is not on your side.
Odd as it sounds, when you want to get stronger, you want to push that car uphill. You want all the resistance you can handle.
I recently attended a hiring seminar for another fitness company which advocates “slow training,” where traditional strength exercises are performed for 20 seconds each repetition. Compare this to the average 4 or 5 second rep of normal strength training, and you’ll see a massive change in resistance. No longer is exercise about how many can you do, but rather, how few.
Without momentum to help you, your joints can’t take any of the payload (which they shouldn't anyway). You can’t drop yourself into the bottom of your range of motion, then push back out (which one should never do anyway.) Instead, you’re just doing good, old fashioned, honest work. No momentum. No gimmicks. Just work.
After applying some of these slow training principles to my workouts, everything changed. I was so sore for three days I almost got sick, my body was wrecked. It took me 11 hours of sleep one night to even come close to recovery, which lots of sleep in otherwise (9 hours, 7 hours).
But now I feel awesome. I feel like I could move mountains. I feel proud that I managed to work so hard and stay conscious while doing it. Not literally conscious, but figuratively conscious, aware of my body and what it was doing. Lots of great spiritual teachers talk about body awareness, staying centered in the body, and using it as a grounding place. I feel like these efforts of conscious training improved my spiritual life as much as my physical well being.
A lot of lessons have come out of this fitness quest.
1) Slow down. If you want to build something sturdy, lasting, or worthwhile, do it slowly. That way, what’s doing the building is you. Not momentum. Not bad form. Just your work, your discipline, you will power to be comfortable with discomfort and maintain good form. I’m not sure yet how this applies to other areas of life, but with fitness, it’s ground-floor, 101, easily overlooked but totally essential knowledge.
I think it gets overlooked because of ego, which brings me to point number 2.
2) Get your ego out of it. I don’t care if you think you should be able to do 100 pull ups. You can only do as many as you can. For instance, I, right now, can do zero. And I hang on that bar and I struggle and I sweat. I put my feet on the floor for support and try to just hold 10% of my bodyweight with my arms, or 20%, or (at the beginning of the workout when I feel good) 100%, but, lord help me, I cannot do a single pull up right now. Right now. But with steady, consistent work, with accepting where I am instead of trying to pretend I’m somewhere I’m not, the change can come. In time. Slowly. But as soon the ego gets involved, I think “why can’t I do a single pull up? Yes I can! I can prove it.” And there goes form. There goes strength. There go my gains, and in comes my injury.
People want to look good, look strong, look like the people doing 100 pushups or weighted pull ups or whatever, but be honest with yourself: can you actually do it? No? Then why are you trying to look like you can? And why are you trying to convince yourself you can? It’s not that you won’t ever be able to, but right now, you can’t. There’s nothing wrong with working toward a goal, but you have to know where you are to know where you’re going.
I’m not working out for anybody else. I’m not working out to prove anything. I’m working out because it’s healthy for me. I’m working out to work out. It’s a lot more fun that way.
Speaking of fun…
3) Quality over quantity. That was the tip of the day in today’s workout, and it applies to EVERYTHING in life. Exercise, food, even words. Would you rather never stop talking, or only say what you mean, only say what’s in your heart, only say what matters (as much as anything can matter)?