Working out is not training.
You probably hate us already for saying so.
Good. Let’s go with that.
Like so many other parts of life, when it comes to fitness, it has become too easy to tell ourselves that we are doing enough, or even worse, doing the best we can. It’s a cop out, offering permission not to ask for more of ourselves. This delusional form of self-medication (yes, that is what we are talking about,) inevitably leads down roads to the more dangerous forms of checking out: Booze; Drugs, Over-eating, and all other forms of self-destruction.
Oprah and her army of true-believers have created a huge, thriving industrial force, telling each other, and themselves, how great they are, how to take it easy, how to be satisfied with mediocrity, and most insidious, how to follow without sight or critical thinking. She’s convinced so many – women and men – that sitting around, bucking one another up, and crying at the drop of a hat is what makes us real, or at the very least, worthwhile and vital.
We could spend all day dissecting the good and bad of the Oprah effect on this nation and others.
But this is about training, not encounter groups, book clubs, or so-called healthy cooking seminars.
By our definition, the concept of fitness is radically different than what most of your under-skilled trainers will try and coax out of clients.
That hour you just did in the gym, half of which was spent looking at your phone? That isn’t Fitness. That 48 minutes of Spin, or Zumba? Great start. Now instead of yakking with classmates for the next half hour, or heading out for a couple of caloric lattes, try adding another 35-45 minutes of intense (not to be confused with heavy) resistance. With no more than 35 seconds of rest between sets.
This is the genesis of training, always pushing. If you mentally stop the free flow of endorphins to tell yourself you’re doing enough, you probably aren’t.
If this sounds like fitness fascism, then you aren’t ready.
It is a different form of reality, one that pushes through the doubt and insecurity, while learning to not only expect the pain, but embrace it.
These are only a few initial thoughts, a rough sketch. There will be much more in the coming days and months.
This site is devoted to higher forms of Training, and how it can enhance and operate in tandem with the better parts of our nature and existence. As our home page says – “Where Mindfulness And Physicality Co-exist.”
It is also devoted to discussing and possibly making some sense out of an increasingly mean and fragmented world.
For us, that all begins and ends with Mind and Body. Everything else is just an excuse, or a stall.