Engaging with the Ground

     We are in a constant relationship with the ground. Gravity presses us down whether we are walking, standing, sitting, or sleeping. There is no way, for most of us, to escape this constant interplay. Unless we are in the water or can go to space, we are in contact with a supporting surface and our bodies respond to that without any conscious effort.

    Because this experience is so ubiquitous, it can be easy to take our contact with the ground for granted. Even when engaged in specific physical conditioning, it is very easy to overlook the complex relationship we have with the floor. 

    In this short routine, I mention "engaging with the ground" a number of times. Starting from a supine position, we engage the back with the ground, and then the cuing shifts focus to the hands and trunk. Pushing the floor away, engaging away from the floor. But what does this mean, and why is it important?

    When we stand, we often don't give any thought to the "posture" of the foot. Normally, when we think about "having good posture" we think of standing up tall. We think about the head and shoulders. When we call a posture "lazy" we envision a "slump" of the shoulders. If you look at the whole body all the way down, though, you see that a "slump" of the shoulders has a cascade effect through the whole system. The exact manifestations won't be the same for everyone, but the process will still be relatively the same: without some intentional awareness, we tend to sink toward the floor when we are trying to save energy. In this sinking toward the floor, we tend to give up some of the tensional support created by the musculoskeletal system. This lack of tensional support can lead us to less-than-optimal patterns of moving and standing.

    As one of my first Tai Chi instructors told me: "You can't do Tai Chi wrong; you can only do Tai Chi 'better.'" This means that there isn't inherently any wrong way to move. Sometimes we just need to keep going. Sometimes putting one foot in front of the other is a survival mechanism and a way to accomplish all of the things that we need to do in a day. When we have time, however, I feel that it can be a valuable use of that time to assess how we address our foundation and how we extend from that foundation. Using "micro-breaks" during the day, feel your base of support. If you are sitting, explore that seated position to see if you are being pulled down in line with gravity or if you are using your body's "anti-gravity" muscles to sit in a comfortable, stable, position. If you have to stand a lot during the day, stand with your weight over both feet and engage with your standing position. Are you allowing your feet to "slump" because you assume that the shoe you are wearing will just automatically handle the support of your feet? Where is the weight over the foot? In the ball, or in the heel?

    There are more volumes on posture and postural muscles than I could even hope to encapsulate. I just want to encourage you to investigate how you engage with your Ground through the day. This is a useful thing in an exercise routine, for ergonomics, and for being aware of your relationship to your body. It's ALSO a useful exercise for mindfulness and intentionality. And, I'd argue, it could go a little deeper than that as well.

Start investigating and start being a little more intentional, perhaps, about Engaging with the Ground.

Efficiency and Expenditure

         Being into fitness for any length of time, you will have probably heard someone ask, "How many calories does that burn?" On the surface, it seems like a fairly straightforward question! People exercise to lose weight all the time, and a LOT of fitness programs advertise how many calories per hour their workouts are guaranteed to burn. It seems like the more calories are burned, the more effective a workout might be.

    

    Losing weight is a fairly straightforward equation. If you have more energy going OUT of a system than is coming IN to a system, the system is less overall. So, it serves to reason that the more output that a person does the better. This often goes hand-in-hand with dieting (which is, essentially, modifying the intake to bring in fewer calories overall). The net result is burning more energy than a person intakes, thereby leading to weight loss.

    Conventionally, this makes a lot of sense. Eat less and burn more and there is a catabolic effect on stored energy (as body tissues).

    So, does this mean that our goal should be to work as hard as possible to burn as many calories as possible?

    To break this down, we have to look at a couple of factors.

1) What is the person's GOAL?

2) How does increasing intensity effect the outcomes?

3) What factor are you using to measure intensity?

4) What effect does intensity have on overall performance?

Goals

    For the first factor, the goal, we have to ask ourselves how intensity can help a goal. If our goal is to be a bicyclist in the Tour de France, that intensity is going to look very different from the intensity in a bench press, or the intensity of nailing a high dive. If the goal is to lose weight, well, I'll come back to that at the end.... But I wanted to mention cycling, weight lifting, and diving specifically to bring up the idea that there are different kinds of intensity.

    To increase intensity, most people think of increasing the LOAD or performing the movement with increased SPEED. But the truth is, there are a lot of different ways to make something harder (used here intentionally in place of "making something more intense.")

    A short list of things that can make something harder is: slowing it down, changing the variation, doing it for a longer duration, increasing the psychic effort by adding mental tasks, making it harder to balance, changing the breathing patterns, and on and on. For each of those modifications, there is an added complexity or challenge to the base pattern. It's not always about being more intense!

    A dancer, for instance, has a very high demand on their system during a performance, but doing it with weight, or doing it faster would not necessarily help their goal. To increase fluidity, they need to work on timing, transitions, mobility, balance, and other, more subtle factors.

Outcomes

    What happens when we make a workout more intense? Let's take an example that most people will be familiar with: starting a weight lifting program. When you add a lot of volume and effort that you are not accustomed to, you generally end up SORE. This delayed onset muscle soreness is a clear sign of systemic stress that the muscles in question are not used to. This can also happen with things like cardio dance or swimming or even Tai Chi! Whatever you are not accustomed to can make you sore. Another negative outcome for increased intensity or load could be an acute injury like a strain or sprain.

    This is not always the case, but it is a caution to go into new activities with a degree of mindfulness and self-awareness. Gradually build up the intensity over time. That way, you can progress slowly and safely! 

    This means, though, that we aren't exercising as hard as possible to try to burn as many calories (or create as much output) as possible PER SESSION. If I lift weights really hard on Monday and I'm sore Tuesday through Friday, my output for the week is 1 day. If I lift light weights for 30 minutes Monday - Friday and take the weekend to rest, I have increased my total output overall for that week.

    This means that intensity MIGHT NOT be the best metric for per-session outcomes.

Factors

    We touched on this earlier. The factor that is used to measure intensity is very important! If you do relatively simple movements at a relatively slow speed with relatively light weight, but a high degree of mental focus, you will be tired at the end of your workout. If you keep the same parameters, but only focus on breathing slow and even, it will be the same result. I would break down the factors for each exercise into four broad categories:

    1) Mental Focus Required

    2) Breathing Emphasis

    3) Prime Movers

    4) Essential Posture

    For every exercise, you can look at each category as a general way of WHERE you are placing your emphasis. Sometimes this will be in one of those four, sometimes in a combination, or sometimes in another category altogether. For the most part, and for the sake of this simple look at output, we can focus on these general areas. If your emphasis is strictly on the prime movers, you are missing a lot of qualitative essentials for a movement! Even in a bench press, most people know that you want the back flat on the bench (posture), to exhale on the exertion (breathing), to explode up and descend slow (mental factors). This is even more important with an exercise like a high dive. It takes more than just pushing off as hard as you can! There's timing, trying to get your line, and (I'm sure!) a bunch of other factors that are more important than just the initial take-off.

Performance

    This is where we look at movement efficiency. If everything is just about maximal output, what effect does that have on the performance of the activity? If we are doing jumping exercises, and we just jump as many times as we can in a row before we can't do it anymore, what effect is that having on our joints? Will I be able to jump again tomorrow? How many years can I jump like that before there is a negative effect from all the jumping?

    Performance is twofold: short-term and long-term. If my goal is merely to lift as much weight as possible in my current session, am I really maximizing my potential for future sessions? Am I better off reducing my focus on the Prime Mover factor and spreading the intensity out to Mental, Breathing,  and Postural so that I create a foundation for growth down the line?

    I think there is a lot to be said for creating a balanced intensity. Not only in each individual workout, but over a span of time as well. 

    To create a lasting physiological adaptation, we need to change our body's set point.

    By lifting a heavy weight once, I do not create any lasting change. By lifting weights regularly over time, I acclimate my body to lift weights. It's the same with flexibility, endurance, and sitting in meditation. What you repeat, your body gets better at doing. 

    I think that is why efficiency is so important!

But, did we ever really define what efficient movement is?

Efficiency

    What is efficient movement? I would broadly define "efficiency" as "movement that uses no more effort than it has to to accomplish it's goal." I know, I heard the eyerolls. That is NOT really a practical definition. Nor is is a particularly complete definition! 

    So, what is efficient movement?

    Let's take a look at an example real quick.

    Going back to bicycling: If I have my bike seat set really low so I don't extend my legs all the way, and if I have to geared so that I have to pedal at a high rate of speed with a low rate of forward movement, I'm doing a LOT of work. My legs will hurt, and I will burn a lot of calories... BUT, I won't be able to go very far very fast before I get tired. If my goal is to do the Tour de France, I would imagine that you need to figure out what settings allow you to go as fast as possible with as little effort as possible. There might not be any specific metric for that! But by paying attention, by study, and through investing a lot of time into trying to figure out what that looks like, I will inevitably become more efficient at going fast for long periods of time.

    It's very easy to spend a lot of energy. It requires a great degree of sensitivity to become efficient.

I think that this really brings us to a fundamental question of what we value out of fitness and how we measure success in fitness. Do we become better at moving well or do we become better at using a lot of energy? Can we move a lot for a long period of time, or are we trying to move really hard once?

There's a lot of middle ground, there, and a lot of area to explore more. I think, for myself, I want to move efficiently and invest a balanced intensity into my movements so I can continue to perform over a long period of time.

    I would love to hear your thoughts on movement, intensity, and the way to achieve outcomes!

The Two Types of Flow

Flow is a really fun topic. Moving in flow and developing flow skills is an effective workout as well as being a practical application of functional mobility, strength, and motor control. The purpose of this post is to give some definition to different types of flow and discuss the application of those different types.

I would categorize flow into two distinct and overlapping types.

The first type of flow is "finite flow." This is a smaller scale of, often characterized by fine motor control and hand-eye coordination. Examples of this type of flow would be Tai Chi, Poi, Rope Flow, contact and regular juggling, and ribbon flow. This finite flow is visually appealing and strings together sequences of successive movements in quick succession. Finite flow can be effective cardio, plus it has the advantage of being a great training for body awareness, mindfulness, agility, and coordination. Another advantage is that finite flow can be practiced in relatively short periods of time where you can focus on one individual pattern or drill specific transitions. And with most of the examples given, they can be practiced in relatively small spaces. 

The second type of flow is gross flow. Gross flow is categorized by putting the whole body in motion dynamically. Skills like gymnastics, parkour, and flow yoga fall under the category of gross flow. Gross flow requires a lot of full body mobility, strength, and control. It is generally characterized by having dynamic contact with your supporting surfaces and involving changes in level ( prone on floor to standing, for example). Gross flow has the potential to develop strength and power but there are some limiting factors. With gross flow there is the necessity to be capable enough to approach those transitions and generally require a certain level of comfort with being on the ground.

Some disciplines cross these boundaries. Advanced practices like martial arts generally involve training in both finite and gross flow, and dynamic skills like dance have elements of both as well. But, generally speaking, the training of both components is still separated in those disciplines.

There are a lot of benefits to both finite and gross skills. In fact, I think training one in exclusion of the other can miss a lot of physical potential and leave weak areas in your all-around wellness!

After having practiced a routine centered around Tai Chi and Qigong for about 8 years, I'm finding a lot of benefit in practicing calisthenics and ground flow skills and feel like I'm resolving some physical issues that the finite flow didn't have the capability of addressing on its own.

Gross flow also has a generally longer road to mastery as practicing fundamental skills and simple patterns is a big prerequisite in attaining the ability to perform more complicated movent patterns. For someone learning rope flow or Tai Chi, you can get into the flow state rather easily and quickly, but for tumbling or parkour, doing general conditioning and approaching the building blocks of the higher level movements is recommended for health and safety. 

Again, with this article there's nothing to practice and no concrete take away. I just have been thinking about flow arts and wanted to suggest these two categories to help the thought process around flow. I think that flow is a very human and practical application of physical ability and both kinds of flow lend themselves very well to improved mental states.

So play around with it, and I wish you the best of luck in your practice!

Breathing and Movement

 

    Breathing is a really cool physiological process. Chemically, it's the transfer of gasses to (basically) keep oxygen in your system and expel waste gas. But, mechanically, it's SO MUCH more then that!

    What I hope to do with this short post is to look at the implications of breathing and movement and    hopefully encourage you to put a little more effort and thought into HOW and WHY you breathe while you move.

    Breath is one of our most basic biological processes. It's one of the fundamental signs of life and functions unconsciously. It's also one of those processes that we can consciously control (unlike circulation or digestion, for example.) Our breath responds to emotional and physical stimuli, both. And respiratory muscles are also both movers and stabilizers.

    I want to look at some of the applications of these generalities without making any kind of value statements or absolute statements. Breathing, like movement, is highly individual and the individual will, of course, have different reactions to and interpretations of different modes of breathing. My caveat is that: no breathing exercise (or any exercise, for that matter) has a discreet and distinct function psychologically. No breathing exercise is a replacement for therapy. So when I take the discussion into mindfulness and the breath, I am not indicating that breathwork can be a replacement for psychotherapy or related cognitive therapies.

    But back to breathing and movement! The basic mechanism of breathing is a change in pressure values in the lungs to either encourage movement of gasses into or out of the upper respiratory tract. to this effect, there are a large complex of muscles whose function is to expand or contract the volume of the trunk. The diaphragm is also one of the few muscles perpendicular to gravity, and one of the few muscles that connects all sides of the trunk. In this capacity, the diaphragm can function as a stabilizer.

    Now, muscle action doesn't really equate directly to physical function in movement. So: "activate your diaphragm" as a movement cue is kind of silly. But there are a number of breathing functions we CAN control. The four basic components of respiration are: inhalation, suspension, exhalation, and retention. All of these effect the internal pressure of your trunk and involve different musculature. Playing with these four actions gives you a lot of material for changing how you move. Exploring the effect in different positions, different transitions, and different ratios can have a profound effect on your knowledge of your body and strength, mobility, and control.

    For instance, if you are stretching, adding an exhale as you reach into a stretch can allow you to sink deeper into your end-range position. In resistance training, too, conventional knowledge is to exhale on the exertion. In this way, you can combine the contraction of the respiratory muscles with the contraction of the prime mover muscles (like if you're doing a bicep curl, you would exhale as you are lifting the weight away from the floor and exhale as it descends.) 

    All this gets trickier when you take breath into more complex movement like sports performance or skill work. At higher levels, you can use general rules to exhale as you exert or stretch and inhale as you return toward a resting position. The most important factor is to be aware of extensive breath holding, as this can be a risky technique under tension or exertion.

   

    Holding the breath at the end of an inhale is called "retention" and holding the breath at the end of an exhale is call "suspension." These are a whole can of worms that can have extremely useful or rather tricky applications, depending on what result you are looking for.

    Breathwork is also often described as the "doorway to the present moment." Typically, our breathing patterns follow emotional states. You will breathe with certain patterns at rest, and other patterns in stressful situations. A good exercise can be to simply observe the quality of your breathing in different situations and during different movement patterns to see what is happening. Just like with food journaling for weight loss, a breath quality analysis can give you a lot of insight into how you are breathing and what, physically, is tense in your body at any given time.

    

    Another helpful exercise is to try to "breathe" into different parts of the body. Doing this with stretching at first is probably the most approachable option. For instance, if you are doing a hamstring stretch (pick your own variation), try breathing into your lower back, or if you are twisting, try to direct your breath to the part of your trunk that you feel the twist. Playing with the breath and awareness of the breath go hand in hand.

    Breathing is an immediately accessible movement that gives you real-time access to your physiology at any point in time. You can practice exhaling and squeezing your abs ALL DAY LONG if you wanted to. You can breathe and try to expand your rib-cage 3 dimensionally, or stretch to the side and breathe into that stretch. Being mindful of your breath is gaining access to a movement and stabilization pattern that globally and directly impacts your system at a fundamental level. 

    So play with your breath, explore your breath, and appreciate your breath! See how breathing differently has different impacts on different movements. Make your breath part of the poetry and self-expression of your own body. Treat it as an art. Learn yourself better through breath. This isn't anything mystical or spiritual! Again, it's becoming intimate with your physiology and physics. There is no technique here, and nothing to "learn", just building a greater sensitivity and finesse to be at ease ibn your body as it moves.

Move well. Move often. Breathe well. Breathe intentionally. 

The Motivation Mistake

Motivation is a topic that gets a lot of press. It feels good to start new things, to be inspired to make change, to tackle that next project! It can be really inspiring to get fired up and push after a goal.

But, since you read the title of this post, you can see where this is headed: I'm about to shit on motivation and inspiration a little bit. Hopefully to re-frame the context around our goals and how we go about pursuing them!

I want all of us to have successful, productive journeys, after all!

Being motivated is a great thing, don't get me wrong! It can feel great to wake up one day and say, "Wow, that Henry Cavill looks great as Geralt in the Witcher! I like that show! Maybe I'll start working out and get to be buff, too!"

Whatever the motivating factor behind a sudden lightning strike of inspiration, it really is a surge of energy and we get excited, make plans, and imagine now sweet it will be to achieve our goal. Even how satisfying it'll be to do that workout or apply that process every day!

But then life happens, we find ourselves just surviving. The stream burns up, and suddenly we dread our workout that day. 

Pause here a second, cuz this is important.

You pausing? Ok, good.

This is the point where I think a lot of magic COULD happen.

So the steam burns off and you're not feeling motivated anymore. What now?

Cuz that always happens, right? It's sort of inevitable. Motivation can't last forever! That initial burst of inspiration fizzles out and we are just feeling... Well... Normal again. Ew.

So, what are we left with? 

The first option is to go back to the source that inspired us: watch that video, look at the picture that seemed to inspire that initial excitement! But that has diminishing returns, also. Somehow, it doesn't seem as exciting, or the amount of work it would take to get there really sinks in and send daunting.

Another option is to just "buckle down and pull yourself up by your boot straps". Tough it out. Grit your teeth and push on, cuz the end goal is worth it, right?

But that doesn't feel very good, either! It's demoralizing to wake up and shake yourself off and hit the grind, because part of the excitement of being motivated is feeling like you're on a Grand Quest to Change the World.

So that seems to leave us at an impasse, doesn't it?

When you feel that being inspired and feeling motivated is the key to success, I think you'll always end up here eventually! And that isn't a bad thing.

It's not: I mean it!

Being motivated is a great way to start out. It's great to feel inspired, to have your imagination riled up and think of all the good things you want to do. It's good to jump in with both feet first and want to set the world on fire!

And it's good to buckle down, sometimes. It's good to put your nose to the grindstone and look for the end goal, that shining city on the hill that you endure the Slough of Despond to reach.

But I think that leaves out a lot of stuff.

I think that there are a couple other important stops on the way, a few shades of experience that are worth including to make the journey more than a binary between "needing to feel motivated" and "just pushing through."

Let's cover a few important ones:

1) Notice progress not directly related to your goal.

2) Appreciate the variety in repetition.

3) Learn that disciplined isn't equivalent to punishment.

4) Swap motivational icons.

So, touching on all of these briefly...

Notice progress not directly related to your goal. In any journey, there are a lot of things that come up that don't seem, at first, to be related to your goal. If your goal is to become more organized and you start rearranging your schedule and tidying up the drawers in your house, you might find that actually improves your balance and spacial awareness. It might not SEEM like those things are related, and really, it doesn't even matter if they ARE or WHY it works. But you're working on new things so new things pop up in your life. Notice those things and feel good about them, too! Especially with fitness, this is a good thing to appreciate because visible progress doesn't happen in a set period of time. So appreciate the accessory benefits of whatever process you're working on.

Appreciate the variety in repetition. In any long journey, it seems that you have to repeat the same stuff over and over. And over. And over.

And this is undeniably true!

But each time you approach your practice, it's a new day, and a new you tackling that task. I had this a lot when I was doing Tai Chi as my main focus. It's the same form over and over again. The same moves, day in and day out. But there's an infinite way to approach those moves! Focus on breathing, focus on foot work, focus on precision, on tempo. There's infinite ways to approach familiar tasks!

Plus the light will be different, the temperature, your internal climate.

This can be seen as "being in the moment" or "enjoying the process" but those can sound trite. Just like the Buddhist koan: a candle flame is never the same, nor a point in a flowing stream. It might be similar, but there is always something different there if you'll just take the time to notice.

Learn that discipline isn't equivalent to punishment. I this this step is absolutely VITAL. Sometimes it seems that we need to punish ourselves for not meeting our goals. We can feel like we need discipline because we're bad people, or that fitness and diet are a punishment for the weakness of eating food that we like and enjoying past-times that are rewarding. This is not the case! 

I think this is a huge shift that a lot of people can make.

In school, growing up with parents, having to work... All of these things can feel like necessary evils because of how we were raised (I'm generalizing here.) I know, as a child, I felt like doing the dishes was a punishment for enjoying video games. I had to grudgingly take care of certain things so I could enjoy myself. But sometimes, maintenance and upkeep are a process of that enjoyment! If I enjoy a clean house, part of that is actually cleaning the house. And then cleaning the tools that I use to clean the house. And then cleaning myself after I do the cleaning. Which then dirties the house a little. But that upkeep isn't a punishment! It's the other side of the coin of the thing itself. Once you realize that they're inexorably linked, it can feel better. And reframing it as part of the activity itself can help plan how much of the activity you do or choose to pursue.

Look at it this way: if doing the exercise is the activity you want to do, equal parts of that activity are getting dressed to go to the gym and getting a shower once you get home (and ALSO making sure your life is in order enough to go to the gym). Maybe that means you need a 45 minute workout instead of 90 minutes.

Or maybe working out feels like a punishment, itself!

Learning to re-frame it to being equivalent to sweeping the floor to enjoy a clean house can sometimes help. 

You're not punishing yourself, you're doing chores. You're taking care of things so you can have time to enjoy other things.

Swap motivational icons. And also make YOURSELF a motivational icon. Maybe after working out for 3 weeks trying to look like Henry Cavill, you HATE Henry Cavill and his f*cking abs and jawline. It seems too impossible! He can't be human or natural: it's pointless.

Ok, then pick something that's a more manageable motivation! Maybe it becomes finishing your workout that day, avoiding one trigger, or losing 5 pounds. 

It's great to have an end goal, but we need smaller goals along the way. 

One thing that I'm doing that feels meaningful is taking a progress picture every month. I only do it on the 28th of each month, and make a side by side comparison image.

The first few times I did that, it didn't look very exciting. But now I'm 4 months in and I can't believe what I see!

Measuring progress over time is important. That can give you that little burst of "Hell Yeah!" To get you through the next round.

So motivation is good, but it's not the whole picture. Motivation won't solve your problem, won't carry you to your solution, and is only beneficial for part of the process. Learn to re-frame, appreciate the small things, changes, and wins, and do your upkeep.

I believe in you! Hopefully this can help.

Feel free to reach out to me if I can be of any help to you in your journey!

The 50 Shades of Play

     Play is a really interesting concept! When you look at philosophy, movement theory, music, or almost any field, there is a certain reverence for play. People play a sport, they play music, they play around with new ideas. Play is a cornerstone of the human experience! We play when we are children, and as adults, try to find ways to inject playfulness into our lives. 

But what, really, is play and how do we make it a meaningful component of our experience?

    If we look at human development, play can be seen as exploration. As children, we play by interacting with our environment. We chew on things, we  try to stand up, we feel things. That progresses to running, to expressing our abundant energy. Then, when we are a little bit older, we play pretend. We've heard stories and seen programs that spark our imagination, so we want to try those scenarios out and see how they might come out differently. That can lead to confrontation when our friends don't react the way that we would like them to!

    In school, we get into organized sports. We learn the rules of the sport and the different positions. Then we play games against other teams. We experience winning and losing, we are introduced to discipline and practice, strategy and technique. We might also play music. In that, too, we have to learn scales and chords, we play in recitals to demonstrate what we have learned.

    So let's break this down a little.

    Play, when we are developing, seems to be directionless exploration. We go out and try things, and in the trial and error, we learn to crawl, stand, walk, run, and recover from falling. We build resilience and competence. We're just exploring, and the exploration itself is stimulation for the nervous system and muscles to develop!

    But when we get older, play changes. We need to learn rules and practice specifics to build skill. We need to relate to others and how they perform. Technique and structure lead to further development.

    In the field of human movement, we are faced with the same basic processes. If we don't have a goal, it can be good to play around with new exercises or modalities to see what speaks to our imagination and inspires us to develop in a further direction. It can be good to try Yoga, Tai Chi, Weight Lifting, HIIT, kettlebells, or whatever else you want! Try it out and get that novel experience for your nervous system.

    But taking 5 different classes a week will have limited results. You are exposed to a mix of stimuli without any rhyme or reason. This can be fun, and can have positive impact on your musculoskeletal and nervous system, but it doesn't necessarily train you to perform. And it doesn't train you to play BETTER.

    Play, when we look at the context of sports (our second analogy), is a performance. A performance is an arrangement of themes set to specific restrictions and rules. If we play football, for instance, there are rules for performing in the context of the game. Just going out and running up and down the field without any knowledge of what you're supposed to be doing might be good exercise, but it's not enjoyable or engaging PLAY. For that, we need: discipline, practice of specific techniques, direction, and knowledge of theory.

    So I like to look at Play in this kind of scale:

At one end we have Exploratory Play. In this level, you are having novel experiences that can have beneficial impact, but are exploring in a baseline capacity.

In the middle, we have Disciplined Practice where we have picked a direction and focus on building the individual components of that performance or skill.

And at the end we have High Level Play where we are so competent at techniques and components that we can combine them into novel and spontaneous experiences.

    Like the Zen adage says: "Before Zen, chop wood and carry water. After Zen, chop wood and carry water." This can mean, in this context, that what seems simple and ordinary in the beginning can have unexpected meaning and depth in the end. What can look like simple play can have hours of study, performance, practice, and theory behind it. 

    So get out there and play, but if you have a purpose to it, that play can lead you to mastery and autonomy!

Surviving

 

    On the surface, the IDEA of working out seems really awesome. Lifting heavy weights, feeling your muscles bulge, having your body being a "well-oiled machine." The feeling of exertion, in your head, can sound invigorating and conjures images of the Spartans, Vikings, or Super Heroes like Superman. Or, you know, like whatever feels cool for you. Maybe it's something completely different.

But I still bet that your mental image of fitness and exercise is something that you feel is epic.

And, it sort of should be! It's good to hold yourself to a high standard, to be exacting, and to shoot for greatness.

What oftentimes gets people into trouble is the gap between their idea of what they want and the process of surviving until they get there.

    I forget which author wrote it about which of their characters (and, frankly, it isn't that important) but the idea was this: An Adventure or a Grand Quest, while you are living it, is a series of misfortune, obstacles, hardships, and travail. When Frodo was taking the ring to Mount Doom, he was alternately plagued by hunger and thirst, by self-doubt, by injury, betrayal, and being stuck in places for long, indeterminate periods of time.

When we look at Superheroes, even Superman, they are in constant struggle and on the razor's edge of personal disaster.

But we applaud them for winning (and looking good in spandex!)

I think the trajectory of a fitness journey is the same thing. Not "kind of" the same thing. Literally the same thing. We approach our physical workout in a microcosm of how we approach life in general.

Let's say that we are training for the most common goal imaginable: weight loss. In our head, we have an image of how we want to appear. Maybe that is tanned, with a 6-pack, and a 28 inch waist. We have that Superhero version of ourselves in our head! But when we get on the treadmill, we don't FEEL like a Superhero. Our calf cramps, we get out of breath, we get BORED. 

One of the major issues with starting out with good intentions, with a grand picture in our heads of where we WANT to be, is there is a major gap in the image or "movie" we project in our heads and the slog (the Dirt and Weeds of my previous post) to get there.

So, briefly, let's take a look at this gap. We started out with a mental image of what we would LIKE to be reality. We start the process, and then, as we saw, there is resistance in the physical world. Once we meet that resistance, our mind has a reaction to it. An "OH SHIT" moment, if you will. There is a non-acceptance of the reality of what we are experiencing, and that can be very uncomfortable. Then the mind comes in and tells us "this is not what I wanted!" The Superhero image seems unattainable.

Now, I bet you're expecting me to say that this is where you need to develop a Warrior mentality and look for the end goal or that "nothing tastes as good as thin feels" or something. But it's exactly the opposite: I want you to stay with that feeling. I want you to recognize that things are hard and that the image in your head doesn't match reality, and that you DON'T feel like a Superhero.

Because the point of life, and indeed the point of a fitness journey, is not in attainment, in reaching that mental image! The point is showing up every day and facing what is in front of you, and in being with yourself while you do it. It's finding a functional kind of survival. It's learning the visceral lessons right in front of you; the kind of lessons you learn through struggle.

HOLY COW, that might sound a little bleak, doesn't it? Let's see if we can shift our perspective on that a little, shall we?

Struggle is just another name for creation. If we are making a work of art, a piece of pottery, first we need material. Then we need technique. Then we need the kiln. Then we need refinement. When you first start to make a bowl, you need to know how much clay you need. How do you know? Well, firstly, it is helpful to have someone make a suggestion. But mostly, it's through practice, through trying to make bowls. When you are shaping the bowl, you need to know how to use your hands, how the clay feels in your hands, and how the clay responds. A LOT of those bowls will break! But with each bowl, you better learn how to make a bowl. In the kiln, some pots will shatter (even the ones you thought were really good!), and in the finishing process you'll mess up the paint.

Your fitness journey is the same way. Every day we show up "on the mat" to create something. It might not feel like a set of bench presses is creating anything besides a set of nice pecs. But I'd argue that you're building a lot more!

Let's apply the analogy of pottery to weight training (specifically because weight training doesn't SEEM like a skill, and it SEEMS like it is just about the result). The raw material of weight training is effort and time. Yes, I used "effort and time" as a single unit, that wasn't bad grammar. How much clay goes into making a weight training session? You have to figure out how much. Someone can tell you, but unless you show up day after day and put effort/time into shape, you won't know. Your technique is important, too. Sometimes you do too much and you are sore. Sometimes you come in tired and angry and your session doesn't go very well. Sometimes when you try to do that 300 pound squat, you don't get it. But that's all ok. Every broken pot teaches you something more about pottery. Every "bad" session, stressful session, or even session that you start and then quit, teaches you more about your body and your SOUL. Not about working out, but about how to move through life.

    Yes, here is where I get philosophical. 

Remember, the point of exercise isn't about what you look like, or even about how you feel at the end of the day. Movement is about learning about what it takes to move. Over time you'll lift a lot, and you'll lift a little; you'll be a bodybuilder, and you'll be a yoga guy. You'll go through years where you don't do anything at all: no pottery or exercise! 

But it's all learning, and it's all surviving.

If we can be like the tree at the beginning of the post, like Frodo, or like the made-up potter from my analogy, we are surviving. The tree grows a little every day, faster in the spring and summer, slower in the winter. Sometimes it gets struck by lighting (which CAN'T feel very good). But the tree shows up every day and does it's thing: it grows. Regardless of what happens.

And you might be reading now and say "Justin, you're basically telling me that I don't need to exercise, I can just make pots". Maybe yes. You'll still grow. You'll still be a Superhero. Exercise just has lots of good things to recommend it, and it's the medium that I use.

My goal for this post is to maybe change your perspective on "working out" and on what it means to be a hero.

So go out there and do what you do. Survive. Grow.