"Lifting weights IS boring..."

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"It's funny how a couple modalities think they have the market cornered on training the mind. The only reason people think doing a leg extension is mindless is because most people do it mind-less-ly." -- Tom Purvis

Near the end of RTS® class this past weekend Tom Purvis had one of his profound moments where he says something that you have more or less always known or assumed but haven't ever actually verbalized it so finally hearing it for the first time makes you stop in your tracks for and just think about things. He said

"People think lifting weights is boring. Lifting weights IS boring. Training your body is not."

I think many of us have felt both from time to time; we've had days where our workouts were fun and invigorating and other days where they were more of something to get through than anything else. Until going through RTS®, however, I didn't really know what to do about this.

One of the things I had to spend a fair amount of time on this past weekend was getting it out of my head that lifting weights was about the outside--"completing" the motion, moving the weights "full range"--and more about the inside--what each individual fiber was doing and how much tension you wanted them to generate, the exact direction of force you wanted to apply. I thought I had been doing a better job of this as of late but I realized that what I had been experiencing compared to what I could experience once I let go of this old mindset were completely different. Curls, rows, presses, shrugs--everything felt so much different than it ever had before.

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Yesterday I had a client who I have been seeing multiple times a week for just over three months now. We have been progressing appropriately and yesterday we had two exercises that we had seemingly done multiple times before--seated hip abduction and prone knee flexion. Now these are not this person's favorite exercises by any means, but by getting them to focus on lifting from the inside they experienced sensations that were completely new to them. All of a sudden these exercises, my consultation, and the sessions in general became a totally different type of experience for them.

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Are you lifting weights for the sake of moving a mass from point A to point B or are you lifting to train your body? Are you lifting weights from the outside, focusing solely on moving that weight? Or are you lifting from the inside, with your focus on exactly what your body is doing and what you want it to do?

Your body. Your training.

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