Is Your Approach Limiting The Results From Your Exercise Routine?
Is your exercise routine too physical?The problem as I see it is with what we mean by the word ’physical’ as it suggests an activity requiring little or no ‘mental’ input. I have met many individuals that regard their exercise routine as a way of taking a break from their intellectual pursuits and train their ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ self separately. But can we really perform at our best by splitting ourselves in two? Does taking the ‘mind’ out of physical activity result in mindless action?Here is a good example. On my drive to work I would see an elderly gentleman walking his dog. He first caught my attention because in spite of his age, probably around eighty years old, he moved with a wonderful free-flowing action. Day by day I observed his effortless style and we soon began to acknowledge one another with a polite wave. However, one day I noticed a change in his gait, in place of his usual stride was a contrived march accompanied by a fixed facial expression and stiffness throughout his body. I initially thought he must be in pain but the reason soon became obvious, it was not physical but one of attitude - he was wearing a tracksuit. I believe this extra effort succeeded only in adding unnecessary tension to his frame and strain on the joints and perhaps in the long term changing his concept of what free movement feels like. In place of enjoying his morning stroll, whilst keeping fit in the process anyway, it had become a chore because it was now exercise. Are we missing a trick here?His approach is by no means unique. Exercise is universally accepted to be the only way to improve fitness and essential for sporting success. Yet the reason there are so many exercise and fitness books available is much the same as why there are so many books on diet – ultimately they do not work. Whether you began training to work on your fitness, lose weight or improve sporting performance there are more fundamental issues that need to be considered first that exercise will not begin to address. Exercise may achieve short-term gains, but long-term success is determined by factors that are present before you begin training.My point is that conventional training and exercise systems do not recognise the role of the most fundamental factor influencing performance. This factor is habit. It dominates life and determines all our actions yet we are barely conscious of its presence, because we are the habit. The way you stand, walk, run, breathe, feel and think are determined by what you have done and how you have done it previously. The more you use yourself in this way the more ingrained it becomes. Your exercise routine will not change habits – it will re-enforces them! You could be getting better at doing thing badly! "Insanity is doing the same thing you've always done and expecting different results." The problem with an exercise routine is that it encourages you to do exactly this and worse still you may not be aware of it. You may see results from your efforts but how can you be sure that the results are beneficial or that they could have been achieved another way, perhaps an easier way with less stress whilst teaching you something in the process. The barriers that prevent improvement are usually not what we would call physical, but ones created by attitude. For this reason our training programs do not use conventional exercise routines, as these can conversely cultivate performance-limiting habits. Neither are our methods purely a ‘mind-training’ approach promoting the concept of a division between mind and body and therefore proceeding to train the two separately. The path to improvement is not through trying harder and doing yet more of the same but in learning to reduce effort by training smarter.
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