Physical Workout is Mental

The more I enhance the intensity of my workouts, the more I realize that there are absolutely no limits to human physical potential. There seems to be an infinite reservoir of energy, tapping into which can take one to unthinkable highs.

The trick here is to develop the skill of tapping into that reservoir. There are umpteen ways good instructors coach you into increasing your physical limits. Most common is ‘visualization’. Let’s say one is in a ‘group cycle’ class which demands incessant cycling for sixty or more minutes, alternating and modulating the pace and power. The coach would lead you through the routine by asking you to imagine yourself in a cycling marathon. The ups and downs of a marathon trek are simulated by increasing the resistance for uphill and decreasing the resistance but increasing the pace for downhill. The most difficult part of the routine are the last ten minutes, where your mind starts tugging on your determination asking you to give up. This is overcome by bringing the adrenalin flow and excitement of overtaking the cyclists ahead of you in your visualization and giving it all you got with that last bout of energy to the finishing line. Before you become aware of your surroundings and the aches and pains in your muscles, you would have successfully completed a beautiful long workout and most importantly lived through the excitement.

Another strategy adopted is to tune your mind inside. To get into what successful athletes call ‘the flow’. Where you are blocking all the external stimuli by closing your eyes and concentrating on the body part from where the energy is obtained to take you further. So in a cycling class it would be the ball of your toe and nothing else. The practice concentrates on relaxing all the body parts, legs, hands, jaws, except the ball of the toe and tuning in to derive all the power from there. The goal here is to reach a meditative stage of mind where you are aware of nothing except the fountain of energy emanating from the ball of your toe.

Finally, the crux of a sustained physical exercise is to defeat your previous effort. The objective should be to perform better than what you did in the last minute. In a cycling class this translates into leaving your pace behind and never falling back into it. This also means never allowing your mind to persuade you into going slow once you have increased your power and pace. Further it translates into performing better than what you did in the last class and challenging yourself just a little bit more with every workout, so that there is never a point where you feel you have arrived.

Effective coaches help you develop these skills to the extent that it becomes a part of you being in life beyond the class also. Where you develop the attitude of an achiever and train your mind to walk on the path you have chosen, never allowing yourself to give up.

Its not surprising hence, that good trainers exhibit all the qualities of an achiever, always looking for feedback and helping you to understand the spirit behind your physical efforts. As one trainer said in one of the classes, a workout is not solely physical; it’s about the totality of your being, reaching a point that the lessons learnt become a way of your life.