DO you ever find your mind continually straying? It dwells on the past or drifts into the future. But how often are you present and in the moment? I mean, REALLY in the moment.
Jemma, now 11 weeks into the Amazing 12 Chichester at Core Results, has a classic case of a wandering mind. And it’s at the root of her anxiety and worry. She knows it.
She’s much better at dealing with it now than when she started the Amazing 12. Jemma admits her stress levels have dropped significantly.
Jemma laughs that I “always bring her back to reality”. Sure enough, without fail, in EVERY session there comes a point when I remind her that all that matters is where we are now and what she is doing in that very second. Not the set she just completed or the next exercise or what she is going to eat next week or what she’s going to wear for her photo shoot or a conversation she had at work that day.
Anything that takes you out of the present moment is a distraction and diminishes the quality of what you are trying to achieve.
There has probably never been a harder time to be present. In this highly technological age, we are continually distracted and our electronic devices are doing precisely that – training and honing us for distraction.
We pride ourselves on being multi-taskers in order to get more done, but it’s been scientifically proven that multi-taskers are actually less effective. It stands to reason that trying to do more than one thing simultaneously means quality will suffer. The focus becomes the doing rather than the experiencing.
The gym or exercise/training arena is a great opportunity to turn off the ‘noise’. For me, training is like moving meditation. It’s why I’m against my clients having their phones on or accessible when they are training. The moment they check in with the phone their mind is diverted elsewhere. If you are on the phone, you can’t be training. You might be doing something, but it’s not training.
When it comes to lifting weights or attempting anything that has an element of risk or complexity, concentration should be paramount.
Sometimes Jemma will try to carry on a conversation with me while training and, with my eyes, I’ll point to the equipment as if to say, ‘concentrate on what you’re supposed to be doing’.
If you are talking while training there is no way the exercise can be executed with complete focus. You’re missing the opportunity and limiting your results.
Ever notice why some repetitions feel easier than others? It may feel accidental or random, but I reckon it’s because sometimes you are more centred and focused than at other times.
The harder or more challenging the exercise/movement, the more dialled in you need to be.
When I get Jemma to crawl with a foam roller on her lower back as part of her warm-up, initially she may start complaining. But when I tell her she will start again if it falls off, suddenly her complaining ends and she goes into a different mode. In those moments I see what she is really capable of.
This week we had another example. I had Jemma slamming a ball and hitting a tyre with a sledgehammer. Halfway through, she started complaining her back was feeling tight and sore.
It’s not uncommon for Jemma to complain and I know she likes a bit of drama, but, nonetheless, I told her we would stop if the discomfort was too great.
With Jemma I’ve come to identify the difference between hurt and pain. Her use of the word ‘hurt’ is when her muscles are being worked with some degree of intensity. Pain is when she has damaged something. Nearly always, she is dealing with hurt. I wouldn’t ever encourage her to train through pain.
Not wanting to short-change herself, though, Jemma elected to carry on. She is driven to get the best results possible. And what was brilliant was that she not only went silent, but connected fully to her body, corrected her positioning and channelled her concentration into every repetition for the remainder of the session.
The outcome: improved form; no discomfort; greater workrate; better workout; higher feel-good factor; more energy.
Training clearly is a way to bring about more focus and enable us to practice being in that ‘now’ moment. It’s a skill that can be taken into our outside-the-gym-training-area life, too.
It is a massively important skill to have, though far from an easy one to sustain, never mind master.
To execute a movement to a high standard in the gym, for instance, you need to be switched on and in the zone. For starters, the mind has to stop chattering and firing at you messages that are defeating and unproductive.
When you are completely in ‘the now’, no fear or worry or pain exists. How do you get there? Like anything else, it comes with practice.
When I watch tennis or world class sports people in action, I see that it is not necessarily the advantage in technique or skill that makes the difference at the highest level, but the ability to return to the ‘now’ for each point or second.
With lifting weights, successes are made or broken by our state of mind. Anyone who has been on the Amazing 12 Chichester and is self-aware enough will discover this. Jemma this week had a tough time deadlifting, for instance. Admittedly, she was lifting a heavier weight than ever before, but it wasn’t a weight that was beyond her (or else I wouldn’t have prescribed it). I know that because she was able to lift it.
But in difficult moments her thoughts got the better of her. She couldn’t turn off the internal commentary.
“It’s too heavy,” she moaned. “I can’t do it.”
“It’s not the weight that’s too heavy. It’s the weight of your thoughts that is too heavy,” I replied.
As Eckhart Tolle says in his brilliant book, The Power of Now, “When you are full of problems, there is no room for anything new to enter, no room for a solution.”
Jemma had lost focus. She became consumed by her grip, the previous set, the difficult repetition, the stressful week she’d had, the heat and a host of other thoughts that got in the way of her completing the lift.
Remember, it’s our Central Nervous System that calls the shots. The CNS will protect us if it senses a threat too great. The more we keep feeding it messages of concern or worry or fear or doubt, the less chance we have of being granted the strength to fulfil the task.
Here’s the take-away: challenge yourself to stay in the ‘now’ moment. Give your training complete focus. It doesn’t mean you can’t socialise with those around you. It means that when the time comes to actually train or spring to action or pick up the weights, put ALL of your attention into what you are doing.
Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t maintain it for even short periods. But notice what happens when you do. The mere action of noticing will restore you to the present.
In that space, though, you are not only free of worry, but your actions are more deliberate, movements far more precise and, most importantly, the risk of injury much less.
This wave of the Amazing 12 is now nearly complete. The next one begins on September 18. If you want an experience that is challenging, educating, rewarding and, above all else, will deliver results provided the program is followed precisely, contact me at Claude@intelligentstrength.co.uk. Places are limited, but the potential for growth is great.