The Strange Art Of Sneaking Up On Yourself
Thursday • October 17th 2024 • 11:06:18 pm
First let me tell you what it isn’t, it is not doing the same thing while hoping for different results.
It is not showing up thrice a week, and lifting this or that 50 plus times total.
It is not mostly having spent your time, sitting around, whether really resting or not.
To sneak up on your body, you have to become smarter than 4 billion years of evolution.
You need to strategize, emphasize, adapt, and focus on comparing your efforts to the results.
Most people, are stuck on a plateau, they forced themselves to lift too heavy.
Which means that they cannot lift long enough, and their body does not care about their feeble efforts.
It has no reason to adapt, because, the first plateau where it grew some muscles seems to be working out.
That is why we must think of fitness, endurance and bodybuilding, as an art of sneaking up, of going around your body’s wisdom.
And blaming it, for something that is your deliberate fault, bodybuilding, fitness, endurance, longevity.
Let me stress that one more time, your body will ignore sets and reps.
Because it has already done a half-sassed job, adapting to them – it can handle your workout.
And you can’t handle heavier weights, and you can’t handle lifting them longer.
You are presenting your body, with the same workout every day.
It is grateful for the flexing and starching, but it has no reason to grow new muscles.
And let me clarify, yes, you grew some muscles, but only because you went from couch to lifting.
Now you can’t lift harder, because you are lifting too heavy.
Now, you can’t create as great of a challenge to you body, as you initially did.
The way you do it right, requires that you trade lifting heavy a few times, for lifting light a lot.
And don’t you date to reach for 15 pound dumbbells, you can’t lift those fast enough yet.
Now grab onto your butt, because this will rock your view of bodybuilding – use both hands.
Start with 3 or 5 pounds, and lift it for as long as you can, to the steady beat of slow longs.
Move to the beats of your songs, as that will put you into a dance trance.
Bodybuilding is an endurance sport, learn from the hikers, eat trail mix, soak it overnight if it is too hard for you.
Switch from lifting above your head, to bicep curls, to lifting in front, and palms down.
If you are forced to stop, pretend you are a jogger, and focus on eliminating your rest gaps.
Gaps are best eliminated mathematically, you may need an free interval timer app.
Measure how long you can work with standing dumbbells exercises, and how long you need to rest to do it again.
Punch those two into the cycling interval timer, and set your rounds to 5, 10 or 20, as many as you can handle.
And then start trimming down your rest periods, by 5 seconds, 10, or 30.
Once you can lift the lightest weights non stop for an hour, begin walking back and forth like a crazed animal.
And find faster songs, and add more rounds, add an hour to your workout. and start showing up 5, 6, or 7 days a week.
Add jogging, bicycling, walking, fighting, wresting bears and strong fat ladies, and power walking with dumbbells to your weekly routine.
And while you, yourself invent more ways, to SLOWLY BUT SURELY increase the intensity of your workouts.
Now that you longer need to worry about hitting a plateau, because of how much runway you granted yourself by moving to the light dumbbells.
You must learn to test your light weights, so that you can check if you may be able to lift 2 or 3 pounds more.
If you can lift heavier, you must lift heavier.
But if you new heavy is making you stop, then you went too far, you are not ready.
You may need to mix your weights, or just lift faster with the set you have.
Lastly, I asked artificial intelligence, to write a tiny litany for you,
"I begin with the light, where my strength unfolds, A brilliance not so faint that I shy from my limits, Nor so overwhelming that I falter in weakness. I am a beautiful machine, a child of the cosmos, Born of stardust, Forever striving, ever reaching, On this sacred path to greatness. I seek the wisdom of self-control, the power of strength, In this relentless motion, I find my rhythm, A symphony of effort, a dance of fire, Where grit and spirit intertwine, I rise—unstoppable, This is my awakening!"