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Strong Medicine

Exploring the Science, Art and Practice of Sustainable Health and Strength

Archives for October 2015

Folding Inner Space, Part III – Pure Awareness and Deep Athletics in Action

October 29, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 4 Comments

Folding Inner Space part three Mark Chaillet

Mark Chaillet, world record holder, world champion: Mark is shown in 1980 deadlifting 800-pounds. He weighs 219 in the picture and is badly out of position, struggling to finish the lift. His shoulders have gotten in front of the bar during the upward pull and now, with legs already straightened; he must finish locking out this ponderous poundage with pure reverse hip-hinge power.

He has shot off all his muscular guns and the only tricks left in his trick bag are his python-like spinal erectors and a grip like eagle talons. He pulled this lift to completion, but a controversial decision, the three judges turn the lift down, 2 to 1, thereby costing him the national title.

Mark was my training partner for six years. He fine-tuned my deadlift technique. We were both narrow-stance conventional deadlifters and both were taught by world champion Hugh Cassidy. We both used Hugh’s technique. Mark’s face and physique shows the degree of pure physical effort needed to experience exercise-induced altered states of consciousness. Nothing less than superhuman effort will fold inner space.

The Inner Astronaut
“An exercise-induced acid trip”

I walked towards my garage gym with a head full of minor troubles. I was distracted and out of sorts. I was really considering punting the workout to another day; my head was really not into it. I was really not feeling up to butting heads with a heavy barbell. As jazz tenor saxophonist John Coltrane once noted in an interview, “I feel the closest to hell when I am dealing with money.” I second that emotion. I was tired and drained, not from any physical toil, rather from mental stress related to life and making a living.

I had myself half convinced to lie back down (it was 6AM) and read some Evelyn Waugh or Kinsley Amis and fall back asleep. I’d wake back up in an hour or so with a whole new fresh and vibrant perspective and start all over.  I wrestled with my thoughts. “When a man’s head is not into the game, distraction prefigures injury,” I thought to myself. This was an excellent argument for blowing off the workout.

My conscientious right-thinking mind knew it was losing the internal argument so it decided to try a new approach. “Why not compromise? How about if you just squat light–nothing heavy, nothing ambitious, just some pristine, precise, technical bon mots–we won’t even pay any attention to the poundage. What say you, other self?” I had played the guilt card on myself and it had carried the day. I would ‘do the right thing’ (the right thing is always something I don’t want to do) and train, but train minimally and lightly and precisely in what I envisioned as a crispy technique day. Who cared if I was weak? Who cared if “light” training was about as exciting as kissing your sister?

Some training is better than no training, “an inch of meditation is an inch of the Buddha” and all of those other exhortations for mediocrity. I walked into the garage and took a look at the big clock. It was 6:18. I didn’t intend to be here long. I turned on my iPod and pulled up something mellow; I save the intense music for my strongest days, when I am fired up and ready to rip into it. Not today. Today I wanted something to keep me calm.

I selected a breezy mystical piece of music, a rare Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar album called, West meets East, recorded in 1970. I clicked on “Raga Inanda Biaravra” and the sitar and Stradivarius began riffing atop an Indian drone tuned to B♭. It was a good musical choice: I had forgotten how strange and passionate and technically superb this odd, old, and for me, recently rediscovered music was.

I loaded a 45-pound plate on each side of the Olympic barbell, already set at shoulder height in the power rack. I checked the gym clock yet again; I wanted to see how long the actual workout would take, not rushing or hurrying. It was 6:21. I ducked under the 135-pound bar, affixed it behind my neck; stood erect and stepped back. I “set up” (took adjustment steps) the squat and unlocked my knees to commence my first rep.

My body felt creaky and stiff and awkward as I lowered down. The weight felt heavy. I felt like the tin woodsman before being oiled. By the fourth out of eight reps, I had broken through my stiffness and awoken my central nervous system. My muscles were being forcibly stretched and warmed, flushed with blood, like it or not, ready or not.

The 135-pound squat set shocked my body awake on every level. It was as if I had jumped into a freezing river. My body, brain and central nervous system were bitch-slapped. I racked the weight. As was my recent habit, immediately after every set of light squats I would perform a slow and precise set of lying leg curls. After eight slo-mo leg curl reps, I immediately performed a set of calf raises. These were done one leg at a time on a stair-step while holding a 40-pound dumbbell in one hand while using the other hand as a support for balance.

On every rep of every calf raise I would stretch as far down as possible then rise up onto the ball of the foot, ending in a ballet-dancer toe extension flexion. I would go to failure with each leg and then immediately “rep out” with both legs. I would do three “tri-sets” (squat, leg curl, calf raise) and rest two to three minutes between each tri-set. I would add a little bit of poundage on the leg curls and use a slightly heavier dumbbell on each successive calf raise set.

The sequence would go: squat, leg curl, calf raises, rest. I would take the 135-pounds one more time for a second 8-rep warm-up set. This one was a delight compared to the first. Loose and warm, I got looser and warmer the deeper into the second set I got. The music was sounding good, appropriate for the early morning dawn. The door was wide open and the October backyard was lush and green with dew on the grass. It was truly picturesque and suddenly I felt good.

OctoberOutdoors

I was really listening to the music, trying hard to follow the lightning fast arpeggio riffs. During Swara, the dappled sunlight was pouring into the gym; the 65-degree temperature was perfect for iron slinging, the music was pulsing and I was starting to get swept away.

For my third squat set, I would handle 185 for six reps. I felt the telltale tinkle of an adrenaline dump as I ducked under the squat bar for the 185-pound set. I snapped it out of the supports, stepped back, set it up and performed six perfect reps. The weight felt incredibly light. This further amplified my burgeoning psych. I did my final tri-set. I had performed 9 total sets in five minutes. My body and legs were vibrant and awake. From this point forward, I would squat and squat only. I had gotten in my three “to failure sets” of the leg curl and calf raise, now 100% of my energy and effort would be directed at the remaining four squat sets.

In quick succession I hit 225, 255 and 285-pounds, all for a single repetition. The idea was to not waste any strength performing a lot of reps on warm-up sets. The single rep sets, spaced a few minutes apart, allowed me to “feel” increasingly heavier weight on my back, yet without frittering away any precious strength or energy best saved for the final, all out set. Each rep felt “snappy” i.e. I was able to accelerate upward and to a dramatic degree on each single.

The last set, the final set, was the only set that mattered: all the good stuff, all the strength increases, all the muscle hypertrophy, occurred during the final squat set. As Cassidy, my Zen lifting mentor used to say, “Everything before the top set is just throat-clearing and windup. Don’t blow your wad on the warm-up sets and preliminary sets.”

Warm, centered and ready, I loaded the barbell to 315-pounds. I felt my “wordless” psych coming on strong. I could “feel” my focus sharpen as I became increasingly focused and aggressive in immediate anticipation of the final all-out squat effort. Five days ago I had done 305 for 6 reps and the final two reps had been hell and barely made–but made nonetheless. Now, on a supposed “off day” (remember, I almost blew off the workout on account of distraction and stress) I felt good enough to attempt ten more pounds.

I knew myself and I knew the difference between real preparedness and feigned or superficial preparedness. I could not afford to tackle this poundage with fake, pretend or faux readiness. The nagging problems that had been bothering me before, the money and people woes, had long since evaporated.

It was Go Time. I switched to some hard, hard music, violent, visceral and aggressive. I began my psych ritual by pacing. I could feel the adrenaline coursing through my body. I could feel the fight-or-flight switch being thrown. The hairs on the back of my neck and on my arms stood up as a cocktail of hormones were fuel-injected into my bloodstream. It was time to storm the barricades.

I wheeled and strode to the bar; I got under the bar ASAP, set up and snapped the barbell out of the racks. In my state of excitation, the 315 felt lighter than the previous 285-pound effort; a great sign. I stepped back and set up. I broke my knees to begin the first rep. I eased downward, feeling the weight every inch of the descent. It felt as if it took forever to bottom out. I made sure I was perfectly positioned on the descent. Now it was time to come erect. Above all else, I would NOT fudge on the depth–every rep had to be ‘bottomed out,’ taken as deep as humanly possible, 6-10 inches below parallel.

I threw my knees out hard as I bottomed out and powered upward. I stood with real acceleration, the first few reps felt powerful and relatively easy. I became instantly elated; electricity was shooting through my central nervous system. On every inch of every squat rep I focused my eyes on a spot on the wall at eye level directly in front of me: it was as if I was trying to use X-ray vision to burn a hole through a quarter-sized hole on the wall. This intense visual focus kept me balanced by providing a stable reference point as I dipped and arose with a body-crushing weight on my back.

If my eyes wandered I would become unstable and instantly lose my balance. Psychologically, the intense visual focus provided my consciousness with a simplistic fundamental task that was critically important: if my eyes wandered for a split second I would lose the rep. This critical task kept a portion of my brain engaged at a high level and continual level, one lapse and I would collapse. I could not let my excitation and psych create slop and chaos. The 2th rep was effortless. Mind and body had successfully unified in order to cope with the severity of the effort

For the first three reps, a single aggressive breath between reps was all that was needed. Rep # 4 slowed a bit as I experienced a definite power stall at the top. No problem, I stood erect and fully locked out. I now forced three huge breathes. I held the third breath, broke my knees and descended for rep five. Rep #5 felt heavy going down and felt heavier still standing erect. High-end acceleration was suddenly replaced by grind; high-end horsepower was replaced with low-end torque. I shifted into four-wheel low and ground number 5 to lockout.

I pushed through the sticking point and stood erect. One more to go; I stood and inhaled “as if trying to suck all of the air out of the room.” I unlocked my knees and began the final rep. While rep six was more difficult than rep five, the final result was never in doubt: the barbell never stalled on its upward trajectory and I never lost my laser eye focus. I locked out rep six and re-racked the barbell with great care. I had given 105%.

I peeled myself off the barbell carefully. I was huffing and puffing and held onto the squat bar with two hands in case I fainted or fell down. I glanced at the clock: it was 6:42. The entire torture-fest squat session, a total of seven sets, (plus six sets of calfs and hams) had taken a grand total of 21-minutes. My legs felt shaky as I wobbled to the nearby flat bench and sat down.

I immediately turned off the music. The violent battle music soundtrack was suddenly inappropriate. I took stock: I was physically shattered; my body was shaking; yet I was elated. As I sat, I noticed all five sense-gates (smell, hear, feel, touch, see, conscious awareness) were wide open and hyper-receptive. I felt like a nuclear isotope, generating heat, glowing. I felt perfect. No thoughts were needed; no commentary could do justice to what I was feeling. I purposefully sunk further into this exercise-induced acid trip. Suddenly an old nonsensical Zen koan made perfect sense to me, “Iron Mountains, Silver Cliffs–Soaring!”

Once again I had entered into this exercise-induced state of altered consciousness: It was Iron Zen, a satori-state, the Zen of pure physical effort. I sat on the exercise bench facing the open doorway in perfect stillness and deeply satisfied equanimity. I sat like a mountain as I gazed out from within my skull with divine mental silence and a relaxed “soft eye” I was taking in everything at once. Another Zen koan came to mind, “Stoned…Immaculate…” that one from Zen Grand Maestro, Jimi Hendrix.

The beautiful orange-leafed Japanese maple, statuesque and perfectly framed in the doorway was contrasted with the most luscious green grass, grass that glistened with diamond dew. I put back the mystical Indian music back on and placed my hands in the cosmic mudra in my lap. I would sit in this wordless bliss for another perfect 30 minutes.

I felt myself start to slump and fuzz out, so I stood, stretched, yawned and headed back into the house. Still enveloped in quietude, I mindfully made myself a nutrient-dense post-workout regenerative shake. My concoction consisted of protein powder, raw peanut butter and raw milk and was unbelievably delicious, particularly while still in the throes of a heightened sense of taste. This “meal in a glass” was ideal for healing a shattered body. I laid down on my futon in the living room and immediately fell into a narcoleptic power nap. For 40 minutes I was in a deep sleep coma. I swear I could feel my body growing as I bathed in deep, dreamless REM.

I awoke refreshed, drank some potent coffee and admonished myself: and to think, I came within a whisker of blowing off the transcendental workout. What did I learn? The hard lesson might be, “How you feel is a lie.”

***

Marty Gallagher is the author of Strong Medicine, The Purposeful Primitive and Coan: The Man, The Myth, The Method.  Gallagher coached the United States team that won the IPF powerlifting world team title in 1991. He is a 6-time national masters champion and national record holder.  He was the IFF world master powerlifting champion in 1992.  He currently works with elite athletes, spec ops military and governmental agencies.

Filed Under: Brain Train, Strength Tagged With: deep athletics, Iron Zen, Marty Gallagher, meditative training, powerlifting, pure awareness, squats, strength training, weightlifting, Zen

Folding Inner Space, Part II – Cessation of Thought and Super-Human Effort

October 15, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 2 Comments

Folding Inner Space Part II Lead Photo

Hormonal Nitrous Oxide

Body-shocking physical effort, maximum effort of a very specific type and kind births an exercised-induced altered state of pure awareness that elite athletes routinely experience, yet fail to identify.  Access to this exercise-induced zone of pure awareness can only be attained when the degree of difficulty is sufficient to cross a hormonal threshold.

How difficult is difficult? In progressive resistance training difficult means exerting to a degree equal to or surpassing whatever you are currently capable of.  To enter exercise-induced Nirvana, you must equal or exceed your current physical limit in some way, shape or form, in some manner or fashion.

I have been self-inducing this physiological phenomena for fifty years and can say with the certainty that comes with half a century of concentrated practice that 100% maximal physical effort, and preferably 102% or 105% effort, is necessary to gain entry into the post-workout bliss-zone.

I am an athlete in a sport of complete mathematical certainty: I have been a national champion in both Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting.  My sports are all about pounds lifted.  It is a universe of numbers: sets, reps, frequency, duration, time under tension–everything in the elite strength world can and is assigned a numerical value.  The iron elite create complex training matrices using cold logic and empirical data; this approach is the apogee of sophisticated rational thought applied to progressive resistance training.

How metaphysically ironic that we utilize the Yang rational left-brain, with its Spock-like coldness, its numerical and mathematical certainties, its science and logic to create the savage training regimens that unlocks the ethereal, intuitive artistic consciousness that lies dormant in the Yin right brain.

The rational goal of powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting is to increase the sheer amount of poundage lifted in the three powerlifts or two Olympic lifts.  This can be accomplished by honing technique and/or by becoming stronger.  The way in which we become stronger is to stress the body to such a degree that we invoke an adaptive response.  We traumatize the body in a deliberate and systematic fashion in order to elicit a specific and desired physiological reaction.

When the body is purposefully stressed–and stressed to a dramatic degree, new muscle tissue is constructed: cells split and divide and strength increases; all as protective response to the self-inflicted trauma of an expertly applied progressive resistance training session.  If the degree of difficulty is sufficiently intense, a hormonal threshold is crossed and a tsunami of hormones are released into the bloodstream: endorphins, adrenaline, cortisol, growth hormone are shot into the bloodstream like hormonal nitrous oxide.

A productive training session is a body-shocking event. The sheer physicality of the effort is so muscularly exhaustive that it completely depletes and drains the human body. There is a concurrent hormonal floodtide. Somewhere in the immediate aftermath, the mind grows silent and the shattered body becomes enveloped in a relaxed and blissful state of pure awareness and contentment.

In this post-workout state, clarity, vividness and cognition are amplified. Effortlessly, without suppression, the conscious observer ceases its endless babbling inside the athlete’s skull.  As my mental mentor, Krishnamurti noted, “The cessation of thought is the awakening of intelligence.”  When the never-ending unceasing internal dialogue ceases, the athlete is able to experience the electric crackle that imbues the very atmosphere of the instantaneous present.

As the exhausted yet elated athlete basks in his endorphin afterglow, he looks out at the gym from inside his head without the inky film of thought blurring his vision; every thing, every object, every person, every object and color is vibrant and enhanced, visually amplified. The athlete glows and basks in his centered, peaceful post-workout state of intense quietude: he is content, he is exhausted, he is at peace and centered.  This post-workout glow, the beatific state-of-being bears many overt and subtle similarities to the amplified states of consciousness achieved in sitting meditation.

Like base jumping, big wave surfing, skydiving or cliff jumping, big poundage teaches with a big stick.  Any man that attempts more than he is capable of, via psych and preparation and sheer effort, must learn how to create a totality of effort–nothing less will accomplish a muscular task that exceeds current capabilities and capacities.

On the other hand, dare to struggle, dare to win. No one ever improved by doing the same thing, over and over in the same way.  To approach, equal or (optimally) exceed current physical capacity, the athlete must successfully achieve a synergistic melding of mind and body.  We seek something profound: we seek to perform past all rational and realistic expectations.  To do so will require more than human effort, it will require superhuman effort. Superhuman effort can only occur if a mind/body melding has already occurred.

Psych and Artificially-Inducing “Fight-or-Flight”

Elite athletes access modified consciousness by self-inflicting a cataclysmic event in the form of a body-shocking training session. They train so hard, so intensely and so fiercely that the body is “tricked” into invoking the primal “fight-or-flight” syndrome. We force a mind/body synergistic melding by subjecting our own body to a task that is so physically demanding, so difficult, so outrageous, that it can only be accomplished by exerting a 100% effort.

Any physical effort at or above 100% of realistic capacity demands that mind and body enter into a unified partnership in order to successfully cope.  Only through a successful mind-body melding can we make the body do that which it is currently incapable of. If successful, we set a new performance benchmark and simultaneously acquire all the physiological benefits associated with progressive resistance training.

Humans are no longer chased by bears, attacked by invaders, forced to hunt and kill to eat.  Only on rare occasions does modern man invoke the fight-or-flight response.  Athletes rekindle and reawaken the dormant fight-or-flight impulse, they hotwire it, like stealing a car.  Any athlete performs better, light-years better, when aroused, centered, focused, fierce, alert, highly combative and possessing an overall heightened sense of awareness.

The athlete convinces the mind that it is fighting for its life. How? By subjecting the body to a 100% all-out physical effort.  The degree of struggle and effort are the tripwire mechanism. The body realizes it is about to be pulverized and the fight-or-flight response awakens in order to cope.

The nervous system’s response should be the same…
The nervous system’s response should be the same…

So instead of having a saber tooth tiger leap out of the woods, the athlete voluntarily attempts to exceed a previous best in an exercise, set and rep benchmark.  Once the brain becomes convinced that, yes, we have a genuine fight-or-flight situation, the brain declares Defcon 5 and triggers an adrenaline dump–which is felt immediately. When the adrenaline begins coursing through the bloodstream, we throw hormonal gasoline on the mental fire.

Excitation combines with emotion and if channeled properly enables the lifter to lift 5% to 10% more than if they performed the identical lift without a proper psych. The best athletic psychers are getting a full 10% over their non-psyched self.  Think of elite athlete “super psych” as the bottled, formalized, artificial version of the 140-pound lady who lifts the back end of the car off her child that is pinned underneath the vehicle.  The elite strength athlete is a psych master. If he wasn’t he wouldn’t be elite.

Normal fitness trainees are oblivious to the degree of effort needed to forcibly morph the human body: only in response to self-inflicted trauma does the adaptive response trigger; only in response to superhuman effort does the body build new muscle. Elite athletes have performance benchmarks that they continually seek to improve upon.  By continually expanding our limits, the body is forced to transform.  The human body will not and does not grow new muscle (hypertrophy) or acquire more strength by exerting sub-maximally.

  • Sub-maximal exertion, can, at best, serve to retain the physical status quo.  The body will not radically transform in response to sub-maximal exertion.
  • Exceeding capacity requires the mind and body unify and assist one another–otherwise the total effort is insufficient to accomplish the task.

Please be aware that you are not expected to perform one-rep maximum single reps in all your progressive resistance sessions.  The man with the 400×1 back squat will have a 5-rep personal best of say, 350-pounds, a triple max of 370, a 10-rep PR of 315-pounds, and so on.  In any session the trainee can select from an infinite variety of capacity benchmarks. Capacity can have a myriad of expressions.

A trainee that seeks extraordinary results must exert extraordinary effort, superhuman effort; mere human effort can only maintain what has been achieved already.  Continually assault the limits.  This implies that you have limits to assault.  Establish benchmarks; embrace struggle and embrace difficulty.  Do so and reap the optimal physiological and psychological benefit: a transformed body and a transformed mind.

***

Marty Gallagher is the author of Strong Medicine, The Purposeful Primitive and Coan: The Man, The Myth, The Method.  Gallagher coached the United States team that won the IPF powerlifting world team title in 1991. He is a 6-time national masters champion and national record holder.  He was the IFF world master powerlifting champion in 1992.  He currently works with elite athletes, spec ops military and governmental agencies.

Filed Under: Brain Train, Strength Tagged With: athletic training, Marty Gallagher, meditation, mental states, mental training, powerlifting, psych, sports performance, states of consciousness, superhuman effort, weightlifting

Folding Inner Space: Part I – Iron Zen: Exercise-Induced Altered States

October 1, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 12 Comments

Iron Zen

Tibetan Lama Dungse Jampol is the son of a Tibetan meditation master. At a young age he asked his father to explain to him, “What is the nature of the mind?” and “What is ‘pure existence” and what is the meaning of “enlightenment?” His father sat down and said to the boy, “Come closer.” The boy came within arms length of the father who gestured him even closer by wagging his finger. When the boy’s forehead was within six inches of the father, the elder lama unleashed a blood-curdling scream that literally sent the youngster reeling. Dungse recalled, “That scream was so loud and so intense and so unexpected that I was paralyzed; shocked, my mind was completely cleared of everything – instantly. My father excitedly said, “See! There it is! There it is!”


It is my contention that intense physical effort, the kind of effort generated during limit-exceeding weight training sessions, offers an entranceway into higher realms of consciousness. My Zen master friend, Ken O’Neil, and I have talked frequently about this phenomenon at length and in depth. I have long sought out others that have experienced this Iron Satori in my ongoing effort to bring attention to this rarified and refined quality of consciousness attained during “Iron Zazen.”

Exercise-induced altered consciousness, or, alternatively and more poetically, The Zen of Pure Physical Effort, is a higher awareness induced by intense physical exercise. Superhuman effort opens the “heavy door with rusted hinges.”

I have been a hardcore weight trainer for 54 years and a meditator for 43 years. Nietzsche once noted “true greatness requires long obedience in the same direction.” To which I would add, over time and with continual repetition the ability to enter into exercise-induced altered states of consciousness becomes easier. The longer and more often the athlete enters these zones of heightened sensory awareness, the deeper the experience becomes and the easier it is accessed: vividness and clarity magnify with repeated visitations.

The exercise-induced altered mindset offers a “shortcut” method, a meditational way in which to fold inner space.

We can jump the beginning meditator ahead; throw them into the deep end of the pool, metaphorically speaking, through the precise application of Iron Zen. Intense physical effort shortens the meditation learning curve, depositing the Iron Zen adherent into an advanced state-of-being. Entry is dependent on the quality of the individual workout: if the effort is deep enough, sincere enough, intense enough, Huxley’s Doors of Perception swing open and the exerciser is predictably enveloped in blissful state of exercise-induced nirvana.

Conscious thought is the enemy, the destroyer of optimal human performance. The elite athlete understands this fact: they embrace and inhabit a wordless state that characterizes optimal human performance. Intense physical effort attacks the human body on a variety of fronts in a variety of ways: we self-inflict body trauma in order to induce beneficial stresses. The optimal workout creates stress. The poison is in the dose.

Our subtle task is to create sufficient stress to invoke the adaptive response–this in order to reap all the considerable benefit associated with expertly applied progressive resistance training. Too little self-induced stress and nothing of any physical or psychological consequence occur. What are the stress categories?

  • Mental stress
  • Hormonal stress
  • Central nervous system stress
  • Muscular stress
  • Internal organ stress

How do we create beneficial stresses and not overdo or under-do the dose?

The requisite stress dose appears when we approach, equal or exceed some measure, some current performance benchmark. Hypertrophy, strength, power and exercise-induced satori do not and cannot appear or occur in response to sub-maximal effort. Pushing up to or past capacity–in some way, shape or form–is what triggers all the good stuff.

The elite athlete is able to will his body to perform past its realistic capacity. This ability is one of the contributing factors to why the elite are the elite. At the highest levels of athletics, regardless the sport, everyone has the genetics and everyone has the work ethic, everyone is fast, everyone is strong and agile–so what separates 1st form 5th place?

In most cases superior or inferior placing correlates to the mental attributes (or lack there of) of the athlete. Some athletes are natural competitors and rise to the competitive occasion while others shrink and fall apart at the actual competition.

Human Nervous System

The elite athlete is willfully able to invoke the primordial fight-or-flight response, the necessary precursor to extraordinary effort. Successfully triggering the flight-or-flight response sets in motion everything of benefit that follows. How does one “artificially” invoke fight-or-flight? They create a system of psych.

Successful superhuman effort requires a singularity of mind. A person does not casually exert superhuman effort.

Elite athletes develop individualized mental methods by which they psych themselves up in order to achieve superhuman levels of performance.  Athletes do not care one wit about attaining higher levels of consciousness; elite athletes only care about improved performance.  An experienced, mature, seasoned athlete uses a highly developed psych designed to elevate the quality of the individual workout and elevate performance in actual competitions.

Recalibrating the mind is the necessary precursor to elevating performance. The “Psych” is a conscious, willful act. The athlete executes a mental checklist that they have developed over time. They recalibrate their mindset to prepare for the training session. Once the actual training session is underway, a highly individualized psych-up routine is used repeatedly in each exercise, drill or protocol.

By consciously focusing, concentrating and using tunnel-vision focus, the seasoned athlete optimizes their capacities and abilities. This singularity of purpose improves the quality of, and results derived from, the workout. The key to continual improvement is being able to string together long series of quality workouts, like pearls strung together on a necklace strand.

***

Marty Gallagher is the author of Strong Medicine, The Purposeful Primitive and Coan: The Man, The Myth, The Method.  Gallagher coached the United States team that won the IPF powerlifting world team title in 1991. He is a 6-time national masters champion and national record holder.  He was the IFF world master powerlifting champion in 1992.  He currently works with elite athletes, spec ops military and governmental agencies.

Filed Under: Brain Train, Mental Health, Motivation Tagged With: athletic training, Iron Zazen, Marty Gallagher, mental training, powerlifting, strength training, stress, stress management, Zen

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