We have all head of the saying ; ‘Working out, but rarely do we hear the term; ‘Working in’!
Working In
‘Working in’, is the untold longevity secret of every top athlete, let alone footballers.
For example every time we train, we should improve our last workout by 1-3%. Otherwise we don’t belong in the gym or on the pitch. If you are burnt out and tired from training, it is your form that will suffer. The body always remembers the last couple of reps that you did. So if the last ones were not good, that is what will be engrained in your movement.
Working in equals bringing life force and energy into the body. This special energy is readily available all around us and is also known as chi, dantiane and prana. Working in cultivates, harmonises and energises our vitality and life force.
Training our bodies when we are depleted and exhausted creates the greatest threat to the human system. Working in means you can are able to move on a full stomach, your heart rate and breathing rate don’t go up and you take energy into the body. Clues to look out for are the tongue drying out. This means your nervous system is sympathetic dominant getting activated. Staying parasympathetic means we can digest, metabolise and regenerate and time movement with breath.
The science of movement and breathing dictates that inspiration lengthens the spine and opens the ribcages by creating negative pressure in the thorax . Expiration shortens the body taking us towards utereo. When we mouth breath , we are in a state of fight or flight. Nose breathing is better for us as the nasal nerve ends stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system at neurological level.
You will hear me say: ‘Inhale= Big belly, Exhale = small belly.
When ever you are learning a new exercise, the neurological system gains 30% by first few reps. The groove of exercise in a working in state should be like a meditation with little to no effort, efficient and soft and flowing.
So we can apply working into lifting weights, by slowing the movement down and reducing the range of movement you should be able to do 30 reps without raising the heartrate and increasing the breath. If your heartrate increases and you are struggling reduce the weight or try switching hands. Quite often athletes benefit form 60-100 rep sets because take them into a mediative state (providing the load is correct) synchronising the breath, heart rate, mind and peristalsis of the gut into a coherent integrated state.
Neuromuscular efficiency
So to develop neuromuscular efficiency you need to practice proper form. You can get the biggest insights and answers to problems by being in a mediative state. This is because your field of awareness comes into a coherent state with the field of your body, so that now you are like a finely tuned antenna system.
Your heart puts out a electro magnetic field something like 5000 times bigger than the brain, the brain is second largest field and the gut is third largest field. These are called biological oscillators, these are regulating the rhythms of the body (heart, brain and gut) enabling us to become coherent. By becoming coherent we not only generate a lot of life force energy, but we can access a lot on answers and ‘AHA’ moments by becoming ‘No mind’, so a state of inner harmony and heart coherence, your integrated and your mind is calm.
And if you still feel depleted using the weights, you need to look at stretching, joint mobilizations, saunas, cold plunges and massages. Do this util you are ready.
Bibliography
Paul Chek