Strength Goes Beyond the Body

Henry Ford once said, “ Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.” With that quote in mind, how often do you think one way or the other? Your thoughts can either push the body to new physical strengths and abilities or keep the body complacent and status quo.

Tension brings about strength. There are about 320 identical bilateral muscles in the body. They work together, especially when pushed to their maximum. Tension of mind and body must also occur in order to perform on a greater level. When the body stalls in performance due to overuse, strain, and pain, the mind can take the body places it never intended to go with the tension of thinking beyond appeared reality. Now, before you scratch your head and ask, “What,” let me unpack this a bit.

Almost any athlete knows this tension of mind and body first hand. Whether it’s busting through the plateau of “best” or recovering from an injury or just the pain of wear and tear. The mind must push the body. Eventually the body catches up to the mind, but it takes multiple doses of this consistency. Think of the marathon runner, for example, at mile eighteen that gets a leg cramp and must push through for eight more miles. Or the tennis player that feels every hit of his racket as it reverberates to the pain in his elbow. Or even the ballerina that pirouettes on the toe of her shoes, the same shoes that hide her gnarled, calloused and bloody feet from the mind/body tension that she practices. It’s a daily tension found in the persevering.

However, this tension of mind and body can work on the flip side as well. Have you ever lacked desire to workout? I know I have and that’s coming from someone who teaches health and physically trains people for a living. “I don’t feel like working out” are words I often hear. In this instance (and in my own life) I’ve noticed that the tension of body and mind shakes loose once movement occurs. It’s a simple physiological answer. The brain releases positive endorphins once it experiences any significant progress towards a physical goal. The body transmits hormones like serotonin and dopamine, often referred to as ‘happy hormones”. With these hormones happily moving about, soon the mind catches up with the tension of the body’s action.

Let me give you an example. Her name is Sheila.

Sheila was in a pretty severe depressed state of mind. So much so that she had been living in her pajamas for a couple of weeks, couldn’t get herself to work, and couldn’t muster up the energy or desire to be the wife and mother that she needed to be. Sheila was stuck. The mind/body tension actually needed tightening. She needed a shift, but didn’t “feel” like doing anything.

It was a bitter cold January day in Minnesota when I got Sheila’s call. Grateful to be on her lifeline list, I instructed her to put on her coat, boots, hat, scarf and gloves over her pajamas and to take a walk around the block and then phone me afterward. Based on the strange expressed sigh on the other end of the line, I don’t think this was what Sheila expected or wanted to hear. But, she obliged anyway.

When she phoned me fifteen minutes later Sheila sounded like a new person. It was as if the depression had lifted and the mind and body tension joined together to work “bilaterally,” if you will. Sheila was giggling and thanked me over and over. Sometimes, we need someone or something to push us into that tension because it’s not a comfortable place to be until we reach it and go beyond. I mean, even someone needs to push baby eagles out of their nest for them to learn to fly. I digress. You can Google that one.

Another illustration of the power of strength going beyond the body is in the specific style of exercises I have taught for over two decades. Isometrics and dynamic tension, are two very close styles of training, but dynamic tension takes the flexed bilateral muscle groups through an arc of movement rather that remaining in a static contraction or “fixed” flex. The mind first accomplishes this flex through a visualization process that induces physical tension, building strength.

Entertain me for a moment as I walk you though an exercise. Imagine you have a heavy weight in your hand. With your arm down and by your side, think about the bicep (front of arm) as you flex and tense with all your might. Then, slowly bring the imaginary weight up for a bicep curl. Now, with the same level of dynamic tension, slowly bring that imaginary weight back down by your side. If you do this often enough, you’ll begin to understand the mind and body connection in a more intimate way. Not to mention, reaping the benefits of building strength without putting wear and tear on your joints, tendons or ligaments.

Where do you need to experience tension today? Is it in your level of strength? Or maybe it’s in flexibility. Or maybe it’s in reestablishing your mindset. Whatever it is…get uncomfortable. Embrace the tension to exceed beyond the natural, the norm, the status quo. You were born with greatness in mind.

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