The Path To Mastery - subsection from Ch 8

The Path To Mastery

Strength training unfolds in 5 major stages of development culimating into Mastery. Stage one, the building stage, is in which you learn primarily the basic dos and don’ts regarding proper form, breath and various training modalities used to elicit different physiological responses. For example, don’t hold your breath, exhale on the contraction phase of a lift, along side various forms that are used to isolate muscle groups and or protect your joints.

Stage two, or the achieving stage, is in which you’ve gained an adequate level of competence over the basic forms of a particular approach (or perhaps several approaches) to strength training. The focus of training often takes on a new texture at this leve as the basics are no longer being learned, rather they are being employed to achieve some end in mind.

Achievers, or individuals residing in this second stage, are by definition lifting weights to achieve some goal. For example within your strength training you may want to do a sumo squat with 50 pounds for 10 repetitions. Or the achievement may be related to some other part of your life such as loosing an inch off your waist line, maintaining lean muscle mass, improve flexibility and so on. Strength training in this modality starts to gain in intensity as it is now purposeful and driven towards a goal.

These two stages of strength training are the most predominant forms enacted by the majority of strength trainers around the world today. The vast majority of people will only get the occasional glimpse beyond these two stages because these are the stages that are most overtly related to the general functioning of the ego. If your ego is “running the show” so to speak, chances are you’re enacting one of these two stages if not a mixture of the two.

The third stage is the “growing” stage of strength training. This stage is also egoically animated; however, the ego must take on a much more sophisticated stance to animate this phase of strength training. As a result considerably smaller portion of the population develops and anchors their strength training within this stage.

The Growing stage is characterized by the ability to manage one’s attention, thoughts, imagery, emotions along with the body as to produce a deeply engaged “flowing” strength training experience. Thoughts and imagery are guided intentionally to bring one’s attention to the key processes of executing various strength exercises. Emotions are leveraged to bring more energy, focus and presense into each exercise which culminates into a “flowing” experience in which all of the major faculties are focused on the sole activity of strength training.

This involves a high degree of body-mind integration that your average ego is not developmentally capable of achieving. The central aim of this strength training is to get into this “flow” state, which is a deeply enjoyable and at times an estatic experience. Getting deeply into this training state additionally improves performance and consequently the results that are often being sought in the earlier stages of strength training come more quickly and easily. This is initially why this intensely focused and deeply engaged form of training is first sought from the individual developing beyond the achieving stage. As the individual shifts beyond the achieving stage they include its basic motivations, training techniques and so on into a larger more integrated approach to their strength training.7

As the growing stage progresses, the conventional results of increased strength, flexibility, and other more traditional benefits become more and more a welcomed byproduct but no longer hold the sole purpose and core meaning of why the individual engages in strength training. For example an individual strength training from the achieving stage may want to get stronger in some specific and measurable way or perhaps they may desire to rehabilitate an injury and regain a certain range of motion without pain. As this individual shifts beyond the achiving stage these goals will remain; however, the central focus will turn towards the intensely focused and present state in which they become unified or integrated into the very movements of strength training. While conventional goals remain, getting into this deeply enjoyable state emerges as the predominant focus. What was at first just a means to an end slowly becomes the central focus.

The fourth stage of strength training is the Thriving stage in which the activity of strength training becomes a passionately driven and inspired activity. Where as in the third stage strength training is desired for the enjoyable experience, the fourth stage becomes a natural out movement of one’s passion and inspiration for living life fully. As a result the attatchment to and the investment in creating an enjoyable experience begins to relax and strength training’s deeper core begins to emerge.

While the terms “passion” and “inspiration” are used quite often, these terms are specifically pointing to a part of the self that is beyond the ego. By definition, as I’m using these terms here, passion and inspiration are something that cannot be held, managed nor created by your ego. No amount of managing thoughts, imagery, emotions and so on will connect you with your passion and inspiration. Your ego simply cannot generate passion and inspiration, although your ego will attempt valiently to do so.

At a more root level (and thus in an often unconscious fashion) your ego will be resisting passion and inspiration tremendously. Why would your ego do such a thing?

To begin answering this question let’s look at the heart of the issue. Your deeper passion and true inspiration to live your life reside beyond your ego’s control. Now remember, your ego worships control. Taking control away from your ego and allowing passion and inspiration to genuinely guide your training challenges your ego’s fundamental stance towards the present moment. Put bluntly, your ego can’t run the show anymore, its autonomy is negated by your emerging causitive agents we’re calling passion and inspiration. When passion and inspiration first emerge into training you are going to go through an “ego-death” of sorts. Your indentification with your ego as the controlling center is dissolving away and your life from a more post-conventional perspective is emerging. Your attachment to ego is passing away, while it is being preserved as a part of a now larger whole.

Passion and inspiration are actually very intense, both in their ability to bring intense levels of joy as well as pain. These intense levels of joy are not something your ego can possess because in order to experience them in the first place a deeper relationship with the present moment must be cultivated, one that your ego, by definition, cannot nor ever will possess. This joy is often an intense experience of aliveness, so intense in fact that you must literally face death in order to experience it in any consistent basis. This is because you must develop the confidence to “die” to each moment, and as a result you’ll be granted a greater birth into life within each moment. It is this greater influx of life into your body-mind from which passion and inspiration genuinely emerge and flower into a guiding intelligence and identity.

This influx of passion and inspiration is not only intensely joyous, it often times also carries with it a great deal of pain. As you learn to die to the moment and as a result become more alive you will feel more, much more in fact. Part of what you’ll feel is related to your ego’s basic conflict with this greater influx of life and vitality. Passion and inspiration in its truest sense will literally burn your ego, your conditioned patterns and your ego’s fundamental rejection of what is. All of which are painful. Additionally, as you begin to take a seat of identity that transcends your exclusive ego it’s not uncommon for you to experience more of the pain of other’s around you.

Individuals animating the thriving stage have an immense ability to manage their attention, thoughts, imagery, emotion, subtle body currents (or energetic-emotional body currents) as well as their body in the conventional sense. While these same self-management capacities reside in the growing stage of strength training, here in the thriving stage these capacities have grown dramatically from what for many have been years of disciplined training. This dramatic growth has emerged because the caustive agent, the guiding force from which all activity stems has shifted from one that is largely egoic to one that is largely transegoic. As a result thrivers have cultivated the ability to allow passion and inspiration to guide their various mental, emotional and physical faculties from moment to moment. In its truest sense, strength training is a passionate and inspired activity within this stage.

The fifth and highest stage as outlined here in this reconstruction of the developmental path of strength training is mastery. For the first time in an embodied full understanding strength trainers are able to deeply to understand the immense importance of surrender within their strength training and life. Individuals in the mastery phase of strength training have learned to disidentify themselves from even the most subtle egoic attempts to manipulate and control the present moment and their experience. They have surrendered themselves from these strategies and as a result have cultivated an ability to rest in an everpresent witness while simultaneously animating the fullness of their training and discipline.

Masters are characterized by this intense ability to remain seated in a witness that is fundamentally not invested in making their strength training anything enjoyable, inspired or special. Individuals exhibiting mastery are not trying to attain something (although they aren’t trying not to attain some goal either) nor are masters invested in avoiding pain and the basic fundamentals of strength training. Strength training is simply allowed to be whatever it is in the moment, at times it will be simple while at other times it will be profound and other times painful, regardless the master does not struggle with what is.

Mastery is the culimation of discipline coupled with the right intention and direction8. Discipline becomes effortless freedom. Effortless does not mean without effort here. Effortless as it is being used here to point out a characteristic of mastery is the transcendence of both effort and non effort. It is Being in Action, it is manifestation displaying itself through its most natural dance. This is what the master exhibits with weights in hand.

Re: The Path To Mastery - subsection from Ch 8

Wow! That was simply breathtaking.

Re: The Path To Mastery - subsection from Ch 8

A deep bow to your breathtakenness

Peace my friend,
~Rob

Re: The Path To Mastery - subsection from Ch 8

That truly is a mastery.  Very articulate explanation of both the body and the mind…..ego comes into play so often.  Well Done, Rob, you are the man.

Re: The Path To Mastery - subsection from Ch 8

Thanks Heather!

I’m so happy you found it articulate…
Peace
~R

Re: The Path To Mastery - subsection from Ch 8

Wow, Very awesome.  This has put into words what I have found myself being unable to describe to friends.  For me strength training is a form of meditation.  I use this to clear my nervous system of stress and accumulated energy rubbish.  Sure there are goals in doing what I do, but those take a back seat to the meditative peace and serenity that I achieve in the weight room.  My entire focus is on what I am doing in the present moment, the awareness of aliveness in every single cell of my being.  The exhilliration that comes froms knowing that I am ALL/God/Oneness, and being aware of that sense of aliveness in literally every cell in my being is what keeps me going.  This is accompanied by a sense of profound joy and wonder at the physical miracle of what is occuring as my muscles contract, right down to the Calcium Channel Ion Gates flooding the sacroplasmic reticulum, creating this most beautiful symphony of coordinated movement, growth, strength, power, energy, aliveness, stimulating the renewal of my body.   It is something beautiful beyond words, and finally in your writing I have found that someone else gets it.  Thank you for writing this, thank you even more for sharing it.

Re: The Path To Mastery - subsection from Ch 8

This really does help to inspire me.  You spread the passion of which you speak.  I would love to read further.  Is this book already released?  If so, where can I find it?

Thanks so much.

Ashley

Re: The Path To Mastery - subsection from Ch 8

hey rob, any news to share about the book?
truly looking forward to it, in a present momenty kinda way of course!

Re: The Path To Mastery - subsection from Ch 8

Hey Tangle, 

Thx for asking, the book is coming to a close!! I've been writing and practicing furiously - pushing this pup to a close but I've still got one major piece to get into place but it's on it's way ;-) 

~Rob 

Re: The Path To Mastery - subsection from Ch 8

rob im so happy to hear that!
really.
let me know if u want a test audience!

Re: The Path To Mastery - subsection from Ch 8

Ok buddy, give me what you're most curious about or working with in your own training and practice and I'll see if an excerpt applies… wanna try?

Big L, 
~Rob

Re: The Path To Mastery - subsection from Ch 8

hmmmm…?
motivation?
or for me the weakest part of the fit cycle, the focused intensity part.
also where/how to focus during a compound movement?
id especially love to hear an inside description of attention during a lift.

thanks rob!