Physical Mastery: Intro

“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”

- Sir William F. Butler.

Introduction:

Be honest… Are you satisfied with the condition of your body? Well, I wasn’t. A few years back, I used to be fat, & I’ll tell you firsthand that it feels like sh*t. You can’t move freely & it feels like you’ve been imprisoned in your own body. 

The US registers at a 58% obesity rate, and it’s only projected to keep increasing in the future. I’m not sure how I ended up overweight, but I’m guessing that it was due to an inactive lifestyle & occasional binge-eating sessions. But that was beside the point. There are only two ways to navigate obstacles: Action or Acceptance. Remember that. 

I gave myself an ultimatum: I’d either change my physique or accept it & move on with life. 

What I wouldn’t do was sit around moping & throw myself a pity party. 

I don’t know if it was fate, but during this time, one of my friends started going on runs. He wanted to participate in a local marathon (3-5 KM) & he inspired me to do the same. 

There’s not a lot of people in the world that I feel indebted to, but he’s certainly one of them. We started going on runs every day, & it was painful. 

But, the things that are attributable to the most remarkable positive changes in our lives…

They are usually quite gruesome. 

Despite the initial struggle, I signed up for my first 3k run & successfully completed it. In the end, it turned out to be a pretty cool experience & I no longer had a protruding stomach. That was my first introduction to fitness. It was my gateway into self-improvement. 

Since then, I’ve crafted my own philosophy through trial & error. It might be esoteric to some, but I believe that true fitness can only be developed by training multiple facets of the body.

A bodybuilder who has difficulty climbing the stairs is equally as underdeveloped as an endurance athlete with a low 1RM (1-rep max). More impressive is the individual who can lift decently heavy weights & run a mile or two without needing oxygen support.

I’ve also learned that in order to truly master the body, you need to respect it first. That means not eating unhygienic foods saturated with seed oils & other chemicals that are difficult to pronounce. 

It also means prioritizing recovery like an athlete would. Recovery doesn’t have to be complicated at all. The most simple but effective form of recovery is available to us all & it’s called sleep. 

There are 3 pillars of physical mastery:

1. Training

2. Diet

3. Recovery

In this post, we’re only going to discuss training, but just know that the other 2 pillars are just as important as training. You can train as hard as you want, but without proper recovery, your body won’t be able to repair the muscles. The same goes for diet: without the right fuel to replenish your system, you won’t be able to develop your body effectively. 

The first pillar is broken down into 5 elements

Here are the 5 elements of training:

1. Strength

2. Speed & Agility

3. Endurance

4. Mobility & Flexibility

5. Proprioception

When you consistently train these elements of fitness, your movement patterns will change. In other words, you’ll develop the ability to communicate seamlessly with your environment. With that being said, let’s take a deeper look at what each of these elements mean.

Strength:

Strength can be defined as your ability to exert force on an object. When you’re physically manipulating yourself (calisthenics) or an object (weights), it’s an application of strength. 

The key with strength is to train in multiple vectors, meaning that you need to train with different magnitudes of resistance in different directions or planes of movement.

Thanks to advancements in neurophysiology, we now know that training muscles through specific movements will increase strength only in that specific movement. 

Take an exercise like the bench press for example. Studies show that training your bench press will increase strength in that movement, but it doesn’t translate to a punch. The same goes for squats. Squatting more weight doesn’t necessarily mean that you will jump higher. Yes, both of these compound movements will increase your strength, but when it comes to training, efficiency is key. If you’re not a bodybuilder, why choose to max out on compound lifts only, when you can train movements with more specificity & transferability to your respective athletic goals? Just something to think about.

Bruce Lee was famous for using overcoming isometrics to increase his strength. He didn’t move a lot of weight in the gym, but he was one of the strongest men to exist in terms of relative strength. Train isometrics, train explosiveness, & train 1RMs… But most importantly, train with specificity. 

Speed & Agility:

Speed can be defined as your ability to navigate from one spot to another in the shortest duration possible. The best way to train speed is by running sprints. One study showed that sprinting can increase HGH (Human growth hormone) by up to 700% after a session. This is significant for muscle growth & overall aesthetic development. Sprinting is a high-intensity movement, so make sure to ease yourself into it. 

Agility is the ability to accelerate quickly & decelerate on a dime. It also includes how fast you can move your limbs laterally. I’ve noticed that soccer players are extremely agile & they do a lot of agility ladder drills. So, ladder drills are great for agility, but zooming out, any drill that makes you move your feet quickly can be great for agility. 

Endurance: 

Endurance is your ability to express strength and/or speed over a relatively long time. Let’s be honest; you’ll rarely find yourself in a position where you have to carry something extremely heavy 1 time. More common are the situations where you have to move something relatively heavy over a long time. For example, say you’re running from assailants. It’s not about how fast you can run a short distance in that situation. It’s about how long you can stay in top speed. 

There are multiple ways to train endurance, but for me, medium-intensity cardio sessions have produced the best fat-loss results. Incorporating this can be as simple as going on a fast walk, where you’re still able to talk, but you’re breathing heavily. Try to hit 120 minutes per week for optimal results. 

Flexibility & Mobility:

Flexibility is how much ROM (range of motion) you have available. It’s about how long your muscles can lengthen without tearing. Static stretches work great for this, but remember to not do them before training sessions. Do them post-sessions to leverage the body’s heat & get into lower positions. Throw in some breathing work & you have yourself a great post-workout recovery session.

Mobility is about how much ROM you can control manually without any assistance. A great test for mobility is whether you can do a bodyweight squat with your bum touching the ground. Mobility can be gained by exposing yourself to new movements on a frequent basis & emphasizing control as you move in & out of the entire range of motion. 

Some say that flexibility is more about the muscles & mobility is more about the joints. 

Proprioception:

Now, this one doesn’t get talked about often, but it’s a game-changer for your movement efficiency. Proprioception is a combination of your coordination, mobility, & balance. 

Think about an expert martial artist. They display no wasted movement when they execute their techniques. Their motions are smooth & crisp, yet so powerful. 

Through repetition, martial artists gain an extraordinary amount of body awareness. This allows them to move like no other athlete can. 

It’s not very uncommon for a Shaolin monk to hold a single-leg squat for over 90 minutes at a time. 

If you want to incorporate this into your training, all you have to do is start off by balancing on one leg for 30 seconds. Once you feel like you’ve gotten the hang of that, close your eyes & try again. If you’re able to master that (most won’t be able to), the next progression is to keep your eyes closed & stay on one leg but tilt your head from left to right this time. Implement these progressions & see how it impacts the rest of your training. 

Conclusion:

My goal with all this is not to overwhelm you…

It’s to show you that there’s more to being fit than benching, squatting, & deadlifting. Think outside the box & experiment with your workouts. Learn a martial art or pick up a sport to complement your work in the gym.

It has been a long & arduous journey since I started jogging & doing 6-minute ab workouts in my room. But I’m glad to report that we’ve come a long way from where we began. And we’ll continue to move forward on this journey together.

Till next time,

J.R