When we train, we don’t train our body, we train our mind to master and transcend Māyā — the material energy through Karma Pooja and Bhakti. It should be done as an offering, with no expectations.
“भक्ति तो एक प्रकार से माया के विरुद्ध युद्ध की घोषणा है।”
— Bhagavad Gita
• Mind-to-Muscle Connection: This is the root — the mool.
With it, every rep, every breath, every contraction becomes meditation. The best way to create a mind-to-muscle connection is, while training, fix your eyes on a single point you see in front of you and use that point to go inside your mind-to-muscle imagination. The imagination for the mind-to-muscle sharpens as you research more about the anatomy of those muscles and the line of movement for every muscle fiber. This comes really handy to take our mind-to-muscle connection to the next level — that is, point focus, knowing the anatomy of the muscle being trained, and the line of movement of those muscle fibers. While training, feel the fibers breaking — that is why we train, to break those fibers.
• Flow Beyond Failure: Flow beyond failure and reach true failure. When it feels like it’s done, that’s when we start the real count to failure. The mechanics of this are: breathe properly, take your time, pause and go — or if you fail, take a little breath and go again. Breathwork is so important in deciding whether you are reaching true failure. That’s how we touch real failure — through patience, control, and spirit. Not only that, there are variations to this failure-reaching prophecy. There are times and movements when you are in an aggressive style — in that time, leverage it. There are times when you are more aware and focused — then go slow and controlled. When you feel you are done and can’t go ahead, say “flow,” and from there, start the failing count. First, breathwork and eccentric movements to failure, then aggressive failure. Concentric, eccentric, aggressive, slow, controlled — use them all. There’s a time to be aggressive and a time to be slow and controlled. Knowing which exercise needs which energy — that’s wisdom that comes with time. This is real training: to know when to attack and when to surrender.
• Pain Is Beautiful: The sukoon we feel after enduring that pain is therapy.
The mind shuts off, and that escape from the overthinking mind separates our soul and directly connects us to the universe.
• The Mechanics — Concentric & Eccentric:
Understand both sides of movement — the concentric (lifting) and eccentric (lowering). Do fast concentric and slow eccentric. True control lives in the eccentric. That’s where awareness deepens and fibers align. Your breath during the eccentric phase decides how close you get to true failure.
Feel the muscle in the eccentric — slow and controlled.
These are like siddhis — powers that awaken through consistent practice.
That’s the beauty of compounding. Build systems. Refine them. Compound them.
That’s how growth happens — quietly, internally, consistently. That’s how divinity expresses itself through discipline. While people do train, having the vision to continue this for life requires training mindfully — performing all movements while taking care of all the joints and not performing any movement carelessly that can hamper joint health in the long term. Initially, I was taking stretching for granted, but once my back was hit due to deadlift, I started taking stretching more seriously and got to witness that stretching before and after training does make your training better and better. Training isn’t external — it’s internal.
It’s about solitude, awareness, and devotion.
“Real training is internal. In solitude, divinity reveals itself.”
I will continue to refine these writings more and more as I continue to contemplate on this, especially during training. A lot is there to cover, and each topic can have a book of its own — that is how much depth all of these concepts contain. The depth of all of these will be understood completely once you consistently train and training will itself reveal its true nature to you. Keep training, as every day we learn something new about the fundamentals of training. As one legend said, we know less about our body than the galaxies.
Keep training — the body reveals its secrets only to the devoted.
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