Physical Balance (leg 1)

I am going to post a blog every week at the same time on a Saturday for a while. For the next few weeks I will further explain the content of The three legs of human development and civilisation

Next weeks post will illuminate emotional balance. Critical Thought has been covered extensively and this post is about my new found physical balance.

Physical Balance

I know the words ‘physical balance’ relate to things not falling over. This is not what I mean. I use the word balance to indicate that a ‘before unknown equilibrium’ has been reached.

A simple example would be walking up a flight of stairs. There is both a control of the leg muscles and an awareness of them. I feel them working, warming and then tiring. The first few steps after the stairs see the brief and slight fatigue quickly drain away.

There is a mindfulness component to this. I am in the moment aware of my muscles exertion without any emotional concern. This is why I state that all three components mentioned in the last post are self reinforcing or synergistic with each other. Three being a number which crops up a great deal.

My job entails moving small and medium sized items from one location to another. I am now more aware of how carrying things puts strains on fingers and joints. I now quickly change my grip on items to make carrying them far less of a strain. Just two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have even noticed all these micro strains until they built up into actual pains due to an accumulation of physical damage.

This enhanced physical awareness does have benefits. I expect I will have fewer minor injuries. By immediately registering a slight strain and reacting to relieve it, then micro tears don’t accumulate and become actual tears. Muscle tears heal far quicker than tendon and ligaments. I am no longer expecting to experience either as often as I have.

I am listing these in order of importance to me but things may be very different for you. Another dramatic change is in lifting heavier objects. I find lifting 20kg and above from the floor and then lowering them back down to be awkward. 20Kg are far more frequent than 35kg boxes but I still wonder why 10kg and 15kg aren’t the heaviest boxes I have to contend with. That said, yesterday I lifted a 20kg box and thought that it couldn’t possibly weigh more than 10kg. I doubt that my strength has changed that much in a three week furlough.

Strength gains

Has my strength doubled? Well, yes and no. Clearly it has but no it hasn’t. So what gives?
Well, I mentioned awareness in my last post. Three types of awareness, which are basically emotional, physical and cognitive. With this hyper awareness I can give some critical thought to this and give you my opinion with a high degree of confidence that I am right. Which means that the billion dollar fitness industry is not right. Or, more fairly, not as right as me.
That said, my muscles have an ability to contract and relax. I have lots of muscles. These need to coordinate themselves to be effective. I have associated structures, ligaments and tendons, which are springy. Then I have the cognitive ability to contract my skeletal muscles. My nervous system firing various electrical impulses about the place to achieve my box lifting or lowering goal. It is obvious to me that all these systems have balanced / coordinated / synchronised / and achieved an equilibrium. Now a 20kg box feels around as heavy as a 10kg box did just three weeks ago. A perceived strength gain of 100%. I am happy to go into greater detail.

Muscles

From my perspective, muscles are made of fibres. I believe that a great many of my muscle fibres were not aligned in the correct orientation for producing a strong contracting force. 15 months of training has caused those that were incorrectly aligned to be broken down and absorbed by those performing correctly. This was detailed in my 90 days book. I am aware that 15 months is rather longer than 90 days. 90 days when you are twenty is rather different to 90 days when you are fifty. After following my own advice my muscles have become far better at being muscles than they were.

Ligaments and tendons

Mine were in a very poor condition. They did not enjoy my training or even day to day life. They protested with moderate and enduring pain for days at a time. I believe there are also ligament and tendon type structures within each muscle group. All these structures need to be springy and resilient, fixed to strong bones and muscles as described above.
Mine were brittle and inflexible and these things take 3 – 4 days to heal micro tears whereas muscles can recover in just one day from similar damage.

Nervous system

The third component I wish to discuss are the nerves which activate the muscle. Last week I recovered a decades long lost ability to wilfully contract my triceps. I do not fill my shirt sleeves or carry much muscle. I weigh less than 150lb at 5 feet 11 inches with a 31 inch waist. So, I spent a happy few minutes alternatively contracting my triceps. Fast forward one day and a new discomfort / sensation makes itself known in my triceps. I remember that pain from my early training days with heavy weights. I thought that this was muscular pain but it isn’t. Or at least, I don’t believe it is. No, this pain is over use of nerves pain. Recovery took 24 hours.

Tying it together

So, my muscle fibres are far better aligned, connected with springier structures and activated with a far better coordinated nervous system. These brought subtle improvements over 15 months of development. So, what happened to double my strength in three weeks? These three systems started working effectively together because my inner monkey, automatic systems and cognitive systems suddenly meshed together, each reinforcing the other.
My mood became more even, my mental clarity reached new highs and my body doubled its strength.

Conclusion

This isn’t all good news. This new strength ability comes with an enhanced level of awareness of my skeletal muscles. This is new and unexpected. During Mindful body scans you focus on the body. This is a deliberate action. During mindful walking, a period of time is spent focussing on the contraction of the thigh muscles. With this new level of awareness, focus is not required. As each movement is made, each muscle group registers it’s activity level automatically and it is intrusive. Without emotional balance, this strange change could be feared. Without cognitive clarity I could be panicking rather than confidently explaining what I believe has happened. I might be wrong and dead in a week. Perhaps I will. If I am dead, don’t do what I did and I apologise for not posting that which I promised to post.
This post just covered the step change in my physical abilities, noticed in the last three weeks. There were similar increases in my cognitive and emotional abilities too. The actual change was over night. I just woke up feeling different. I felt better. I felt like I was now me. The me I thought I was. I did wonder how the new me would cope at work. That will be covered next week. Expect a similar level of gain.
See you then