Stop exercising and start training!!!

 

For the past two years, I have been exercising.

If you saw me doing my thing, you would think that exercise begun from the backyard of my grandfather's homestead.

Running was my chosen means to engage my body. At the crack of dawn, four times a week, I would grudgingly leave my warm bed and face the cold dark, dreary streets. In rain and in sunshine I would plod the road.

The leafy suburbs of Kololo know my name. The dusty and pot holed surface of Naguru held on to me like a long lost friend.  If you look carefully on the Northern by-pass, you will see my gleaming sweat. The sleepy Namugongo, would always blow its cool breeze whenever I would trudge my way through her.

I know every nook and cranny of the MTN half marathon. The seven hills of Kampala can recognize me any day. The flat terrain of Jinja keeps whispering my name. The dusty, sleepy hills of Lubowa can point out my shoe print. I even joined a team of runners and increased my road mileage.

I run on the busiest highway in East Africa: the Mombasa highway. I was enthralled by the South African Two Oceans race and mesmerized by the thought of running the Comrades marathon.

I was in good shape, or so I thought. I had the runner's bounce. I constantly experienced the runner's high. I was a walking dictionary when it came to the vocabulary of running. There was however one snag. I was not running as fast as I would have loved to. I was not as strong as I knew I could be. My flexibility was questionable. My endurance was feeble. My stamina, well I did not have any stamina. So what was the problem?

The answer came in form of an Irish coach. In one of those conversations, where I was front and center of a heated discussion on the value of running, she looked me straight into my Acoli eyes and said 'Stop running around like a headless chicken". There was a thick concentrate of saliva that formed in my throat. I elected to pull her away from the crowd and seek for clarification.

In very many words and in that accent that only belongs to the Irish, she told me to stop exercising and start training.

It dawned on me, like I am sure it will dawn on you one day, there is a world of difference between training and exercising. After some serious soul searching and flipping through a couple of books and sites, I came across enlightening stuff.

Exercising is something one does just to move. Exercising makes people feel good for the short term.  After six to eight weeks of exercising, it becomes common and boring.

Exercising sometimes leads to sweat, but rarely leads to improved health and fitness. Exercising does not provide that intensity and passion, necessary to provoke the response that alters the metabolism and affects the muscles.

Training necessarily requires a program of constantly varied, functional movements, performed with high intensity. Training means that you make a commitment to a true goal of improved human performance.  Training requires pushing through barriers - going beyond your limits and pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone. 

Training demands sacrifices so that you can train multiple times each week and continue to train regardless of excuses involving work, family, the environment, and other life obstacles.  Training means tracking your progress by logging your workouts and food intake.  Training means not giving up until you reach your goals no matter how long that takes.

It means that you reach a goal only to realise that you can better yourself by pursuing another goal. You are propelled by a relentless and obsessive desire to be a better version of you.

If you want to improve your overall health and fitness, then focus your mind.                                                                                                                    Stop exercising and start training!!! 

 

 

uncondition thyself

When the psychologists gather at a coffee table, it is more then likely that the discussion will focus on Pavlov and his dog. It will be an engaging tale centered on the power of conditioning. They will even marvel at the endless ability to condition the human mind.

As they laugh their heads off, I would like to stroll in with my water pistol. Take dead aim at the over flowing plates of food. With all the pent up rage, I would methodically shoot at each plate. My anger sated, I would then walk away. I think it would be less messy if I just read them the riot act.

This prevalent thinking that the human mind, like the mind of a dog can be tuned any which way, has gone on for so long. It is about time someone thought up a philosophy that amplifies the power of the human will power.

It is true that the human mind can be fashioned in a way so as to serve the ends of a particular individual. One simply needs to study Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy or Gandhi's India or Pol Pot's Cambodia or Casanova's exploits ad infinitum. Central in all such cases is the fact that a people, collectively surrendered their will power and elected to be lead by the nose as asses are.

It is now time for us to reclaim our brains back. Oh yes, you can. All you need to do is to empty your mind of all those negative anchors that weigh down your ship of life.

The idea that you were born into poverty is amplified to mean that your unfortunate circumstances at birth, will guide you to the dung heap of life. At birth, you are either a boy or a girl. What you choose to do with your life depends a great deal on how you perceive your circumstances. It is the Rev. Jesse Jackson who said ' You may have been born in a slum, but a slum was not born in you.'Now is the time to unshackle our mind, so that we can soar like only an eagle.

Banish the thought that your physical attributes are cast in stone. You can change the way your body looks. You can have the body of your dreams: the body of a Greek god or goddess for that matter. All it takes is dedication, dedication and more dedication. We do not need any permission from anybody. We just need to permit ourselves to be the best that we were meant to be.

Take charge of your life. It is your life. Use your mind to fashion your life in the way that you see fit. Regardless of what fate or chance may bring your way, you are in complete control. In his poem INVICTUS, William Ernest Henley captures this idea in the last two lines:

I am the master of my fate:


I am the captain of my soul.

 Let us set the record straight. No one is born to be at the beck and call of anyone. The idea that you must work for someone is an echo of the industrial age. This is the information age. An age where information seeks you out like a laser guided missile. We must set ourselves in its path so that our minds are inflamed with the infinite desire to know more: to do more: to be more.

Kindle the fire,

Let the flames lick at the pot of Pavlov and his disciples.

Stoke the fire,

Let it burn away all attempts to control thy mind

Take charge

Take control

Uncondition thyself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So help me somebody

 

I swim.

Sometimes I like to consider myself an endurance swimmer. Just the other day, I swam for an hour and a half. I sauntered out of the pool and bounced my way to the changing room. I felt like an Olympic champion.

The following day I revelled in my achievement. I was alive with a sense of accomplishment. I had waded my way into my history book. All I needed to do was to attract the attention of the swimming fraternity. Then I would be a 'celebrity'.

I went on a search for any such achievement, just to make sure that that 'feat' had never been attempted before. Leafing through the Google with that giddy feeling that I am the man, I chanced on a story that brought down my house like a pack of cassava chips.

 It was the story of Diana Nyad.

Diana Nyad swum an epic 117 kilometers, in 53 hours.  Unlike me who swam 2.7km in 1:30 minutes in a sparkling clean swimming pool, she swum in shark and jellyfish infested water: in a body of water that is always at the mercy of the vagaries of weather. To top it all, she is 64 years old.

She is at an age where many people consider that the age where the sunset of life is shinning its waning light into their hearts. At 64, the ordinary human body is weighed down. The skeletal frame struggles to support a body that is portly and loaded with its fair share of a life lived without regard to longevity.  

 At 64, the ordinary human mind has dreamt all there is to dream.  It has visualised  in precise detail, what can and cannot be achieved. It is at the point of shuddering at the effects of being too rush in undertaking risks.

 At 64, the ordinary African mind, body and soul, has assumed an elderly status. A status that is set to advice and not to adventure. A status that is defined by waking up, setting up a rocking chair or a rickety stool or a worn out mat by the front door and recalling yonder days when 'life was life'.

Out of this triumph Diana shared her lessons:  "One is, we should never, ever give up. Two is, you're never too old to chase your dream. Three is, it looks like a solitary sport, but it is a team."

In whatever we do, wherever we are, we should never, ever, give up. Persistence, it is said, is much better than intelligence. With an ounce of Diana's persistence, any run of the mill human being can soar beyond the clouds of 'human' possibilities.

 Age is indeed just a set of numbers. You are only as old as you permit yourself to be. The key to mind boggling achievement lies in ones thought. It is James Allen who said that a man is literally what he thinks.  It is ingrained in the human DNA to create paths where there was once a wilderness. Our duty is to inflame ourselves with the enthusiasm to pursue the seemingly impossible.

Life is a team thing. From crib to coffin, human beings are symbiotic. We can all get what we want if we help enough people get what they want, so said Zig Ziglar.

I am going to mix persistence, age, and team- work into a combustible cocktail that will explode me into the record books. To become a Diana Nyad or to be better than she will ever be, I need to swim a non- stop distance of 120km in 60 hours…so help me somebody.