How Mindful Muscle Training will completely transform your workouts.
You’ve all seen it - that person spending 5 minutes scrolling through their feed in between each set. Maybe you’re guilty of it yourself. It’s ok, we’re only human. But I’ll tell you what. It’s not just that you’re wasting time, it’s that you’re not tapping into the deep power of focus and mental clarity that can elevate your workouts and take your fitness progress to the absolute next level. A lot of us humans workout unconsciously; we have a routine we follow passively, we count the reps while thinking of other things like what someone said this morning that annoyed us, the stress of work, what to eat tonight and so on. Some of us will focus temporarily DURING the exercise, but our minds will either get distracted by thoughts or the environment around us as soon as we finish the last rep, and that’s if we don’t start socializing or grabbing our phone to be drawn into the rabbit hole of social media. I can’t get over the amount of heads I see tilted down at gyms. It’s not biceps, pecs or glutes that need training, but neck and spine with corrective exercises. This unconscious way of training is a lot more detrimental than you realize.
First, you need to know that there’s something called mind-muscle connection that enhances your workout by mentally focusing on the muscle activated during the exercise (1). If your mind is on dinner, it’s not on the exercise and it’s not on the muscle activated. You achieve greater muscle gains through mind-muscle connection. And that’s just one point. The other is how an absent mind can affect your form. When your attention isn’t on your form, you risk performing the exercise incorrectly without noticing, which takes away the maximum benefits you get from the movement while also increasing your chances of getting injured. When you exercise with mindfulness, you’re more in tune with your body. You’re listening to it; your body constantly works and adjusts to keep you safe and alerts you when you’re doing something that could hurt you. I don’t care what anyone tells you, but the most important thing about fitness is not strength or aesthetics or any ego-derived training - it’s healthspan and longevity. It’s living well with healthy joints, free of chronic pain, well into your senior years, and that requires you being present with your body, slowing down, listening to it, paying attention to all the subtle ways it informs you about how its state of being, which happens every day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you sleep, with every single thing you put in your mouth and every movement you make at home, at work and at the gym. You gotta treat your body like your child; you don’t torture your child and ignore her or him when they ask for your attention. You treat your child with love and care. You do everything in your power to keep them safe, respected and cared for. Now, apply this to your body. What if you treated it with love and care, doing everything you can to keep it safe and well? What if we paid attention to the subtle ways it asks for our attention? Paying attention and listening to your kids requires your full presence and it requires you to be quiet. It requires your mind to be quiet. The same is true for your body. But of course, instead of listening and quieting the loudness in our heads, we double down. We push and scream and rage our way through exercises, abusing our body as we obsessively try to achieve our often ego-driven goals. Screaming and raging is not quiet listening. I understand the ambition, and your body is yours in the end; it’s not my business, but remember the relationship you have with your body will be revealed to you one day - if you’re not aware of it already - from the way you treat it with regards to body image issues you have about it and how you tend to hate it more than love it, to the way you punish it for your achievements, at the expense of your joints and back. So, mindfulness goes beyond even the workout itself and spills over into your daily living and relationship with your body.
Elevate your workouts with mindful fitness. Sign up to my uniquely designed Mindful Muscle Workout system a.k.a. MMT: https://ryzeprojects.com/memberships
That said, mindful training increases the quality of your workouts while improving your mental wellness. It’s not often you see fitness and mental wellness working in harmony. Yet, the word health is of Germanic origin, relating to “whole”, so it goes without saying that physical fitness and working out MUST go hand in hand with mental wellness. The best kind of training is mind-body training. That is holistic fitness and health. Yoga is the classic example. Pilates and Tai chi are two other ones. I’ve seen and felt the benefits even in a simple 30 day yoga challenge. I’ve been practicing martial arts for 20 years, and one great aspect is their integration of the outer and the inner, the outside strength and the inner strength. In fact, Tai chi is actually short Tai chi ch'üan, which translates to “supreme ultimate fist”. Most people associate it with simple calm relaxing meditative movements, which they are, but it was developed as a method to cultivate control and power, for fighting, while bringing attention and focus on absolutely every part of the movement, so you’re completely present with it. “Tai chi practitioners are encouraged to stand quietly before beginning the ‘Form’ or exercise routine, to ‘empty’ their minds and develop a deeper connection to the skies above and the ground below”. (2) There’s power in stillness, and that power is applicable in any aspect of your life, including workouts.
But maybe yoga isn’t your thing. You like more intense and strength challenging muscle workouts or cardio workouts. That’s my case. I enjoyed yoga, but I love martial arts, weight training and resistance bands. So, I decided to bring the philosophy of stillness, slowing down and mindfulness as well as harnessing the internal power I learned from martial arts and applied it to my workouts. The result is Mindful Muscle Training a.k.a. MMT. I designed this new mind-body fitness method because resistance training as we know it doesn’t exist yet as an organized system that emphasizes mind-body connection, mindfulness, and especially conscious breathwork. Being present with the breath is one of the most fundamental and simplest ways to be present and in tune with your body and yet it’s most often completely ignored because of our perpetual falling back into our chaotic, over-thinking, distracted mind. But learning to integrate it consciously into your workouts will transform them. Besides the benefits I’ve mentioned before, and while working out alone already helps with stress and wellness, it’s been shown that mindful training takes this to another level. There’s evidence that mindful exercise reduces stress, anxiety and depression (3)(4), while also improving “breathing, heart rate, and parasympathetic activity” (5)(6). So, to make the most of any workout, you can see why it’s so valuable to integrate the mental aspect as well. This is the principle of my MMT system; it helps you connect mindfully with your body and your breath to bring you into the present moment, while developing your body’s total strength, endurance and mobility. We usually finish each session with 5 minutes of lying down meditation to cool down and deepen the feeling of stillness and calm. The workouts are refreshing and empowering. It can even allow emotional baggage and stress to be released while burning calories and building the body. I’ve even had someone cry at the end, just from being able to relieve themselves of not only stress but pressure and emotional weight that we often carry into our daily life. It’s impressive how much healing can happen just from conscious breathing and mindfulness. Mindful training allows you to connect not just with your body but with your feelings, and that allows you to be even more in tune with your authentic self. It’s always humbling to me when clients feel their lives changing through my coaching, physically, mentally and emotionally. After having been meditating and working out for 20 years, I realized there had to be a way to bring those two wonderful things into one, because it’s not just about lifting weights, but feeling whole.
I highly encourage you to try it. Currently, I practice and teach MMT at home with resistance bands and body weight. Bands are great for the joints as well and they’re proof that weights aren’t the only way to build strength, although the principle of mindfulness applies with weights or any kind of training, really.
That said, you’ll see with my MMT workouts how we can train at home in an environment we feel comfortable and vulnerable in when we don’t have access to a gym. A quiet space at home can also encourage inner quiet to help you bring mindfulness into the workout. All you need is a small space, a set of resistance bands and your bodyweight, and perhaps a training mat. Bands are really inexpensive and versatile. You can get a set of 4 bands (each representing different levels of resistance) at any store for around $40, and you literally have an entire gym that fits in a small bag. I’ll be integrating dumbbells and kettlebells soon as well for more variety in strength and functional training, but for now I have over 50 MMT workouts (with new ones regularly added) that cover all your muscles to build strength, endurance, mobility and cardiovascular health with mindful breathing. I even have mindful HIIT workouts in there to show you how you can be present while intensely burning calories. On top of that, I included my audio meditations plan in there as a separate category so you can practice mindfulness on its own.
So, now that you understand the value of mindful fitness, make sure to integrate in every workout, and try my unique MMT system to take your physical fitness and mental wellness to the next level. You can sign up by following this link: https://ryzeprojects.com/memberships.
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