Pattern Overload

“When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”

― Winston S. Churchill

If you’ve been a regular reader or listener to this podcast and blog then you’d know that I’ve had an extensive background in the fitness industry. 

The reason I’m starting this conversation out with that statement is because in today’s episode I’m going to cover some aspects of how the lack of fitness, or more specifically in terms of the lack of strength in particular, is a huge marker on why we’re seeing the current decline in our society. 

When it comes to developing the strength of your body there’s a consistency that is involved where your mind is also unified in this effort. Strength is a broad term and can apply to being solely a physical trait, but strength is also about the development of the trait in terms of strengthening one’s mind and spirit. 

My career as a professional strength and fitness coach has been one that has given me tremendous insight on the observation of our culture as it has helped me to help people to develop stronger and more capable minds and bodies. 

However, it’s always been an interesting observation in the human experiment to give people instructions on what they should be doing with their minds and bodies only to have them not follow the advice that was given to them. When this happens this frequently leads to them coming back to seek me out for more advice which in turn leads me back to repeating the advice that I had previously given them in the first place.  

I’m certain I’m not alone in this arena as it’s just the reality when it comes to human nature. That reality is that most people lack the true discipline to follow instructions with intention and discipline until they’ve experienced the repeated frustration of failure and shortcomings over and over again by pursuing their own journey in their own way.  

When it comes to people in most cases they have to literally fail at most every turn before they start to realize that their efforts, their worldviews, and their beliefs just don’t work in the test of a real world application. 

I want to be straightforward here because when I make such a statement the same thing applies to myself. If it didn’t apply to me I wouldn’t be able to make such a statement in the first place. The reality surrounding this thing called the lived human experience is that mistakes are just going to happen. We live in an imperfect world, but our goals should be to strive to be as perfect as we can be inside of an imperfect reality. 

Now having said that the point to life is that when mistakes, shortfalls, and setbacks occur we should be teaching people how to grow stronger from such scenarios by reminding them of what they learned from their mistakes instead of doubling down on filling their minds with a victim mentality. 

Teaching the victim mentality has been a growing trend that I’ve noticed firsthand in my industry in the past ten years or so and I would even argue that it’s contributed to a less healthy, more obese, and more disease ridden society due to people losing the ability to grow from their mistakes. This lack of growth in the face of adversity and poor choices is directly caused by removing the notion of personal responsibility and personal discipline. 

Since much of society has bought into the idea of not accepting and initiating personal discipline this in turn means that society has grown weaker as strength can only be acquired through personal discipline and accepting personal responsibility. 

People don’t like to say this because life is hard, but as the great Bruce Lee once said: Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one. 

From Opposing Forces To Unifying Strength

To give you a heads up the following information is going to really get your attention. 

This is the sort of information that can literally transform both your mental and physical abilities and help you take your mind and body to the next level. 

Now I want to talk to you about the true definition and secret of strength. In terms of the type of strength I’m going to address here I’m referring to the application of your physical strength. 

I’m going to teach you something that I teach new students all the time and it’s a real application of the secret to physical strength that usually blows people’s minds whenever I meet them for the first time. 

First of all, I want to lay the foundation of this by explaining the definition of strength for you as it concerns the physical work of your human muscular system. 

Now the reason I’m doing this is to help to shed some light and understanding on this foundational principle for you along with it’s application for you in terms of its physical application, but I also want to progress further to illustrate to you how this philosophy can also be applied in the arena of mental, cultural, political, and societal applications as well. 

I will begin by asking: Do you know the definition of strength? 

I will give you a moment to think about it. 

The definition of strength is your muscle’s ability to produce tension and force for a given movement. 

Now when you focus in on that definition the two keywords that should jump out at you should be tension and force. You see when you tense a muscle that muscle is producing force and when you apply that force to a specific activity you now are readily engaging in an act of physical strength, or an act of physical motion. 

Now I want to give you a concrete example of how strength is directly applied to the scenario of your grip strength to illustrate to you the power of this in a single application of a real world physical example. 

In this example that I’m about to tell you it’s something that I’ve taught to many first time students over the years and it never ceases to amaze people once I demonstrate it by using your ability to increase your grip strength in a simple handshake example. 

That’s right, with this example I can literally increase your hand grip right now at this very moment…not six weeks from now…not ten weeks from now, but literally right now. 

Now I’m guessing I really have your attention. 

So you’re probably wondering Brandon, how are you going to do this?