Sight Beyond Sight

When Captain Ginyu stole Goku’s body, he didn’t know how to tap into the physical power for the same reason Luke couldn’t get the X-Wing out of the swamp on Dagobah. Your mind and body are one comprehensive unit.

I could just schlep a program in front of you. The exercises would be listed. So would the sets and reps. This is probably all you wanted from the get-go anyway.

But unless your mind is in the right place, that piece of paper won’t give you the results you want.

How do you know if you’re moving with grace? How do you know if you’re emotionless? How do you know if you’re tapping into your true potential? What’s the difference between an Olympic weightlifter working up to a daily maximum and you working up to a daily maximum?

I once heard of a story of a man that lived in the crevice of a mountain. This man had remarkable healing powers. For years, a journeyman sought this nomad. The journeyman wanted to know the secrets of healing.

The journeyman waded through the forests. He slept on the soil. He searched for months.

One day the journeyman awoke with an awful illness. He had a choice. Lay there and suffer, or give one last attempt at seeking the nomad.

By fate, he found the nomad. After telling the nomad how long he’d been searching for him and the illness he acquired along the way, the nomad agreed to share his secrets. They walked and walked. Walked all night back to the nomads home — a tiny crevice in the foothills of a giant mountain.

There wasn’t much in the crevice. Tree stumps were arranged in a circle around a fire pit. To the right was the nomad’s bed.

“Sit,” the nomad said.

The journeyman sat on the stump. The fire loaned the little light in the room . . . enough light for the journeyman to see the nomad pulling leaves from a tiny plant growing at the foot of the bed.

“What’s that?” the journeyman said.

The nomad turned his head slowly and smirked.

“The secret.”

The nomad put the leaves into a pot and boiled it over the flame for a half hour. All the while, the journeyman couldn’t help but wonder if this nomad’s secret was nothing more than a cup of tea.

“Drink,” the nomad said as he handed a journeyman the cup of tea. By this time, the journeyman was in agony. The illness was spreading, but he was happy. The nomads secret cure was in his hands. He blew the tea to cool it down, noting the ripples flowing away from the body. He couldn’t help but think that this looked like every other cup of tea he’s ever had.

Five minutes passed. The journeyman’s tea was gone. Gulped down. The nomad sat with his legs crossed. Tea just about full. Smelling the steam.

“Sleep,” said the nomad.

The journey man cuddled up with himself, but couldn’t help but notice the nomad drinking tea over the next two hours—the same tea that it took the journeyman five minutes to drink.

This continued for two more days. The journeyman pounded the tea. The nomad sat quietly.

On the third day, the journeyman got frustrated. Even though his illness wasn’t getting worse, it wasn’t get better. He approached the nomad with fury, asking him why his tea wasn’t curing him.

The nomad smirked.

“When you drink tea, you drink tea. When I drink tea, I drink tea.”

There’s a fundamental difference between training and training. Between lifting weights and lifting weights. Eating and eating. 

It’s up to you to jump the gap.

The way you train changes as you gain experience. At first, you’re just passing time. You don’t really know how to use your muscles for concentrated effort. You’re tentative. But, over time, you learn how to train.

Sometimes it’s less about the motion and more about the meaning. What does it mean to you. How does it effect your personally? Emotionally? Or are you doing it just to look good for some girl that doesn’t even know you exist?

If your program could talk, I bet a lot of the times it would say, “I’m sorry. It’s not me, it’s you.”

I know my own ghosts of programs past would tell me this. You can do the same program at two different points and get two different set of results. That’s why grand master chess players can burn 7,000 calories playing a game of chess, and why we can move the same pieces and go through the same hurrah without having any significant physiological response.

All battles are first won with the mind.

There’s sight.

And then there’s sight beyond sight.

Which do you have?