listen | Exercise and Mind

Love Like the Movies Make you Want to Love

Movies will make us believe that love is a cruise down easy street, where more flowers show up every day, engraved hearts show up on more of our trees, where hearts grow fonder and each little character nuance become more charming and charming with each moment spent with our lover.

Is this true? Have you ever found this?

I believe this is only one half of the equation of love. These represent the good days when cloud 9 is hitting with a soft, comforting hand, waltzing lazily down the murmuring streets with gaiety.

The truth? Try have a discussion about bank accounts or children or the future or making that sacrifice or having some questionable friends over or downsizing or making conscious changes. See how fuzzy thy heart still beats. Still on cloud nine?

I hope so.

But chances are, at least one of those things will strike an angry, emotional, or tempered chord that will far outbalance all the other happy lovey things you’ve been doing up there on cloud 9.

The Truth of Love

The truth is that love requires positivity and respect and an unceasing willingness and effort to dive off the deep end, even though you’re scared out of your shivvies of what lurks beneath. And further, not only does love require this of you, it requires you to have an ongoing awareness of this so that you begin to check yourself before a new habit of dis-respect or dis-trust forms.

Truth is, its going to hurt sometimes. Love is not easy. Nothing worth having ever comes easy. and the reason it hurts is because when you fall off of cloud 9 it’s not pleasant.

No, the truth of love should not be built upon fuzzy dreams of leisure. The truth of love should be solidified with the physical actions of life.

It’s Not Just Loving Yourself

Love in a relationship is more then just how much you can sacrifice, how much you can turn a blind eye, how much you can keep the faith. That’s one sided blind love that’s more fit for your favorite band or pair of shoes: even though your favorite band may try to explore a new direction you’re not so sure about, you got to love them so much that you’re going to join them on that journey.

That’s what favorites are, and sure, love in a relationship should have a bit of this in it. After all, you did pick that partner because they’re your favorite, didn’t you?

The unexplainable happens sometimes as growth naturally progresses, and this almost always, unchecked, creates animosity in relationships. Nostalgia, it’s a thing. As humans, it’s inevitable that we grow at different rates. This is our uniqueness, our special secret code of humanness. To steal the old yogic wisdom: There are many paths, there is only one way.

The problem here is that self love works. Self love works because we make a habit of loving ourselves more and more and more until we love ourselves so much we can’t help but feel happy and excited to be alive. However, self love is not partnership love, though it is very related. Showering our partner with more and more love without first off having a discussion about the growing discontent will nurture guilt, resent, self disrespect, and blindness.

You got to listen to that lover!

Think of this analogy. Think of yourself standing at bat, waiting to hit the ball coming at you. You swing and miss. So, you wait again for the next ball, except this time you swing harder and quicker and with much more energy invested. Swing – miss. Sure, try investing more violent passion in the next strike, you only get one more!

“We are deceiving ourselves if we think that only the violent passions, such as ambition and love, can conquer the others. Laziness, sluggish though it is, often manages to dominate them; it wrests from us all of life’s plans and deeds, where it imperceptibly destroys and devours the passions and virtues alike.” ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

What I’m trying to point out here is that in a relationship, love isn’t just about loving yourself, or about how much your partner loves themselves, or about how much confidence you can build up in your partner – all very important things in themselves. No, love in a relationship is about how much love is flowing back and forth between you and your partner.

Are you listening? You got to listen to that lover of yours. They’re speaking.

(and yes, this means that if you’re partner is telling you they’re listening, you’ve got to speak to them with the honesty of that deep end.)

So, on some inspiration from a a site I stumbled upon, fitnchic.com, I feel it is necessary to learn about some new habits, or hopefully old, that everybody, no matter what they are doing, should focus on.

Limb Extension

The first of which is limb extension. Whenever you are doing an exercise and it involves movement that goes from one extreme of the muscles cabilities to the other, a person should always be focused not to extend past the joint or muscles extension.

It should seem fairly intuitive that you don’t want to be extending those arms to a locked position on the way down, fully blown open. Because of the fact that you jump into what will feel like a locking position, you don’t want to over extend those arms. See how the fellow in the photo below goes down, something similar to this. i personally go a little bit further down, but not much.

Breathing

Breathing is essential to your exercise. Your muscles, brain, heart, and blood all scream for more oxygen while your exercing. Sometimes you’ll find yourself getting light headed or dizzy, this is a sign of lack of oxygen; so breathe!In-out-in-out.

Most recommend that you breath in as your going up, exhale as your going down. The logic just makes sense since your diaphragm works in the same fashion.

Posture

In the article Sitting Still we touched on the fact that if you stay still and sit in a position for a very long time, you will find that your muscles start to row naturally into those positions: slouched back breeds hunchbacks, sitting spreads hips etc. Well, the same idea passes for posture when your exercising.

If your lifting the weights with the wrong posture, you will find that the muscle starts to grow in the awkward posture positions which then causes your body to get altered into a bad direction. After this happens, it becomes increasingly harder to recover from such growth. It is possible, but an extremely conscious effort must be made at correcting.

Focus on things like:

keeping a straight back
looking forward so your neck isn’t tweaked into an awkward position
bending at the knees

Paying attention to these things will provide you with proper muscle growth, and benefit you definitely in the long run.

Speed

Muscle cars are fast, but going fast during your muscle building isn’t the best option. Yes there are certain times when your training to specifically be explosive and reach high speeds, but that is very specific training and if you’re reaching this level, you are most likely also training directly with a professional trainer.

Keep your motion smooth and steady, if you are not properly warmed up, and decide to power through a heavy set on the press, this is a pulled muscle waiting to happen.

Stay Loose

It is essential that you become loose when your working out. Flexing and stretching and straining the muscles that most activities require can cause muscle pulls and strains that certainly aren’t wanted.

Keep your body loose always. Get in the habit of stretching a few times a day; when you wake up, when you are in midday or when you get home, and then at night time a few hours after dinner. This way your body will be getting the proper stretching in, loosening your limbs which also gives the required blood/oxygen flow to the muscles looking to repair.

Listen to your Body

During your whole exercise routine, listen to your body. It knows how much it can handle, it knows how much it wants to do, it knows when to stop. Listen to it, recognize signs. Most times out of ten, before you really strain a muscle you can start to feel it slowly tweaking more. If you get into a situation where your slightly tweaked, STOP, STRETCH, and move away from that area for the day. Nobody wins with a pulled or strained muscle.

Do you have any other tips on things the exercise should be focusing on while consciously staying fit ?

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