I’ve been following my strength training program for 30 weeks at this point, and during my workout today with squats I reached a state where for the first time in a long time: I felt real.
From my ‘Meditative Strength Training’ I drafted a program where I focus on one main barbell lift and do it for 10 sets of 5 reps. On the final set, I do what’s referred to as an AMRAP set, which is ‘As Many Reps as Possible’. For squats, I do an extra eleventh set out of respect for Tom Platz who once said: “When you think it’s all over… you have 5 more.”
For the entire week, nothing has felt real until this eleventh set. I was gassed from the AMRAP’d 10th set and I had to sit on the floor and catch my breath. After a few deep breaths, I got back up, got back under the bar, braced, and lifted the bar from the rack for that 11th set.
After stepping back, I look up into the mirror in front of me, and I’m not there. For those 30 seconds, I am gone. The golem that my soul has possessed is going on autopilot and started working through another five reps, without me in it.
Everything else I do to try and climb out of my head, is done from the inside of that very head. This is one of the few, if only, things that grounds me so far into the physical world that there’s no head left to be in. There’s no room for rumination, there’s no room for anxiety, there’s no room for the persistent dysthymic, anhedonic state that is the norm.
It’s as if I’ve been sitting my entire life and I finally stood up.
And it only lasted for 30 seconds until the bar was racked, and I was back on the floor sweating like a stuck pig, out of breath, with legs that have finally decided to say that the workout was over.
Thank you, ~Michaelion