Coach Ted talks about reaching that place in your training where you are hyper focused and able to eliminate outside influence, thought, distraction, and therefore are able to embrace the unknown.
Training as Advanced Meditation
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Training as Advanced Meditation
Season 3/Episode 22
November 23, 2021
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This is the Ted O'Neill program where we explore the science and philosophies for performance optimization, and the elevation of the human experience from the mind of Ted O'Neill with John Leon Guerrero.
Jon
Welcome to the Ted O'Neill program. Today is Tuesday.
0:20 Ted
The next way that I view using the body as a lever is this concept that training becomes the most advanced form of meditation. So, meditation more and more are something that's gaining traction, I think for the general populace, okay, and you know, again, since I don’t, I don't get out much outside the walls of the apple. I don't really know what people are thinking about this. But I know in 2019 There was a study from the University of Wisconsin that was, I think, one of the first big landmark studies done on meditation on how through thought alone, you can change your chemistry you can change your brainwaves, and therefore receive epigenetic upgrades to whatever condition you might be experiencing so more and more people are getting on track with this very, very old idea of meditation. This is not a new age thing. This has been around since the dawn of time going within to access different states of being. But meditation. There's many, many types of meditation to share. I don't propose to be an expert on any of them. I do have a daily practice, sometimes multiple times per day, but I wouldn't say that I'm a student of any one particular philosophy. And there's many, many that I don't know but if we think about in general, what is the goal of meditation, and one might in a very conventional sense, say it's to go within to cancel out all the outside noise, to develop some kind of level of focus, maybe even a singularity of focus on hold a thought or hold no thoughts and just find a state of calm or maybe work on one particular thing. So again, cancelling out all the other outside noise and just focusing either on the outcome that you desire, or the thing that you're perhaps trying to heal by seeing that it's already been healed or whatever the different take on this is. But meditation is almost universally done in a sensory deprived state. Right? I mean, we don't we don't do meditation, in a loud, noisy room. It's usually someplace where you have the mostquiet maybe you're wearing a blindfold or something that canceled out, right? Maybe you have some music, maybe there's no music, but the idea is to close off external sensory perception. So then how on earth could training be the most advanced form of meditation?
2:33 Jon
Now I like where you're going with this because the first thing is, I know that you're this is a setup. I admit it thought about this in a way that allows it to be accessible for most people as a concept, but it makes complete sense now, because you and I have discussed our meditation practices I know I've told you and that you're capable of the same that sometimes my meditation takes place in the noisy environment where I'm going about my day and it's time for me just to go away and I will sit in my car in the middle of a parking lot that might have things going on. And I'll shut the rest of it up and just allow myself to just be alone in my meditative state for a period of however many minutes I feel like,
3:18 Ted
That's a great practice rep.
3:20 Jon
And this idea that you're training can be a form of advanced meditation is not a conceptual one, I would say and we haven't talked about this previously, but I would gather that at some point, you were in the midst of intense training, and then realized that you were in advanced meditation.
3:43 Ted
One of the things that really clicked this into a state of clarity for me was when I first started meditating. Well, first off, I thought this is going to be really, really easy. I've trained to squat 1000 pounds, I've done things that were way outside of my capabilities, seemingly, and I closed the gap on that and some of the things that I achieved and some I didn't achieve, but I thought I had a really strong mental base of training. And then when I started meditation, holy smokes. I couldn't sit still; my body was doing things involuntarily. And I thought, all I have to do is nothing. There's nothing. Why is this so difficult? Well, if you have a lot of stored anxiety or tension or other things that reside within your body, or within your brain, and those can be separate. We talked about that earlier, then you might experience a very uncomfortable time when you're trying to find this place of have a singular thought or no thought at all. But to your point, yes, I had recognized that stain in a certain flow state physically, throughout the course of a training, maybe you're working up to a one rep max with a way you never thought he would see. Or maybe you're doing your dynamic effort work, which requires you to have a sustained, elevated presence the entire time you're engaged in this where your output has to be maximal even against some maximum weight. So, you're moving very explosively there's no coasting during this was a state of being. This was a thought and a feeling aligning together and holding one thought for as long as possible when you're in that moment. So, it'll begin to occur to me that wow, this is and when I started meditation, it was curious to me that I found I could reach states of flow or channeling states or meditative state. It's much easier when I was awake in my day to day life than when I was in intentional meditation. And I think that was a function of having trained for so many years, and having cultivated that to where within this sea of noise and this sea of maximum sensory input Diablos loud, by intention, the walls are painted red. There's noise all around you if you're lifting people might be yelling at you. So, this isn't a place of calm. If you're in the middle of that storm, to be ultimately successful, you have to become the common storm. Whatever that looks like for you. Because a lot of lifters believe they're approaching their training with great intensity where they're really just diffusing their energy. And then you can see those who have an intensity and it's channeled. And then you can see those who are just really introverted, but they're building massive amounts of energy. Against the task that stands before them. So one of the ways we use training as an advanced more of a meditation is I've created a series of formulas for example, on some of the big lifts or one thought to hold in your mind, to where when you get to that place where your chemistry begins to change, instead of going with the chemistry which is really an attachment to the old belief system. If your feelings are a chemical state in the body, and if those feelings were learned through imprints or impact or traumas from the past when you lacked discernment, at an early age to identify what that really meant. And when you feel fear and anxiety, you're going to feel that fear and anxiety from the time you first learned it. Not now as a fully sentient adult under a barbell for example, you get overwhelmed by it. To the point where you forget what you were supposed to be doing. And people can say, well, that's not true. Come to my gym, get under the bar. And I will show you exactly what I mean. Everyone does this until they receive this level of training. So, when you begin to look at it this way, and you find those points in time where you begin to have that chemistry change, who I ended up with a singularity of focus on holding one thought is how we approach that. So, on the squat, for example, if someone's a wide stance squatter, I teach them to push out laterally and shove back as hard as they can until they reach their destination. That might be a box if they're box squatting, there might be no box if they're not box, whatever it might be calling them up high. For a reason are calling them down to a position that several inches below parallel for a specific reason. So until you reach your destination, and then there's this whole series of non-negotiables you'd have to already have put on lockdown like where the bar goes on your back and how you hold it and all these things that have to do with different elements of form, but if we can truncate this into one experience are one thought push out and back as hard as you can. That formula doesn't allow room for anything else. And so, as a practice, and as a as a means of building skill. On holding one thought the more repetitions you perform, where you have to call that formula into existence. When you're being maximally challenged, the more you're going to build that level of focus which to me is exactly like advanced meditation.
Jon
Welcome to the Ted O'Neill program. Today is Tuesday.
0:20 Ted
The next way that I view using the body as a lever is this concept that training becomes the most advanced form of meditation. So, meditation more and more are something that's gaining traction, I think for the general populace, okay, and you know, again, since I don’t, I don't get out much outside the walls of the apple. I don't really know what people are thinking about this. But I know in 2019 There was a study from the University of Wisconsin that was, I think, one of the first big landmark studies done on meditation on how through thought alone, you can change your chemistry you can change your brainwaves, and therefore receive epigenetic upgrades to whatever condition you might be experiencing so more and more people are getting on track with this very, very old idea of meditation. This is not a new age thing. This has been around since the dawn of time going within to access different states of being. But meditation. There's many, many types of meditation to share. I don't propose to be an expert on any of them. I do have a daily practice, sometimes multiple times per day, but I wouldn't say that I'm a student of any one particular philosophy. And there's many, many that I don't know but if we think about in general, what is the goal of meditation, and one might in a very conventional sense, say it's to go within to cancel out all the outside noise, to develop some kind of level of focus, maybe even a singularity of focus on hold a thought or hold no thoughts and just find a state of calm or maybe work on one particular thing. So again, cancelling out all the other outside noise and just focusing either on the outcome that you desire, or the thing that you're perhaps trying to heal by seeing that it's already been healed or whatever the different take on this is. But meditation is almost universally done in a sensory deprived state. Right? I mean, we don't we don't do meditation, in a loud, noisy room. It's usually someplace where you have the mostquiet maybe you're wearing a blindfold or something that canceled out, right? Maybe you have some music, maybe there's no music, but the idea is to close off external sensory perception. So then how on earth could training be the most advanced form of meditation?
2:33 Jon
Now I like where you're going with this because the first thing is, I know that you're this is a setup. I admit it thought about this in a way that allows it to be accessible for most people as a concept, but it makes complete sense now, because you and I have discussed our meditation practices I know I've told you and that you're capable of the same that sometimes my meditation takes place in the noisy environment where I'm going about my day and it's time for me just to go away and I will sit in my car in the middle of a parking lot that might have things going on. And I'll shut the rest of it up and just allow myself to just be alone in my meditative state for a period of however many minutes I feel like,
3:18 Ted
That's a great practice rep.
3:20 Jon
And this idea that you're training can be a form of advanced meditation is not a conceptual one, I would say and we haven't talked about this previously, but I would gather that at some point, you were in the midst of intense training, and then realized that you were in advanced meditation.
3:43 Ted
One of the things that really clicked this into a state of clarity for me was when I first started meditating. Well, first off, I thought this is going to be really, really easy. I've trained to squat 1000 pounds, I've done things that were way outside of my capabilities, seemingly, and I closed the gap on that and some of the things that I achieved and some I didn't achieve, but I thought I had a really strong mental base of training. And then when I started meditation, holy smokes. I couldn't sit still; my body was doing things involuntarily. And I thought, all I have to do is nothing. There's nothing. Why is this so difficult? Well, if you have a lot of stored anxiety or tension or other things that reside within your body, or within your brain, and those can be separate. We talked about that earlier, then you might experience a very uncomfortable time when you're trying to find this place of have a singular thought or no thought at all. But to your point, yes, I had recognized that stain in a certain flow state physically, throughout the course of a training, maybe you're working up to a one rep max with a way you never thought he would see. Or maybe you're doing your dynamic effort work, which requires you to have a sustained, elevated presence the entire time you're engaged in this where your output has to be maximal even against some maximum weight. So, you're moving very explosively there's no coasting during this was a state of being. This was a thought and a feeling aligning together and holding one thought for as long as possible when you're in that moment. So, it'll begin to occur to me that wow, this is and when I started meditation, it was curious to me that I found I could reach states of flow or channeling states or meditative state. It's much easier when I was awake in my day to day life than when I was in intentional meditation. And I think that was a function of having trained for so many years, and having cultivated that to where within this sea of noise and this sea of maximum sensory input Diablos loud, by intention, the walls are painted red. There's noise all around you if you're lifting people might be yelling at you. So, this isn't a place of calm. If you're in the middle of that storm, to be ultimately successful, you have to become the common storm. Whatever that looks like for you. Because a lot of lifters believe they're approaching their training with great intensity where they're really just diffusing their energy. And then you can see those who have an intensity and it's channeled. And then you can see those who are just really introverted, but they're building massive amounts of energy. Against the task that stands before them. So one of the ways we use training as an advanced more of a meditation is I've created a series of formulas for example, on some of the big lifts or one thought to hold in your mind, to where when you get to that place where your chemistry begins to change, instead of going with the chemistry which is really an attachment to the old belief system. If your feelings are a chemical state in the body, and if those feelings were learned through imprints or impact or traumas from the past when you lacked discernment, at an early age to identify what that really meant. And when you feel fear and anxiety, you're going to feel that fear and anxiety from the time you first learned it. Not now as a fully sentient adult under a barbell for example, you get overwhelmed by it. To the point where you forget what you were supposed to be doing. And people can say, well, that's not true. Come to my gym, get under the bar. And I will show you exactly what I mean. Everyone does this until they receive this level of training. So, when you begin to look at it this way, and you find those points in time where you begin to have that chemistry change, who I ended up with a singularity of focus on holding one thought is how we approach that. So, on the squat, for example, if someone's a wide stance squatter, I teach them to push out laterally and shove back as hard as they can until they reach their destination. That might be a box if they're box squatting, there might be no box if they're not box, whatever it might be calling them up high. For a reason are calling them down to a position that several inches below parallel for a specific reason. So until you reach your destination, and then there's this whole series of non-negotiables you'd have to already have put on lockdown like where the bar goes on your back and how you hold it and all these things that have to do with different elements of form, but if we can truncate this into one experience are one thought push out and back as hard as you can. That formula doesn't allow room for anything else. And so, as a practice, and as a as a means of building skill. On holding one thought the more repetitions you perform, where you have to call that formula into existence. When you're being maximally challenged, the more you're going to build that level of focus which to me is exactly like advanced meditation.
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