Intensity and focus during exercise

[cliffa74]

Thinking about Intensity and focus during exercise, maybe we should get a quote from a master.

You can make your exercises a success or a miserable failure. You can make them monotonousand irksome, or you can make them a sheer delight. It depends entirely upon your own mental attitude.
You should, and I want you to, regard all your bodily activities and exercises as a pleasure.
You should look forward to them as a joy to perform. The results will then be much more satisfactory
and certain. Hold in the mind’s eye AT ALL TIMES the Ideal of Physical Perfection.
Think of yourself as possessing a Perfect Body. Realize each time you are exercising you are
arriving at still greater perfection.
Regard each day’s exercise as a goal in itself. Follow my instructions faithfully EVERY day, and
as you string these healthy days together you will have woven a healthy and happy life.
Remember step by step and the thing is done!
In all your bodily activities you are invited to put CONSCIOUS CONCENTRATED EFFORT
INTO EACH MOVEMENT. Perform all your exercises with a WILL. THINK Strength into the
parts involved. THINK Power. THINK the muscles are growing larger, stronger, more beautiful,
while you are exercising. Put pep and punch, vigor, vim and snap into every movement! Put life
into your exercises! Don’t ever perform them in a halfhearted manner. Avoid a lazy attitude.
Refrain from dreaming of other things while exercising.
Do not dread them as something to be shunned or skipped through as quickly as possible.
MAKE UP YOUR MIND NOW YOU ARE GOING TO PUT YOUR WHOLE HEART AND
SOUL INTO EACH DIRECTED EXERCISE, AS GIVEN IN EVERY LESSON. THE
DESIRED RESULTS WILL BE YOURS.

[Pharage]

That is a great quote, thanks for posting it. As someone who is just now trying to get into fitness, I think my attitude towards exercise is going to be a major factor in if I can stick with it or not.

[Andy62]

You can't beat Charles Atlas,but here is a quote from another master = Swami Rama

The reason this type of exercise is so superior is illustrated by the following quote by Swami Rama referring to the Isometric Power Flexing exercises in his book "Exercise Without Movement."

"The exercises in this book,however, are yoga practices with benefits far exceeding ordinary muscular movement. In these subtle exercsies one visualizes muscles, respiration,senses, nervous system, and mind.....Exercise without movement, however,is a systematic method of exercise that allows the practitioner to travel along the pathways of action,from mind to muscle..... They are the preliminary steps to mastery of the autonomic nervous system. Most importantly, in these exercises one comes to experience the tremendous potential of the mind itself,and one makes the dramatic step inward through the layers of personality toward the Center of mind and consciousness."

http://www.geocities.com/swamiramabio/ResearchSwamiRama.htm

[cliffa74]

While we are pondering:

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it.

A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.

[Andy62]

"The German strongman of the 1880's, Eugen Sandow,even in his time , proclaimed the the truth that physical exercise performed mechanically and without concentration of thought could do little for the development of muscles"

Yoga And Health

[gruntbrain]

Even a mindless performance of exercize can at times be valuable; think meditations where the focus is not on the working muscles but rather the breath

[JoeJustice]

That Charles Atlas guy has a really clever screen name.

-Joe