Go On Feel

Training Insights

Slow shutter panning shot of a speeding cycle racer taken during the Bricket Wood round of the Tour of Hertfordshire, May 2016
Photo by Garry Neesam / Unsplash

Go on, do it, trust your body. We only think we dictate to our bodies. We do no such thing. We are energetic creatures, you are an energy portal.

The energy is running from the top of your head to the souls of your feet. Every single god damn thing you think and feel is running through this conduit, and, we are pretty good at thinking and pretty ordinary at feeling and allowing.

So many athletes have this idea that the game is governed by their head and their thoughts of overcoming the challenge, married, and governed by the analysis of it. So we rely on these thoughts to get us through, but it’s a disconnect because you aren’t turning those pedals with your thoughts of acceptable and unacceptable, and as soon as it gets messy the head goes into judgment and that fractures the embodiment of your process.

You are no longer in your body, you are up in your head! You can’t learn to trust your body by listening to your thoughts when things get tough. The energy is running through your body, it’s not generated by your muscles, your muscles are being activated by the energy itself.

The muscles are at the end of the chain, we only think otherwise. Your thoughts and analysis are so busy trying to put those muscles into action and it’s the wrong focus. You don't need it to go, you need it to flow. Now, when was the last time you went training and listened to your body, paid attention to the energy as it moves through you, tracked it, where does it go?

What does it feel like?

Does your energy get caught somewhere?

Do you feel like you have an energy block anywhere?

Where is the pain pooling? What happens if you pay close attention to it?

Where does it go then?

Cyclist
Photo by Oktay Yildiz / Unsplash

Do you notice how the energy moves down your body in a channel when you are feeling good, down your body and out the souls of your feet?

That is a grounded sense that’s rooted in your body's presence. The head takes the energy up with anxiety. The body takes the energy down with ground and presence.

You want the energy to move, not to get trapped in your head. Ever notice how when you are stressed that your energy is high up in your body, chest, neck, traps, head?

When you are really stressed, you can feel like you are almost disconnected from your body, or almost out of your body.  

While we are unconscious of the energy that runs through us, we are unconscious of how to manipulate it to our full advantage.

Now, the more you are able to relax that body under fire, the more that energy can flow into your process. But it can’t do that while your head, heart and body are in a state of disconnect because you are in your head when you should be in your body. Until we track the energy in our body, we have no true understanding of it.

No trust comes from giving your process over to your head. No good will come from the constant physical output analysis unless you are in contact with where it’s coming from.

If you can’t pace by, feel and without data, then you have a major disassociation going on that you need to look at. Trust can’t develop without understanding, and acceptance can’t arise without a deeper basic trust in yourself.

Confidence is actually a product of self-trust and understanding. Because analysis without understanding is doubt in sheep’s clothing!

Gilesy