holymotherfuckingshit
I just dumbbell curled 32 lbs in each hand. I’ve been able to do 8 and even 9 before, but this time I did 12. My brain exploded, and it’s a little inconvenient trying to type with my cerebellum hanging from the chandelier.
Maybe I need to listen to Judas Priest more often when I work out.
Push it baby, Push it!
Push it baby, Push it! Music always helps the pain.
Way to go.
Brain guck is icky to pick up!
whats the mind — body
whats the mind — body connection there?
in other words, is this some natural high thing that I don’t know about?
Not an easy question to
Not an easy question to answer. First, I think that the difficult part of any workout is the mental aspect. It takes some mental discipline (that I have in only very tiny quantities) to push one’s self harder than one thinks possible, to just kep the commands going to the muscles even though the muscles are screaming out, “STOP STOP!” and the natural instinct is to put the weights down and rest.
The loud, driving, aggressive, sexual, and violent music provides some kind of adrenaline push that can be useful in getting over the top.
Another possible aspect is as I referred here: self-hatred that during lifting, the diastolic blood pressure shoots momentarily skyward so dramatically that some doctors have been worried that weightlifters would suffer aneurysms. Apparantly the restrained breathing (expressed as grunting) or held breath helps to equalize that pressure and the risk is actually nearly nonexistant. In any case, as important as oxygen and blood flow is to mental function, it wouldn’t surprise me if hyperoxygenation and fluxuations in pressure could induce an altered state, even just for a moment.
I don’t know if it’s possible to get the endorphin high like runners do from non-sustained exercise like lifting.
From my own actual experience, the experience of pushing myself physically harder than I thought I could is exhilirating and accompanied by a state of focus and intense tension. There is a shutdown of the intellectual chatter that normally runs through my head as every bit of attention goes to pushing out that last rep. I won’t say I black out, but I stop being aware of anything else other than the screaming of the muscles and the electric pops and pings that I (probably falsely) associate with micro-tearing of the muscle tissue. Then I drop the weight and it’s all over, as though I’d been rolling down a rocky mountain slope and then tumbled over a cliff into free-fall.
Did that help?