If you want to build strength or muscle mass, you know that a one-time visit to the gym to lift weights isn’t going to work.
To build muscle and strength you must “start low and build slow.” If you’ve never lifted before, you don’t come into the gym and load up a barbell or pick up the heaviest dumbbell. That would be a recipe for injury.
Instead, you start with bodyweight movements. Then you add light dumbbells. As you show up and continue to do the work, your body adapts. Eventually you’re able to handle more load,
The same applies for flexibility. A tight and rigid body won’t become flexible or supple after one yoga class or stretch session. It can take months or years to notice subtle changes.
In fact, if you try to force a stretch, your body will push back. That’s how people get hurt.
Of course, the big challenge with the slow approach is that it often feels like “nothing is happening.”
In my Yin yoga classes, many of my students tell me that they “don’t feel” anything happening in the pose. This is normal, especially in yin, where we’re targeting fascia. You may not feel the impact of a pose in the moment, but after a long period of time you start to notice the effects of a consistent practice.
This principle applies to learning too.
Learning new things is like stretching the brain, or overloading its muscle. In fact, that’s exactly what we’re doing. If you try to stretch the brain too much, it will resist. Our minds like to stay in their comfort zone, they can’t handle so much new information at once.
But if you take in a little big every day, you eventually will be able to synthesize it all.
Progress doesn’t happen overnight. It happens in small incremental steps.
Love it? Hate it? What do you think? Don't hold back...