The Gimmick is that There Is No Gimmick

As one astute observer exclaimed after one of my presentations on "Understanding Conditioning" -- as the light bulb lit up in his brain and face, "The gimmick is that there is no gimmick."

In a world which has learned to sell the sizzle rather than the steak, the hardest and most obvious thing to convince people of, is the simplicity of direct understanding, because they are always led on a convoluted "wild goose chase" thought necessary to motivate people to even listen, and in fact, their reason for listening, is the presumption that they are mainly there for entertainment rather than purpose -- and those there for the latter, have to be convinced it is for entertainment, and not something productive.

That is the unfortunate consequence of mainstream mass marketing media -- and not the truth of any real activity, which unfortunately many think, the mass media is a valid and adequate substitute for the actual experience. And so many people, are "conditioned" to think that everything is fake and contrived, and there is no real consequence and significance to anything: that everything is just one big commercial, to fool one into thinking anything the sponsor of that program wants one to think -- and that is the only truth they know.

So when I point out that any movement that can be done on a machine or equipment, can actually be done better and more productively without it, they are incredulous, because their conditioning has been to think that they absolutely need that apparatus to do that movement, or any other requirement -- because the body is designed for one thing, and that is movement. Movement is integral to the design and the evolution of the human body. One actually has to override that genius of simplicity, by being conditioned to defeat that essential intelligence.

The proof of this is that any movement one is used to performing on any machine or equipment, can simply be done without that equipment, but to make it as effective, it should be done for a minimum of 50 repetitions, and not the usual 10 with resistance, before one stops -- thinking that the latter is more effective than the freehand version with no resistance, because the movement itself, will always provide its own resistance -- to further movement beyond its extremest range.

An example is to do a standing press with no resistance -- and to keep pushing the imaginary bar as high as possible. The further one attempts to do so, the obvious further resistance the body provides against doing so -- and one doesn't need a machine to aid in doing so. And really, the whole advantage in movement, is achieving a greater range of movement, and not simply repeating a limited range of movement, tirelessly and endlessly.

That's what differentiates the world champion, or prodigy from the mediocre -- their greatly enhanced and extended range of motion, and not doing a limited range of movement, more than every other competitor can. Just as in singing, it's not who can sing the loudest badly, but who has the greatest range of ability -- even to go from the worst to the best, and not just do the average, more than anybody else can.