Focus.

Exercise is a reduction of one’s problems to a simple motion. While overcoming intellectual, emotional, or other forms of cerebral difficulties require complex solutions, exercise reduces these things to be accomplished in an incomplex manner.

Physical exercise elicits no compromise. It is a pass / fail exam. There is no mediocrity in its practice. If the question is whether or not you can lift the weight, then the answer is never going be anything other than “yes” or “no”. This allows one to focus all the energies of the body and mind to one, simple motion.

This is the beauty of exercise. It reduces all problems to a simple yes-or-no answer. When I am exercising, there is nothing else in the world that my mind is able to wander to. All the energies of the body, mind, and soul are locked in a struggle to complete the objective in front of me. The weights, the bars, the tracks – they all offer a contest, like an dueling opponent offering a challenge. And they are not inert actors, they can be anything you wish them to be. The heavy bag can be the most villainous, heinous enemy of all – possessing no subjectivity or moral imperative. One does not articulate a complex response, one accepts nothing other than a total and complete victory over the challenge presented before you. There is nothing else.