Bring Your Brain

You're not just here to work out. You're here to learn what your body can do.

Turn On the Lights

Imagine walking down the lighting aisle of a hardware store: hundreds of lamps, fixtures, and switches. Some lights are off. Some are dim. Some shine brightly.

Your muscles contain motor units: each one is a motor neuron and the muscle fibers it controls. As a muscle needs to produce more force, the nervous system generally recruits more motor units, progressing from lower-threshold to higher-threshold units. It also changes how frequently those motor neurons signal. That's one way to understand strength: recruit the lights you need and regulate their output.

Conduct the Light Show

When I lived in New York City, I sometimes had to navigate crowds and closed streets around Saks Fifth Avenue's spectacular holiday light shows. It was worth stopping to watch: thousands of lights moving together as one coordinated performance.

Now imagine trying to control that entire show with your own two hands. It's not enough to turn on every light. The right lights must switch on and off, in the right sequence, with the right intensity and timing.

Movement works that way. Skilled athletes, dancers, and musicians aren't simply exerting more effort. They've learned to coordinate extraordinary complexity.

Practice Makes Permanent

When I was a kid, my mom made me redo messy homework. I wanted to get outside and play, so I learned to write neatly the first time.

Later, learning to touch-type meant finding the home row, practicing without looking, improving accuracy, and eventually typing without consciously searching for each key.

Movement learning follows similar principles. Repetition helps build skill, but repeating something doesn't guarantee improvement. Attention, useful feedback, manageable challenges, and opportunities to correct mistakes shape what we learn. Habits aren't irreversible, but the way we practice matters.

Bring your brain. The goal isn't just to work harder. It's to learn to move better.