Condition

Conditioning is a long process, and because there’s a routine and repetitive method of training one’s mind and body to act habitually, it can get old and unappealing, but it’s helpful in times where I need discipline to endure a long-term process.

Usually some trickery has to accompany conditioning.

For instance, I trick myself all the time when I’m conditioning for the marathon. My body signals discomfort and pain, but I trick my brain by consistently by telling it that it’s false or doesn’t exist, and it works.

Let’s say I’m on my sixth mile, and my ankles are tightening up. At this moment I shift my focus to anything else but the discomfort. I pretend it’s not there. Other than the physical attempts in which I try swinging my arms differently, straighten my back a little more, hold up my weight by tightening and straightening my core before coming down so that the impact of my feet to the ground is softer, I direct my mind to something else.

It could be the music I’m listening to, or the people I’m passing by, but usually distracting my mind works most optimally when I start paying closer attention to my surroundings. I try to magnify my five senses to nature, people, and objects I’m passing by.

Pain demands to be felt—and it is felt—I just don’t pay attention to it. Practicing this type of conditioning has made numbing the pain and forgetting it altogether come faster than before, so I don’t experience much pain during my runs anymore.

For social affiliations and daily inevitable events, however, I learned that tricking your mind in this method yields different results than when I use it for physical exertion. Because unlike running, it’s not just pain you have to trick yourself from feeling.

So when it comes to anything but physical activity, I try to avoid this conditioned exercise, but I still practice it sometimes because unfortunately, it’s become a sort of innate reflex.