Limitless: A Phenomenology on Training

Warm-up
I wasnt always the professional badminton player that I was now. If truth be told, I
started out the weakest in the team when I joined the varsity team which I was barely able
to get in. I had to try out for two times in the consecutive years because I was deselected
for the team. Admittedly, looking back, it was due to my failure that I had the drive of
surpassing my teammates the next time I joined the tryouts, and so I did.
Badminton was the highlight of my stay in high school. I devoted almost all of my
free time on training. I can even vividly remember the feeling that I had whenever the day
was Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, because they were my training days, and so
I would often get excited all throughout the day because I was really looking forward to
training. Not long after I was in the team, I had already joined multiple competitions and
garnered medals and trophies for the school.
After 3 hours of each gruelling training session, I always find myself in wonder
and pleasantly dizzy from fatigue. Exhausted but fulfilled I willed myself to the shower
room, where I begin to peel away my sports attire. I stand under the shower, slightly
confused; my eyes staring blankly in front of me, thoughtless and motionless. I feel
renewed somehow, even optimistic. I was feeling a sense of amazement to myself. I just
finished a three hour workout! The sense of accomplishment and hard work had me by
the reigns; I came to embrace the feeling of fatigue and exhaustion that comes after each
workout and grew to love the pain in my muscles that followed the feeling of a good
nights rest.

Break

Athlete or not, I think that its safe to say that everyone has trained in one point in
their life. When we are training ourselves, we are trying to do something that forces
ourselves past our limits. When we work out we bring about fitness through labor and
exertion, we reconstruct our own selves into something more, stronger perhaps or even
wiser through repetitive actions. When we exercise we work continuously, cultivating our
actions and through these actions we transform our bodies into something else. The
question is, for what reason do we train? Most people train to get fit or be stronger, some
do it for the beauty of appearance and physique to impress others, and some people train
as to represent some sort of self expression and while others train to overcome weakness
and insecurities.
People have different standards of being fit. For example, from what I hear, to be
in good cardiovascular condition, one needs to a minimum of 20 minutes of aerobic
exercise three times a week to stay fit. Although some people would do this training
exponentially greater, the end goal is still the same to be in a sense fit according to
their expectations,
What does it mean to have a great and beautiful physique? If one was to think
about it, there are multiple perspectives of standards of beauty among those engaging in
their respective sport. For the bodybuilders, their perspective of beauty is bigger is
better. They possess huge amounts of muscle in every region of their body that
sometimes isnt perceived by other people as beauty anymore. Another are marathon
runners who engages in long distance running with their seemingly out of proportion leg
muscles that they are proud of, or badminton players such as I with visibly
disproportionate shoulders and legs with the right parts of my body being much more
muscular than the left side of my body. Can we say that these examples of athletes train to
achieve this sort of physique? Although these are the perceive effects on their body for
their respective sports, couldnt we say that the manifestation of these different body
physique are some sort of representation of being better at their respective sports?
Training has also been known for its calming and distressing effect which may
seem paradoxical in nature since training involves physical and mental stress unto the
body. Although that may seem so, virtually any form of training and exercise pumps up
your endorphins which was also connotated as the runners high. More often than not,
athletes will get injured more than once in their lifetime, and yet for some reason, these
sustained injuries drive them to train more relentlessly than ever to overcome their
weakness of injury.

Work Out

The process of establishing and achieving goals in training in the first place,
whether it was to run a mile in 5 minutes, or swim at least 40 laps a day was to keep a vow
to himself to break free of his boundaries. This vow maybe self hazardous at times,
however, as breaking a vow to yourself such as missing your daily 40 lap swim can instill
the feeling of guilt in a person, making him think that he violated his own law and that he
breached his own routine of training.
People and most athletes view their training space as something to allow their mind
to be lost thought the freedom of movement within the area. This space is similar to
having ownership of the territory, with superior athletes having a stronger sense of space
or territory over the other individuals. Admittedly, I could highly relate to this ownership
of territory concept because there were numerous power struggles in my varsity team
back then when I was in high school. Basing it from personal experience, this sense of
space is usually felt when playing a doubles match. When I think that Im better than my
partner, I am usually the one setting the pace in the match, whether it be an attacking pace
to offset the opponents are take a defensive action to tire out the attacker. This sense of
space and ownership of territory allows my body to do what it wants, letting my body
takeover the game.
But then when I feel that I am inferior to my partner, it usually makes me feel
nervous and unsure of my capabilities, allowing the pervasion of errors on my shots which
contributes to the loss of my confidence thus making the game significantly less fun than I
am used to. When a person or any athlete for that matter finds him freedom to move and
act on his own interfered with, the euphoria that the game brings significantly dwindles.
The freedom to move without burden or impediment allows the mind to forget whats
around them and allows the body to take over completely, similar to what they call the
runners high wherein runners may experience euphoria, a feeling of being invincible, a
reduced state of discomfort or pain, and even a loss in the sense of time where it happens
to a lot of us when we are in a place where time flies by because we were having too much
fun.
Training has made us feel that there was something greater in store for us. It
reminds us of change, that we are capable of being greater than we are now. Even being
forced to follow the pace of someone superior than you would allow you to break your
own boundaries and encourage you to surpass the person in front of you. Training has
allowed us to feel that we are able subjected to the undeniable conditions of human
existence such as the feeling of determination, confidence, fear, pain and accomplishment.
Personally, now that I am in college, I have moved on to more important things
such as my academics and organizational work. Slowly, my passion to play badminton
began to dwindle, and as I further hurl myself to my studies and extracurricular work, my
drive to play was nowhere to be found. When I used to cry and have tantrums because my
mom forbade me to play was long behind me, I no longer craved it, and realizing it now
as I am writing this paper made me a bit sad because something that I have always loved
to do has faded into something less.
I believe it is not completely lost to me however; I still play albeit only for leisure
and to distress myself. Although there is times that whenever I feel frustrated about
something, or that I am depressed, I find that playing badminton is a great avenue to
channel my trapped emotions unto the shuttlecock every time I smashed the bird. It was an
unexplainable feeling; I thought every time I was in the court, it felt like I was in a
sanctuary something that I can escape to and momentarily forget all the problems in the
present. Perhaps, the way I see badminton now is something that helps me express my
bottled up emotions, something that still involves the growth of my body, being emotional
growth instead of physical.

Cool down

While its true that the meaning and purpose of training is different from one
person to another, it all boils down to its essence that training universally improves
something in oneself no matter what form ones training is or what purpose the training is
for. Each of our body is like a limiter waiting to be broken should the person will it to be.
The person has to set his limit farther each time he breaks it, until the very moment where
he looks behind and only see the darkness left behind by the shadow of his former self. As
he continues to break and surpass his boundaries, he will soon be saturated with his own
sense of power and space, reveling in euphoria where he would experience the mind and
body combining that would allow him let loose of himself.
After the individual returns from his transcendental euphoric moments, he is left
with an exhausted body, with a revelation of his new power. As he grows in power, his
disputes and burdens seem to diminish and decrease in size, it doesnt overcome his
territory and sense of space anymore. In bypassing his boundaries, and getting to know his
own body, he is able to have more faith in his bodys capabilities and continue to transcend
even further as he progresses in his training.
So why is it that people train? They train in order to gain a sense of the universe, a
sense of their untapped potential, that sense of power and euphoria that comes each and
every time you break your own boundaries. And after you continue bypass your limits;
there will come a time that you will realize that there are no boundaries that can hold you
back anymore. There is no edge, no wall, no pit, but just a surface with infinite ways of
getting to your end goal.