Physical Intelligence - Day 25

Physical intelligence is not a superstition, it is a physicality and so it is that the third time I married my love of Tottenham Hotspur with going to the gym, that this was the third successive win.  I know others sports fan engage rituals as if engaging these rituals will have a direct bearing on the result of the team.  In a recent match I watched Turkish supporters praying in earnest that they win the penalty shoot out.  There team did not.  I will acknowledge serendipity but not superstition.  This is the first time Spurs have won 8 in a row since they last won the title in 1961.  Chelsea matched a record with 13 wins a row earlier in the season but the team that last attained that record did not win the title in that year. 

Serendipity can mean Spurs going to Leicester in their penultimate game and should the lose there and hand Chelsea the title, it would match Spurs going to Chelsea and losing there to hand Leicester the title.  Equally it could be read as an ironic twist should the reverse happen.  It is very egotistical to think that what we do hundreds or thousands of miles away from what our sports team is doing has some kind of magical effect.  What I can relate to is the physical sweat of the players, which is ironic because we get angry or happy at our teams without any act of sweating ourselves, unless we happen to be watching the game on a very hot day - but even then our sweat is not something we worked for, it is only the result of a physical property called heat.

The above shot from the Metro newspaper is Christian Erikson celebrating his out-of-the-blue goal in a match that would otherwise been stalemate.  He tried something special and it worked and this is something as a Spurs supporter was a rare thing to see from a Spurs team, that special quality called a "WINNING MENTALITY'. 

A winning mentality is a physical intelligence, it is not a superstition.  Christian Erikson is a much underrated midfield general whose personality is very grounded - he could have gone to any of the big teams and achieved silverware and winners medals, but he has a feeling about the Tottenham project and he chose to make this move.  That Spurs have now a manager that matches the discipline and hard work that was central to its greatest ever manager Bill Nicholson is a great time to be a Spurs supporter.   For sure Tottenham will need a winning mentality in abundance because matches against Arsenal, West Ham, Manchester United and current champions Leicester are really difficult set - let alone finish at Hull who have a new manager that has made their home ground a fortress, even if they are in relegation bother now.

Today, for the first time I separated my gym session into two 45 minute sessions, which mirror the regular game time in a soccer match.  My family was not happy that I came into the kitchen for my "half-time break", this is not exactly the same thing as footballers going to the dressing room for their half-time break and team talk.  The only pity is that that we are at the end of a football season with only about five matches left - and it would have been great to engage this type of gym session and watching soccer at the beginning of the season.  This season has been special culminating in today as Spurs achieved their highest points total since the Premier League came into being and yet they still are 2nd. 

The key lesson today was how this "winning mentality" is reverse engineered back into the gym room to the supporter who is now exercising while his team his playing.  This year I have not gone beyond my limits, so talk of rest this year is not relevant.  Where rest is relevant is in weight training where muscle groups can be pushed to a certain limit and then rest is best, as we train different muscle groups and incorporate the effects of a worked muscle which continue after the muscle has been exercised.  So in this case rest is an intelligent part of the exercise routine.  I can still engage 90 days straight so long as I am physically intelligent about variety.

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