Mindful Strength Training To Failure (MSTF)

Mindful Strength Training to Failure (MSTF) is about this one quality: the quality of discovery. Once you understand the mechanical aspects of proper exercise, such as proper form and technique, you can practice MSTF. What you are trying to do is to bring your whole awareness to what you are experiencing in the moment, free from any idea of what you should be feeling. You are in a process of discovery. You must be able to accept anything that shows up without judgement and express it freely. If someone were to look at you, they would know everything you are going through moment by moment. This is an intimate experience, and is born of integrity, as you are being truly honest with yourself and your life in those moments. This is truly a freeing, deeply rewarding, and meditative experience. Your muscles are exhausted, but there is a deep sense of feeling good, as you are discovering something new and unexpected moment-to-moment, and supposedly producing dopamine ( a feel good neurotransmitter) during those discoveries.

Producing dopamine doesn't just help you feel good. Dopamine pushes back on norepinephrine (adrenaline); and when norepinephrine spikes, our glia cells Part of Central Nervous System) tell the brain to shut off any voluntary muscular contraction, which essentially makes us give up or "fail." So we can fail before our muscles do. By producing dopamine, we can go all the way to the point of muscular failure, creating a more potent stimulus for building strength.