If you want to progress in your training there is one attitude that can transform your progress. Ignore it and you can find yourself wading through endless plateaus of repetitive drudgery. If each time you train you get curious about what you can learn it will make a huge difference compared to an attitude of knocking off a certain number of exercises, covering some distance or filling an amount of time.
In the past I have ranted about the MTV/CNN exercise culture where people run on treadmills watching screens to anaesthetize themselves to what is happens in their bodies. They may do the requisite number of kilometres, or burn the target number of calories but they do not develop in style, elegance or understanding. If you do not have your mind open to what is happening in your body then you lose opportunities to learn. If you do not keep awareness or attention then you are training your body to be a dumb beast of burden.
No two breaths are exactly the same, and no two movements are the same either. Repetition takes place when you are not paying attention. When you do pay attention you can notice the subtle differences between what externally looks very similar. When you relax and pay attention then you can find different ways of performing movements that externally look very similar. To manage this you need to be fascinated by your movement, by what it can teach you.
Physical earning can take place in many ways. Sometimes during a session you can have a new sensation, not necessarily something easily vocalised or explained, but a new appreciation of some part of your body and how you move. You could realise that you have greater capacity for an exercise than you thought, or conversely recognise a signal from your body telling you that it is time to stop before you go too far.
Every now and then you will come to a new level of understanding where different aspects of your training come together and create an integrated whole alive with potency and poetry.
Whether what you learned is small, and seemingly insignificant it is the accumulation of these understandings that help you progress over time.
If you really immerse your body with awareness it will start to teach you amazing things and will respond to the exercise with healthy adaptation. There are certain kinds of exercises that facilitate great depth of immersion, though with practise you can use any exercise.
Keep a notebook and write about what you get from each session. To tune yourself into the nuances of physical sensation and increase your capacity to describe them I recommend that you practise my kinesthetic streaming exercise to develop physical intelligence. Most of all start each session with an attitude of curiosity and fascination.
What will you learn next time you train? Are you curious yet?
