Supertraining

Jon Haddan writes asking:
<<CNS fatigue seems to be a bit of a black box. Is there
any real scientific understanding of it that addresses
it in the way it typically is discussed by coaches, or
is it just an explanation for declining performance
when no other cause can be found?>>>

******
CNS fatigue is one of those je ne sais pas along with spontaneous remission. 
That is to say the term is bantied around continually as if there is some 
intrinsic, perhaps esoteric, meaning implied. You ask if there is any "real 
scientific understanding". Methinks NOT. Here we're dealing with what Aussie 
philosopher of neuroscience and consciousness David Chalmers deems one of the 
hard problems: qualia, a term from William James.

And it is with William James we must start. Remember the scientific heresy? 
From the Latin Renaissance until the triumph of the anonymous Rosicrucian texts 
of 1614-1617, the Roman Church treated science as heresy and scientists as 
heretics, some being condemned, some burned at the stake. The Rosicrucain 
texts, chiefly the Fama Frat ernitatus, held that one could come to know the 
mind of God by reading the Book of Nature (Liber Mundi): that resolved the 
dilemma between science and revelation in one book (Bible or Koran is today's 
quest ion).  The deal that resulted was that scientists could study External, 
Measurable phenomena but had to leave the mind alone since it is the seat of 
the Soul or Psyche, property of the Holy Roman Church and it's little foreign 
dictator who hallucinates the Skygod talking to him. It was in the wake of 
Darwin, Marx, and Wagner that in the  early Post-Christian era William James in 
1878 established the first psychology lab in the world: a new era was born, and 
Nietschze published the obituary of Skygod. 

CNS fatigue is much talked about, as if it's a given, a force of nature that 
reigns supreme, perhaps the skygod of weight training who imposes  his wrathful 
limits just when you want to move forward. Were our "universal science" not 
colonial imperialist Western Science, then we'd be scouring the world over to 
comprehend just what the hell "cns fatigue" might mean in terms of observable 
performance and aquisition of replicable skills - both conditions. The sad 
state of Western Science is that it's curious culturally bound limits, 
inherited from medieval Catholic doctrinal superstition, creates a kind of 
blindsightedness: a science may well observe a phenomen, but if it falls 
outside the official doctrinal base of Western science, in order to uphold 
conformity to mediocrity and pseudo-science, then s/he will have a "negative 
hallucination": it never happened, I cannot see it. Why risk academic heresy in 
an academy formed from the social institutions of religion that gave us the 
Inquisition, Anti-Semiticism, and Crusades? After all, deviation can result in 
being identified as a heretic, thus being blackballed, not getting tenure, etc.

Thirty-five years ago a fellowship took me to Japan for further education. On 
purpose. Having reached the limits of Westen philosophy (a lot of talk about 
talk, a game without conclusions) and Western psychology (then conveniently 
divided into two departments: those who followed cocaine addict Freud and his 
reductionist system of plumbing, pipes and pressures reducing all behavior and 
inspiration to illnesses and sexual pathologies - what a sicko, and the 
pre-computer behaviorists denying existence of mind, emotion, obsessed with 
rodents and worms and mazes, messing up their grandchildren as BF Skinner did), 
I went off to Asia to learn and practice a psychology going back three thousand 
years, not less than one-hundred. Of course, we don't recognize it as 
psychology: our colonialist scholars have made a religion of it in order to 
conform to patterns of cultural sluggishness. How is it martial artists, for 
example, can call up and manifest exceptional skills, seemingly going well 
beyound our standarized notions of mind, body, energy,  and fatigue. How can 
our science be so pathetically stupid and ingrown as to  Ignore or Dismiss what 
folks in other cultures can do?

In my opinion, most people in their training never come close to CNS fatigue. 
They simply lack the drive, the concentration, the samadhi, the isshin ni, and 
a host of other words t hat don't well translate to English or other European 
languages simply out of their depth with regard to the fauna and flora of 
mind/spirit/soul.

Them's my opinions.  As a coach, I slip in a lot of covert training of 
mind/spirit/soul, nominally as "breathing", attention, focus, drive, all those 
words. Having earned licenses in Asia the old-fashioned way t hirty-five years 
ago,   I'm not bound to package it in any specific manner, just teach it. 
Bodhibuilder Frank Zane does much the same.

cheers from Austin, Texas, Live Music Capitol of the World

Ken ONeill
Austin, Tejas
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
EarthLink Revolves Around You.