Crisis Strength

Adam Sinicki

We've discussed being in 'the zone', which describes our ability to blank out all distractions from out mind to increase performance. This is one example of a brain state that can greatly improve our performance. It is in affect a type of 'crisis' mode, where the brain changes the entire functioning of itself and the body to prioritise focus and reactions rather than our usual concerns. There are other ways the brain can do this however, and if we are under extreme or dangerous circumstances, or at least believe ourselves to be, then the brain can switch priorities, release hormones and direct attention in ways that will give us superhuman abilities.
This concept is known as 'crisis strength' as you may have gathered from the title of the article. Examples of crisis strength include mothers who lift cars up to save their children trapped beneath, and the rock climber who threw a 200kg boulder off of himself while injured to prevent himself falling off a mountain. At this point our body releases crazy amounts of adrenaline and pain killing endorphins and turns off all of our safety precautions to allow us to go all out.

The Zone/No Mind - The aforementioned ability to block out all distractions and thereby focus purely on a game or fight can give you Neo like reactions. In martial arts it's called 'no mind' and can be achieved through practice and concentration but often seems to happen at key moments when the stakes are highest. Fortunately for athletes this includes final sets of tennis games etc. There is obviously also a role for chemicals in this process as witnessed by the way the whole world around us is seemingly launched into slow motion. Be one with the ball...

No Fear - Whenever move we need to commit fully to the movement in order to get the complete amount of strength out of it. This happens when our body releases endorphins and adrenalin in reaction to fear which can block pain and fear. To an extent you can also improve your strength through simply training yourself to lose fear - which is why insane patients are often so strong and another reason I recommend the Bushido way of accepting the concept of failure or defeat (and you thought I'd gone off on a tangent... tut tut). The truly extreme cases however can possibly only be tapped into by tricking our bodies into believing the circumstances are dire. I witnessed this first hand when a man managed to talk a teenager of roughly average strength to lift a car by telling him his family was trapped beneath. The reason our body normally doesn't allow this is that to do so can burst blood vessels, exhaust energy reserves, tear muscle and damage ligaments; but we can still squeeze out an extra 20% or so before it becomes dangerous. The take home message then is to try tapping into your fears or extreme rage when lifting or fighting to unleash extra reserves of power. I believe this is a truly untapped technique and I intend to learn how to use it to its fullest and potentially double my strength in the process.

No Pain - In Health Psychology they taught us that pain was essentially a psychological function. That it is your 'perception' of pain that mattered. This is why you can distract yourself from pain or forget about pain during a fun day with friends. This is also why some people have higher pain thresholds depending on their upbringing. Importantly though it's also why street fighters who seemingly don't care about getting hurt are so much more proficient in a fight, and why some bodybuilders can push themselves through more reps. In other words, train yourself to be able to put pain out of your mind when necessary. Buddhist monks (by far the best kinds of monks) have done this to the point where they can set fire to themselves and not flinch while their flesh burns off.

Berserker - Interestingly these feats of mind over matter have been observed in history long before the Biomatrix started noticing them. Some of the Viking warriors apparently used to go into a 'berserker' mode when fighting and at this point would be capable of insane feats of strength and with complete disregard for their own health. This is where the term 'going berserk' comes from, and why Thor from Marvel Comics has such an ability. Today something similar is called 'excited delirium' in which prisoners during riots go into such an insane rage that they break their own arms and more in order to escape handcuffs or captivity, sometimes resulting in death. Regardless of the damage caused to these people, the effectiveness of berserker rages in battle suggest there is something of use here.

Limpness - Sometimes though, completely turning the brain off is actually the best reaction to a situation and explains why the body will often faint during times of extreme fear. One reason is that it can be useful to play dead - though this doesn't really benefit us today. The other reason however is that going limp means your body is no longer tensing anywhere and that your bones are able to bend and contort in the myriad ways their internal structure allows them to without causing damage to the body. When you hear stories of people being thrown out of planes and surviving the falls it's always because they were unconscious and so able to go completely limp. It's also why babies are more likely to survive car crashes. So - falling? Knock yourself out.

So 'priming' your mind to perform is key if you want to tap into extra reserves of strength and block out pain. But as we've discussed elsewhere, it can also help your health and positivity and the presence of loved ones has been shown to improve our chances of recovering from diseases like cancer. Furthermore, in studies where the participants could have no possible impact on the outcome (such as flipping a coin), more positive individuals have been shown to have better luck. Scientists still have no answer for this one.
In an only-just-related note, another exciting concept is how many people predict their own deaths or injuries. Freud was among other famous individuals who have done it, and his insightful explanation was that we are unconsciously aware of what our immune system is doing. He even foresaw his mouth cancer. With this in mind, it seems slightly more feasible that positive emotions etc could have an impact on our ability to recover from disease (that and the affects of happy hormones themselves). Other predictive dreams and de-ja-vu where it seems our brain in fact knows the future about world events or small details in our lives seem harder to explain. While this is unlikely, it's far more probable that it simply uses its vast amount of conscious and unconscious knowledge to make accurate predictions. Our DNA can affect our destinies in ways we don't fully grasp as is shown in remarkable cases of separated twins with parallel lives. There is no such thing as coincidence - only connections that we didn't see.
In short, it seems the brain controls and knows far more about our internal functions than we're aware. And if, like those monks, we can train ourselves to be aware of our brain functions and even control them, we can tap into vast reserves of our bodies' potentials.

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