The 3 biggest realizations and turning points I have had in my 10-year training journey. 

Here at VAHVA Fitness, we've had a long and eventful training journey.

Our experiences have led us to change the ways we train many times, sometimes radically. We've always adjusted the training methods to our growing knowledge of how to best develop a fully functional and strong physique.

Over the years, there have been certain remarkable realizations that stand out from the rest.

The Need for Variety

One of the first true turning points of my training journey was when I realized that one needs a variety of training to become as strong as possible while remaining competent and healthy.

I had stiffened up my body with too much focus on repetitive simplistic exercises and lifting heavy. I was also too concerned with my looks and muscle growth.

Due to the growing imbalances and aches, I was drawn into exploring a variety of training options and as a result took a serious approach to movement training.

I started playing around with animal moves, movements from martial arts, dance and yoga. I studied a variety of mobility and flexibility training and also started to pay closer attention to the form of basic bodyweight exercises.

I wanted a more free, spontaneous and intuitive mindset to training. Slowly but surely my body followed this approach and started to open up in incredible ways.

We are designed to move and movement training is the way to restore an unrestricted naturally functioning and flowing physique. It's a forgotten way to train. A way that got buried under exercise education and modern fitness culture.

But I can tell you your body is a lot more than what the mainstream fitness reveals to you.

Form Consciousness

Working on a variety of styles and movements is fundamental but I came to notice there were aspects in the body that movement training alone couldn’t cover.

Some areas of the body can be incredibly hard to develop. Certain postures just don’t unlock, stubborn weak muscles don’t get addressed.

A different form of training consciousness needed to be cultivated so the body could be developed further.

With every training session, I now had a new purpose in mind. To observe and feel even the smallest details of how my body functioned and how my muscles behaved - and ultimately, to be able to control this.

Refining your exercise form, body control and mind-muscle connection is a vast art of its own.

It became a groundbreaking approach that allowed us to fix persistent weaknesses and deconstruct the attributes behind high-level athleticism.

It was about raising training quality above everything else. It wasn't about what you did but how you did it.

We've found this precision training to be an unbelievably powerful way to restructure the body, to eliminate pain and to build masterful performance.

It was the missing link between our mind and body.

Ancient Framework

The third major turning point was meeting the grandmaster Jiang Yu Shan.

We’d already gone very deep into muscular control, movement ability, and manipulating the structure and posture of the body.

We were still constantly furthering our methods and also searching for knowledge from the outside but we weren’t bumping into anything fundamentally new at this point.

The fitness landscape in the west is very homogenous. Nearly everyone does the same stuff. It may look a bit different from the outside, exercises may change but the methods, emphasis and the ways of thinking are effectively the same.

If the styles have some uniqueness to them then the level of knowledge still wouldn't go very deep.

A simple change of perspective wasn't enough to break through this plateau. We needed a whole new realm of physicality and a framework for conceptualizing the body and its processes.

This we found from the teachings of grandmaster Jiang Yu Shan and the world of Ancient Qigong.

It not only offered a way to strengthen the body the West hasn't understood yet but an immense art for controlling the internal processes of the body.

During thousands of years, ancient masters invented subtle ways to affect the neurotransmitters, hormones and organs to keep the body and mind balanced.

One of the keys for revitalizing the body system is your breathing.

Despite having gone to breathings seminars of some big names in the industry, only now was the first time I understood the true value of breathing and stillness.

There's still a lot to discover and most of the deep stuff we've seen I can't even talk about.

Doing a variety of training, understanding training quality and learning ancient Qigong were the 3 of the most significant realizations in our journey. They all had a remarkable effect on our lives and physiques.

The question is, will they be important turning points in your journey as well?

Eero Westerberg
Head Coach of VAHVA Fitness