HIIT YOU IN THE FACE!

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is very en vogue right now.  Just work out 15 minutes a week at a super high intensity and you are all set to look like an anorexic winner of the Biggest Loser.  That being said, just go read up on Fartlek workouts (which is the funniest of all workouts because it is truly pronounced fart-lick) and you will see that this has been around for a long time.  That aside, I am a believer in high intensity training, I certainly don't do any of it myself, but I'm sure it works great for other people.

Now on to stuff that is important to me, lets talk about HIIT training in other areas of our life.  If you have read much of my stuff you know my theory of everything and my belief that everything is everything. Therefore, if HIIT works for getting in shape it then must work for other things.

Remember when I talked about Chuck's personal money accumulation strategy?  Well Charles Schwab believes that it takes four things to get super wealthy: talent, leverage, getting all your eggs in one basket, luck.  And, if you have to get rid of one, get rid of talent because the other three are a must.  So it works with money, if you have high intensity (all your eggs in one basket) interval (leverage being recovery time where your muscles grow even when you aren't working out) then at least you have a chance to get lucky.

I believe in our spiritual lives we are actually invited to live this kind of life.  For the last year I have been focused on spiritual disciplines.  We often look at spiritual discipline as the slow moving monk who is trodding through his spiritual faith, cloaked in boredom and perfection.

We are actually invited to take on spiritual disciplines in a very intense and very focused way to get returns very quickly, but usually it is too uncomfortable to take on.

Fasting sucks.  Not eating food is really hard to do.  If you are not eating because of spiritual reasons I believe there is an entirely new element added that makes it even more difficult.  Solitude sucks.  But we are not only called to solitude but Jesus went by himself into the desert.  You know what the best thing to do in the desert is?  Try not to die.  The best pastime is not dying.  And that is where we go to be alone.  Or how about giving, at one point Jesus invites a rich guy to give away everything, that is pretty intense.

So when you are physically training you are hurting your muscles.  Working out is a threat to your body and so after a workout your body tries to protect against that threat happening again by building new muscles or increasing your VO2 max etc.

When we enter spiritual training are we trying to put a hurt on our spiritual muscles or just sitting with our legs crossed humming.  Go put a hurt on your spiritual muscles and watch them actually change for the better.