VAKOG in Training or "The man in the mirror"

When you start training and look at yourself (in every possibly perspective) and do the same thing after 1,3,5 years of training, you notice a fair amount of change.

Due to my life as a trainer and a therapist-in-training I observed that many trainees go through the VAKOG- stages when starting training seriously.

First: What is VAKOG?
It is a abbravation from the hypnotic vocabulary, where every letter stands for one quality of perception.

V...Visual
A...Accustic
K...Kinesthetic
O...olfactory/smell
G...Gustation/taste

Whenever a person is coming up to me to start training (well...there are, as aways, the exeptions), they come driven by the visual sense...
When asked, the first reason to start training given to me is "to be healthy".
90% of the time I sense this is bullsh*it, but whatever gives somebody a good nights´ sleep works for me.
The second reason is something like "getting in shape" aka "looking good at the beach/in a tight top/a miniskirt/naked/..." and then we hit the spot.

People are focused on how they present themselves to the outside world, how other people percieve them, what impression they make without doing something like acting(giving them a reason to admire them, hate them, whatever), saying something (smart or dumb)...
So in short, they live outside themselves, the lost contact to their center, whatever you want to call it.

When training begun, other senses come into play, because they can not see their mirror- image anymore, maybe because there are no mirrors when training with me or maybe because all the sweat is blocking their vision.
That is a good thing!

The next senses are commonly taste and smell because... Well, my trainees sweat a lot.
:-D


If they can accept the hard work I put them through, the teachings, the endless exercises to perfect technique, another sense comes into play:
Accustic.

This is the point in my trainees life they actually start to listen to me, not only what I tell them with my words, stuff they can just reproduce, meaning copy, but what is between those words, behind them, between the lines.
This is where the mental part of training, the symbolism making it so precious for life itself, comes into play.
This is where someone gets the idea first, training might be more than physical activity.

Last but not leasT:
Kinesthetic. #

Here You start to feel something.
Not only the weights you move, not only the strong muscles of your back, the tightening of the legs, the firm grip of your rotator-scuff-muscles on your upper arm, the increased capacity of your lungs...
You start to feel yourself again.
Feeling how moving yourself and weights outside of yourself moved you back to your center.
People feel more stable, more focused, in harmony with the natural cycles.

It is really hard to describe because to understand the stages yOu have to feel them yourself, use your senses to experience the sensations of transformations.

Maybe you already started by looking at "the man in the mirror".

Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry