The Bridge to Exercise Instruction: Timed Static Contraction (TSC)

Elegance over Eloquence?

For those who truly want to understand the mechanics of exercise, they must thoroughly study (not merely read) Transitioning from TSC to Feedback Statics—a free PDF download from baye.com. In addition to a learning vehicle, this treatise exposes the extreme linguistic challenge posed by exercise instruction.

In my estimation, one of the foremost exercise instructors in the world is Colleen Allem. Her experience with TSC serves a point I have repeatedly made regarding the TSC mode of exercise. The point involves the elegance of both the language to instruct TSC as well as the elegance of exercise equipment design on which to perform TSC. A large majority of the verbiage required in the instruction can be dispensed with and a large majority of the expensive mechanics in the exercise equipment can be dispensed with. My focus, herein, is aimed at the verbiage.

Other exercise instructors throughout the world have realized the elegance—efficiency of communication—that TSC provides. Colleen’s experience with this, in general, is not truly unique among those instructors who have faithfully adopted this mode. However, Colleen’s specific linguistic challenges have highlighted this attribute.

Under the auspices of the now-defunct SuperSlow Exercise Guild (SSEG), Colleen was a Master SuperSlow instructor. This designation was the third and most profound level of expertise in dynamic exercise. She achieved this at a time before I and many others in the SSEG had allowed ourselves to fully embrace all that TSC had to offer.

She also achieved this ranking at a time of great personal hardship. Only with a will of iron and fanatical work ethic did she excel. Her mother told me that she sometimes discovered Colleen, late at night, having fallen asleep with her copy of SuperSlow—The Ultimate Exercise Protocol (my first comprehensive treatise on the subject) open on her arm. On many occasions, she pushed herself to physical and intellectual exhaustion to educate herself. At that moment, her life and her family’s survival literally depended upon it.

Colleen is originally from South Africa and immigrated to the United States being fluent in English and Afrikaner. She lived in the United States for several decades before immigrating to central Mexico. Once reaching Mexico, she struggled with the language barrier to teaching her craft to the Spanish-speaking locals.

Colleen was greatly opposed to TSC for the singular reason that she considered it a lazy way to instruct. And as she recently expressed to me, “I don’t do lazy.”

But Colleen, until she had become more fluent in Spanish, was forced to instruct the TSC and to avoid the dynamics of SuperSlow protocol. Only the TSC provided the economy of words that facilitated the instruction through her limited Spanish. Of course, she became very intuitive with the superiorities of TSC.

And what’s more—as some instructors are beginning to realize—is that novices are better off learning TSC before embarking into the dynamics of SuperSlow. Moreover, TSC is often the only mode to involve in rehabilitation. Moreover again, TSC is often the only mode to employ with many subjects, myself included.