I’m doing a simple weight training comparison between the Vedic approach and the modern approach. Nothing long or arduous; in fact it’ll likely just be a point-to-point comparison.
Today’s simple beginner’s weight training workout: [1]Simple gym setup
20 body weight squats. A basic strength building approach that works on the legs.
10 push ups. Basic strength for the arms.
20 walking lunges. Lower back and leg strength. Good stuff! Gets tiring around 8-10 lunges but it’s worth keeping this up.
10 dumbbell rows. Arms and connective tissue around the arms that extend into the back, chest and upper abdomen.
15 second plank. Actually quite useless, unless you have 50-60 reps. However once you start getting the hang of it you need to increase the reps so it remains challenging; else you’re body is not really learning anything.
30 jumping jacks. Basic on-the-spot cardio. Gets better if done with weights. I would also suggest skipping if that works for you; its a pretty good calorie burner.
3 x 10 squats. That’s 30 but with breaks every 10 reps. If you’re doing body weight squats you can consider alternating with 10 reps of those in the middle set.
Yogasanas
Vedic approach:
Yogasanas: Using the body weight to build strength of each limb, the abdomen, neck and pretty much everything. Since your body weight can be between 60Kg – 90Kg depending on your height (assuming ideal BMI) this is a fantastic way to build physical strength and endurance. There’s a total of 84 key poses, and an extended 1350 asanas [2]. Wow that’s a lot! You can begin with the basics that I show here.
In fact if you just do the Surya Namaskar you’re likely to lose weight quickly, gain excellent dexterity and flexibility – not to mention true deep muscle strength
Here I introduct “Dhanur Veda”. This is a form of high energy martial arts that will add a phenomenal strength to every single part of the body. The key focus would be the Self-Defence arts.
In the olden days, self defence relied upon either using various techniques/tactics, and was supplemented by weapons. However weapons were heavy, thus resulting in a signficant amount of natural ‘weight training’. We don’t use such weapons today, but the techniques remain largely the same and can be practiced using a dumbell instead of a sword.
Kalaripayattu is one of the oldest adoptions of martial arts into a dance routine – with mallakhamb and various other high strength, high dexterity training techniques.
So fundamentally Vedic weight training for strength and modern weight training are not all that different. Except earlier we used to focus upon increasing strength to help manoeuver weapons – and today no such need exists.
Are we re-learning the same things? I don’t think so. I feel modern methods of weight training and cardio have a different objective. I personally love to speak of martial arts (and I used to be a karate-ka myself; but stopped a while back). Modern methods are very mundane and lack applicability outside of the gym.
