Musings

Going Within: Steve Ilg on Sustained Concentration

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I’ve had the good fortune to study with Steve Ilg, off-and-on, over the past 14 years as I’ve pursued various endeavors as a multisport athlete. He’s an incredible talent and was dubbed the “Multisport Mutant” by Outside magazine this summer. Over the years, Steve has competed in five different world championships in four different sports. Hell, in 2007, this 45-year-old stepped on the overall podium four times: third at the USAA Western Regional 10K Snowshoe Race; first at the Flagstaff Winter Triathlon; first at the Topaten Winter Ski Race (in classic category); and third at the Flagstaff 10K Running Race.

What makes Steve of interest is not his athletic accomplishments. It’s his knack for bringing the Eastern-meditative philosophies back down to earth. Here’s a guy who can go on about ethereal stuff to the point you think he’s no longer grounded in reality and it’s time to ship him off to the funny farm…and then he’ll nail the nuances of road racing strategies (he’s a former New Mexico state champ); how to nail the squat (he’s been on the bodybuilding stage as well); or how to annoy the living crap out of the guy in front of you during a trail run so you can pass him.

Steve often refers to meditation as the “glue” that holds his fitness together. Let’s see why…

1) Question: Why should endurance athletes meditate?

Ilg: First, meditation is not something we do. It is a byproduct of that which proceeds it: attention, concentration, and finally sustained concentration. For the first several years, if not decades, our focus should be on sustained concentration, not meditation. Just like lactic acid is a byproduct of exercise, meditation is a byproduct of sustained concentration.

What we can talk about, however, is attention and concentration and sustained concentration.

2) Question: OK, so why would an endurance athlete be interested in pursuing this type of concentration?

Ilg: I would imagine they had heard about, or directly experienced, some degree of freedom from their restless mind. Something has triggered them to the sudden realization that, “You know what, I put one foot in front of another. And I keep putting one foot in front of the other. And when I do that, I fall into this spirit of repetition of my feet moving and my breath coordinated.”

Something happens, some chemical shift, that suddenly makes all of their outer worldly concerns take a back seat. And suddenly they experience being truly present and aware without condition, judgment, or opinion.

3) Question: Are you referring to what athletes call “being in the zone?”

Ilg: Well, quite honestly, I don’t know. That term seems mishy-moshy to me. In the Eastern traditions, there is in place such a beautiful and deep system of self realization science - one that’s been around for a thousand years. I would imagine to some degree the “zone” is one of those four stages of concentration.

4) Question: Four stages? What are those?

Ilg: Whoooh. Testing the teacher are you?! Good boy!

The first stage is about the ultimate union. It’s all very esoteric. First is sustained concentration.

The next stage is one of joyful peace. It’s kind of like the equivalent of the ultra distance athlete’s endorphine high.

Next is a stage of simple awareness. By “simple,” I mean to imply uncluttered, uncontested…a cloudless, sky-like awareness without egoic under or overpinning.

Beyond that, concentration is turned upon consciousness itself.

However, we begin with attention.

We have to become more familiar with single-pointed concentration. There are two forms: external such as threading thread through the eye of a needle. It’s that action that’s concentrating your mind. The other is internal where we try and concentrate on an internal item like a mantra or visualization. All senses are drawn within.

This comes back to meditation in endurance sports. There is always some form of external concentration. Otherwise you’d be running into a tree or riding your bike off a cliff. There has to be some form of external concentration. In a sense, sadly, that’s what ruins sports as a purely meditative art. You can’t get home if you’re meditating while you’re running because you just merge into the running and won’t know how to get home. Kinda like Forrest Gump, ya know?! Which is why the true masters say that you must train your body so it doesn’t get in the way of concentration.

5) Question: How would working on concentration help an athlete?

Ilg: I don’t know. It’s different for everyone. This is why I only teach one-on-one. I can tell you this much: It’s about attainment, not entertainment. At some level, an athlete has to get turned on to this concept of “I need to learn how to concentrate my mind because every time I go out for a run, I turn my ankle. Yet, the more often I concentrate, the more effortless my effort becomes.”

On a recent mountain bike ride, I concentrated on mula bandha. I focused on moving mula bandha around the mountain peak. I just had the image of mula bandha floating in the ether around the peak. The more I concentrated proximally (within), the more the distal activity, the turning of my legs and the pedals, grew more effortless.

If an athlete gets to the point where he or she realizes that, the more pure his or her mind is, the more pure, or effortless, his or her sport performance is.

How does doing this every day…

…enable Ilg to gather 3 decades of overall trophies in a plethora of sports like these? Trophies shown: Over his right shoulder is a hand-made Nimbres Native American Bowl for winning the five-day Tour of the Gila bicycle race. Over his left shoulder are championship medals from winning the World’s Highest Nordic Ski Race and new course record. In his hands: Overall Pairs Championship trophy from Mt. Taylor Winter Quadrathlon.

6) Question: So when you’re riding your bike, you’re thinking about this thing called “mula bandha” and not your grocery list or wondering whether or not you left the garage door open, right?

Ilg: If you’re fortunate enough to fall into one of these concentrated areas, then absolutely. That’s where the sacredness arises. The more and more we run, the more we get off on running. The more we do that, the more we do it truly and become a master of it. That’s when running becomes sacred, and there is no way we would want to wear iPod’s or be distracted from the sacredness of the purity of running.

Once we reach such a spiritual cairn along the way, then it is a very short distance to the next stage: seeing no difference between running awareness and self. That is when union - or Yoga - arises. Running is every bit a vehicle of yoga as is doing postures upon a plastic mat. Probably more so…there is less plastics in a running shoe than a yoga sticky mat!

Anything can become sacred. You can be a porno star and be sacred if you truly, truly, worship the entire act and energetics of what you’re doing. What true yogi would claim that a bench press isn’t as sacred as a chataranga? Our aim should be not to just workout, but to work within.

7) Question: Let’s back up a step. What is mula bandha?

Ilg: Ah! I’ve got you interested in the rungs of the ladder toward enlightenment! Yeah!

The modern dancer might recognize mula bandha - in English that Sanskrit term is roughly translated as “the root lock” - as their center. To the martial artist it is the hara. To the yogi, mula bandha enters our awareness as a anatomical muscular contraction from the uro-genital triangle.

At the beginning level, you struggle to find that musculature and then isolate it from the spinchter musculature. Once you train the anatomical muscle, like you would the biceps in the gym, then a shift happens and it moves to more of an energetic level.

Question: If I were a multisport athlete and I wanted to try this concentration stuff, how would I go about starting this?

Ilg: I would suggest one of Coach Ilgs great CDs (laughs). If you’re not working directly with a Teacher (with a capital “T”), it’s a wise idea to begin by either asking for a private session with a yoga teacher or someone else who is skilled and has experience in meditative arts that are based on sweat, not intellect. Direct perspiration is much better than a book reader’s indirect experience.

However, if one doesn’t have access to a Teacher, then going to an alternative book store and asking to see their selection on meditation books would be a start.

You don’t want to take counsel from someone talking about meditation if they don’t know what is sacred in your life. Because there are so many beautiful paths, you have to line up your Teachers to what you respect.

9) How has this type of enhanced concentration helped you in as an athlete?

Ilg: As a sponsored rock and ice climber, I recall making the transition from free climbing (where you just use the rope for safety) to free solo (where you use no rope). That’s a big transition, trust me. You don’t have the luxury of making a mistake like other athletes, at least, not if you wish to continue your present incarnation. I knew I’d have to have a highly concentrated and highly disciplined mind.

As I learned to climb without a rope, I found that the higher I climbed, the heavier became the pull of gravity upon my back. I would be 10…20…30 feet off the ground and everything was okay. At 60 feet though, even the easiest technical moves became very difficult. My fingertips were sweating. That’s when you find out just how unconcentrated the mind becomes and how it wanders and how attached we are to the preciousness of life. You really can’t get that in other sports, even the fast “extreme sports” aren’t quite like the long highway of alone time required to summit a hard route free solo.

So, every time my mind freaked out, I tried to bring it back and focus on my breathing. Within that window of breath and animated movement, I realized a tremendous freedom occurs between a developed discipline and allegiance to breath awareness. When I was able to trust the breath, the monkey came off my back. The Great Abyss clawing at my back trying to pull me into the Void, transmogrified into the Hand of Vishnu, actually helping me to scale the rock or ice climb!

Basically, if you can see it…in the beginning I was using my rational mind to an insane degree. I’d be up 300 feet from the canyon floor, look down and barely see the top of some punk ass tree…and think to myself, “Hey, if I fall, I’ll try and spring out and grab that branch.”

It was all very unrealistic, but I was trying to rationalize my fears.

Eventually, like a seasoned meditator, I was able to use sustained concentration (upon my breath) to get over the insanity of the intellectual mind and into the free mind. I suppose that is where every athlete, performer, yogi, and meditator really wants to hang out: in the free mind.

By using concentration, the more we relax, the better we perform. This is how enhanced concentration has helped me not only as an athlete, yet also a loving partner, father, teacher, coach, and, well, you know how life is…it’s helped in the Dance of Lila*!

* Lila: The outcome of creative play by the Divine Absolute. Particularly; the vibrational shifting amongst the three gunas or qualities of nature; sattwa (illumined), rajas (activity), and tamas (inertia).

For more information about Steve Ilg and his coaching services, visit WholisticFitness.com or read his blog, InDirect Lines.

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