Shadow Training: Eyes Closed, EarPods In

You want to know the truth about the Shadow?
Close your eyes while you rep.

I mean it. Rack the weight. Get your grip. EarPods in, noise flooding your brain — cutting you off from the world and your natural equilibrim; then…

Eyes closed.

Now let’s see your balance, son. Let’s see what you’re made of when there’s no mirror to check your form, no audience to impress, not even the safety of sight.

Seventy kilos above your face. That’s the reality check.

“That elbow better not pop out. Not now. Not with my eyes shut and the world turned inwards.”

Now rep.

This is Shadow work and I doesn’t care what it looks like from the outside.
I don’t give a fuck how it looks full stop.
I only care about how it feels.

The Inner Game

This is what most people miss. Training isn’t about the set or the weight or the numbers on your little notepad. It’s about what you feel in the dark. The micro-adjustments. The tremors in your stabilisers. The discipline it takes to let go of what you can’t see and trust only what you can sense.

Eyes open, anyone can copy form.
Eyes closed, you have to know yourself.
Trust your structure. Trust your process. Trust that the work you did in the light is enough to hold you steady in the dark.

The Shadow Philosophy

Life will throw you into the dark whether you want it or not.
No warning, no mirror, no spotter.
Your only option: do the rep anyway. Feel your way through it.
Breathe. Find your equilibrium in the chaos. Your balance.

That’s what the Shadow teaches:
Don’t perform for the crowd.
Don’t move for the approval.

Move for you. For your own calibration. For the felt sense, not the photograph.

Closing Ritual

So next time you’re on the bench, the bar loaded and the room too loud —
Close your eyes.

Let the Shadow teach you balance.
Let your body remember what your eyes forget.
Don’t train for the applause.
Train for the silence after — when you know, deep down, that you held steady under the weight and didn’t need anyone else to tell you you did it right.

That’s the Shadow.
That’s the lesson.

DAVID