Self-knowledge from resistance training

Abstract

The problem of self-knowledge has been thoroughly discussed in the context of traditional epistemology. In parallel to that traditional approach, Ecological-Enactive Cognition (EEC) has emerged in the last 30 years as a genuine contender in the cognitive sciences. According to EEC, the unity of analysis of cognitive processes is the dynamics between brain, body and environment. In this paper, I advance an EEC approach to self-knowledge, which immediately suggests that knowing oneself is a matter of knowing what one’s body can do. I then turn to resistance training, particularly weightlifting, and argue that it offers a paradigmatic case of self-knowledge in EEC’s terms. I contend that periodically reaching the point of mechanical failure provides an important insight into self-knowledge. Thus, resistance training allows the trainee to achieve knowledge of themselves in a fundamentally practical manner—and doing so is transformative of the kind of actions they are capable of.