“Let’s begin immediately.” Rui said with a determined expression.
“That’s the spirit.” Dylon said, chuckling. “I assume you’ve gone through the scroll completely, right?”
Rui nodded. “I remember it perfectly.”
“Good.” He said as he gestured Rui to follow him. “Then you know exactly what’s waiting for you in store, correct?”
Rui nodded.
The devised and recommended training regime for Outer Convergence was quite interesting.
The first stage was some elementary form training, that had the user go through a set of motions that involved all muscle groups simultaneously. These were intensive dynamic workouts that focused on priming the user’s mind to get used to delicately coordinated muscle group expansion and contraction rhythms.
This was the very first step to eventually paving the way to converging the power generated by all those muscle groups, the end goal. There was a total of thirteen elaborate dynamic exercises in total. Which Rui noted was equal to the number of broad muscle groups in the human body.
The second stage of training was sparring with equipment that restricted the motion of certain muscle groups. The user would have to rely on muscle groups that would normally not be used to a high extent. Rui had instantly realized this was to ensure that the process of regularly and routinely drawing power from each muscle group would become part of muscle memory. The more one rigorously trained each muscle group individually, the more smoothly and timely one would be able to use it.
The final training stage was actually wearing a suit that heavily resisted the motion of the body. The suit was carefully configured to ensure that the user’s raw strength was not enough. This was done by conducting a series of weight-lifting tests to measure the physical strength of the user, and the suit was configured accordingly. The user was then supposed to utilize the gains made from the previous training stages simultaneously to be able to move past their physical limit.
Rui immediately realized that the purpose of this training stage was meant to force the user to consolidate the gains made from the previous stages and use them not only simultaneously, but as one. Draw immense amount of power from each muscle group using the muscle memory inherited in the second stage, and then constructively funnel it across the body using the coordinative muscle memory built from the first stage.
He figured the more and more the user was able to accomplish this, the closer the user would be to mastering Outer Convergence. The fact that the user was supposed to be able to move normally despite the suit was an indication that principle of Outer Convergence had been mastered.
The final step was to get used to applying it to strikes, which could be accomplished through rigorous sparring.
Rui fell in love with the entire training process. It was such a novel means of mastering a powerful technique. He couldn’t help but want to devote all of his time purely to Outer Convergence.
“Alright, let’s begin.” Dylon said. “You’ve memorized all the workouts, you said? Then begin with the first one.”
Rui immediately picked up some training weight bands, wearing them in the specified location. Then he began the strange set of exercising routines, performing what resembled a twisting or a spiralling squat. It may have looked comical from the outside. But Rui’s background in training regimes for combat sports allowed him to realize what was happening.
This training regime forces his mind to coordinate five muscle groups simultaneously and cooperatively in order to perform this exercise under the burden of the heavy training weights on his limbs. If the muscle groups did not cooperate and coordinate, then the body would simply be unable to perform this exercise.
The exercise was grueling and painful, it reminded him of when he had just started out more than a year ago.
That thought brought back immense nostalgia. Back then he was a nameless runt among more than a thousand other nameless runts, who had managed to pass the Entrance Exam among a million other nameless runts.
And now here he was being personally guided by none other than a Martial Squire.
Truly, it was surreal looking at how far he’d come.
“Focus.” Dylon warned. “Your form is crude. Don’t hasten the squat up, and don’t bounce as you come down. This stage is extremely important. If you don’t do this well, you can kiss your chances of mastering this technique goodbye, young man.”
Rui wordlessly nodded, huffing as he felt his muscles burning as he squatted up and down.
The burn was excruciating yet immensely satisfying. It was a strange experience, to feel such contradictory emotions simultaneously.
Soon, Dylon had him move on to the other workouts.
Each of them focused on the coordination of a particular muscles group with other muscle groups.
The Latissimus Dorsi, Rhomboid, Trapezius, Teres Muscle, erector Spinae muscle groups that constitute the back muscles were all individually coordinated with other the other muscle groups across the body. These exercises often involved the simultaneously bending or twisting back and forth of the spine in conjunction with some other movement that put pressure on the upper skeletal system.
If the coordination of the muscles weren’t perfect, then there would be damage to the back muscles. This is why such exercises were strongly recommended against on Earth as opposed to safer workouts. But on Gaea, damage in training often meant very little. This allowed Rui to engage in training regimes he would have never even dreamed of recommending, let alone doing himself. And the gains were worth it.
Each and every muscle group was moving in ways that it seldom did, strengthening those movements and refining them.
Even though this was his very first day, he could feel that he had made satisfactory progress. These movements that he had never felt the need to focus on would now become the foundation for a new technique that would bolster his Martial Art!