Written by: Kyle Riley
Therapy Co-Founder
Redefining what it means to be strong.
We’re often told that strength looks like intensity.
It sounds like loud music, hard breath, big lifts, heavy sweat.
And sometimes, it is.
But what if I told you that some of the most powerful strength isn’t fast, or loud, or aggressive?
But steady, slow and even still?
In the world of fitness, stillness is often misunderstood. It’s seen as passive. But in reality, stillness is where we learn to hold ourselves, literally and emotionally.
Whether it’s a slow, controlled movement that makes your legs shake, a deep breath when your heart is racing, or the choice to stay grounded when everything in you wants to go…
All of these things require strength.
And learning to dance between strength and stillness, just like in our brand new class, Connect Strong, can provide profound results both physically and mentally.
When we combine strength with intentional stillness something powerful happens beneath the surface—physically and neurologically.
Slow, controlled strength training removes momentum and forces more muscle fibres to activate throughout the entire range of motion. You’re not just going through the motions mindlessly, you’re engaging more stabilisers, deeper muscle layers, and improving strength through a full range of motion.
Slower, controlled reps protect your joints and give time for your connective tissues (like tendons and ligaments) to catch up with your muscles, improving joint stability and reducing injury risk.
Another perk of mindful strength work is improved neuromuscular coordination. Essentially, teaching your nervous system and muscles to work together more precisely. By slowing things down, you force your stabiliser muscles to engage and refine the movement pattern. Over time, this can sharpen your balance and coordination. In fact, strength training in general has been shown to consistently improve proprioception (your body’s sense of joint position in space) and motor control, with higher-effort training yielding greater gains.
📈 Stillness is Where Strength Happens
The gains don’t happen during the workout, they happen after. Strength training is a stress, and the body adapts to this stess during rest in a process called supercompensation. This process is like a little wave: immediate fatigue, rest, then a rebound where you become stronger than before. But only if you allow enough time for the rebound to occur through recovery, the big rocks being adequate sleep and good nutrition. Additional tools such as breathwork (Heal), stretching (Connect Yin) can also aid in bringing the nervous system back into a parasypathetic state to aid the recovery process.
🧘♀️ Mindfulness in Motion
When you slow down and breathe through the burn, you’re not just working muscles, you’re teaching your body it’s safe to stay calm during stress. To better understand this balance, picture the autonomic nervous system as a dimmer switch on a light. When it’s in good shape, it “transitions easily” between the bright, high-engagement mode of the sympathetic system and the low, calming glow of the parasympathetic system, adjusting up or down as needed. Modern life often leaves us with the dimmer stuck slightly on – chronically stressed at a low level, never fully relaxing. Exercise can help “re-tune” this system. For example, heart rate variability (HRV) – a measure of autonomic balance and resilience – tends to improve with regular exercise. A 2022 study on middle-aged women found that 12 weeks of resistance training significantly increased markers of parasympathetic activity, on top of boosting sympathetic markers. In simple terms, strength training made their nervous systems more robust. Over time, this can mean a lower resting heart rate, better stress tolerance, and quicker recovery from stressful events.
At Therapy, we talk a lot about mental fitness, the emotional and psychological strength it takes to show up, to keep going, and to stay present.
That’s what Connect Strong was built for.
This isn’t a slow class. And it’s not a HIIT class.
It’s something in between.
It’s a space where mindfulness meets muscle.
Where breath and burn go hand in hand.
It’s for the people who know that fitness is just as much about how you feel after, as what you lift during.
Ready to dance between strength and stillness?
Check out our latest class, Connect Strong launching on the timetable from next week!