Chapter 2: E=mc²
As a trainer I find this formula very intriguing. I never took physics class in college, and from what I remember, I scored poorly when I took physics in high school. However, after I started my career as a personal trainer, my interest in the subject of physics grew. If you consider what I do as a profession, and what other trainers do in their profession, we simply make people move. And if we analyze our work in scientific terms, we, as trainers, are helping people release their potential energy into kinetic energy, so that they will release potential chemical energy stored in their bodies, which will also help them reach their personal goals.
Let's pretend I have a client named Sal. Sal is a small business owner who rarely ever moves. Most of his energy is spent on sitting at his computer desk, and he drives most of the time when traveling long distances. So Sal's kinetic energy is spent most of the day sitting and moving his hands around a keyboard or a driving wheel. His potential energy, however, is really not understood. Sal never realized what other potential forms of energy can be released until he met me. When Sal comes into my workplace, I purposely raise his kinetic energy and release his potential energy by making him transfer the energy of his body onto various weights, bars, dumbbells, medicine balls, etc. and make those weights move up and down, left and right, side to side, etc. I can also make Sal do mechanical work with his own body, by jumping or climb stairs, which also releases a lot of potential energy.
What fascinates me about my work with Sal comes from Einstein's formula E=mc². Since, before Einstein, people always thought of mass and energy--and energy and mass--as being entirely two different forms. However, because of Einstein's famous research, we discover that energy and mass are the same. Energy is mass times the speed of light squared (E=mc²). We saw the first occurrence of this formula at work when the first atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. What really happened that morning was nothing short of being god-like. Scientists from America figured out a way to enrich Uranium and to break-up the Uranium's nucleus so that it will implode. The implosion meant transferring the mass of Uranium into pure energy. When they dropped this Uranium over Japan as a bomb, we saw how Einstein's formula worked. The mass of Uranium multiplied into energy as the speed of light squared. If you look at it in terms of numbers, the speed of light is 670,000,000 mph. If you square that number, it comes down to:
670,000,000 x 670,000,000 = 448,900,000,000,000,000 c².
If an amount of Uranium that transfers into pure energy weighs at 50 lbs, it comes down to:
50 x 448,900,000,000,000,000 = 22,445,000,000,000,000,000 E.
I'm not sure what unit of measurement scientists use for such a powerful force of energy, but just by looking at that number is quite intimidating. In fact, I'm confident that nearly all of us have heard many times the story of how awful the atomic bombs' destruction was against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, my interest in Einstein's formula does not rest in how it explains explosions or nuclear power, but how this formula relates with my work and my clients.
In the formula E=mc², m stands for mass, and m is essentially what we are. We are living mass. And when clients come to me for help, they wish to make changes on their mass. Usually they wish to remove some of their mass (i.e. fat), but sometimes they come to make their mass stronger or more flexible, etc. Ironically, though I make my clients move so that they can use their energy to make the changes they wish on their mass, they themselves are living forms of energy, as we see in E=mc².
The formula for mass can be stated as: m=E/c².
All the different forms of mass that comprise our bodies (blood vessels, skin, hair, eyes, muscle, bones, etc.) are condensed energy. In fact, if we had the strange technology to do so, we can essentially convert our bodies into pure energy like the scientists were able to do with their Uranium, and make our bodies generate the same kinds of god-like effect when we make our cells and atoms implode. Consider me being dropped out of an airplane and when I pull on a string all the atoms in my body are being split apart. The energy that my body will release will equal to:
191.5 lbs x 448,900,000,000,000,000 c²
This idea that someone or something condensed all this energy in the universe known as "mass" fascinates me. All the rocks, waterfalls, clouds, grass, etc. we see are made of the same stuff. All the animals and birds and reptiles that walk on Earth are made of the same stuff. We as humans are made of the same stuff too. And if we had the power to convert any of these things into pure energy, we can make a bomb infinitely stronger than what we witnessed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The potential energy that is in mass all over the planet is just as god-like as the bombs that we created over 50 years ago.
When I train my clients to expend energy, I am only limiting my scope of work to what their bodies can do. I am not honing into their cells, nor am I trying to understand the function of each atom as I train. As a matter of fact, I do not even apply the knowledge of physics, chemistry, or biology as doctors do with their patients. However, because of my knowledge of E=mc², I feel that all of our understanding of kinetic or potential energy, with at least among humans, is very small. When have we reached the maximum state of kinetic energy with humans? Is it simply by making a person run fast? Perhaps all the Olympians in the world can demonstrate what it means to reach maximum kinetic energy in thanks to the training of their sport. Potential energy is associated with restoring forces. I already demonstrated how I can release those forces as a personal trainer when I work-out my clients. But how much force is being restored in a human? Perhaps to answer this question I should enrage all the Olympians in the world and observe what kinds of forces can be released.
Ultimately, it will not just be the human body that affects our energy/mass substance. Our mind will also play a great role. If I can generate and unleash all the potential forces that I can possibly find in each and every one of my clients, together, we can redefine what human kinetic energy can mean. Perhaps the combination of what Sal does with his work coupled together with Mark who comes to train with me every morning can increase different types of energy into one that affects Kay whom I have never met, but because of my work with Sal and Mark, Kay goes on to invent one of the most powerful vehicles of the 21st century. All the different combinations of energy is, essentially, one form of energy. We learned how to harness such energy once in a bomb and now in factories and gadgets as well.
I have a vision that will put my clients as a positive force with as much energy that lights different parts of the world, yet in our own unique and beautiful way. Through personal training, all of us will redefine the meaning of potential and kinetic energy. What doors Albert Einstein opened with his great formula E=mc², I hope to also open with whatever positive force and energy I transfer from myself to all my clients.