In jailhouse jargon, I was a dead man walking.

At least it felt that way to me — as well as my cellmates working on the chain gangs of my quadriceps, hamstrings, and gluteus maximus muscles. In actuality, though, I was just an old man exercising.

During the Tuesday bicycle rides intended to be one of the two relatively hard ones each week.

For those who don’t partake in such voluntary captivity, let me explain. A Tuesday ride usually lasts about two and a half hours and begins with a warmup of 30 minutes or so that leads to the first of six to eight hard efforts.

They generally take six to 10 minutes and take my heart rate from 80 percent to 95 percent of its maximum.

But early in the summer, the heart rate monitor that’s become my prison chaplain and those aforementioned cellmates were telling me the governor had no intention of pardoning me. Or, to escape the prison motif for a sentence — thereby creating two really bad puns and a bit of awful grammar — my get up and go had got up and went.

Those hard efforts were not ending with my heart rate at 95 percent of its max, although it certainly felt that way by the middle of most.

Worse, I felt even more like a dead man walking on Wednesday. Clearly, I had lost my way.

Until I found wu-wei (pronounced woo way), that is.

Before I further explain how to apply this principle in the Chinese philosophy of Taoism to your exercise to improve its efficacy — and your enjoyment of it — allow me to apply prison parlance to you. No amount of good behavior during your confinement in the big house will cause nature’s governor to pardon you.

But Wu wei could delay, in a roundabout way, the date of your death sentence. And it can certainly make your jail time, especially in the exercise yard, more enjoyable.

According to an overview of the principle published in the 2021 September-December issue of the Asian Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, wu-wei can help your “well-being and pursuit of goals” as well as “open new avenues” that lead to “optimal human functioning.” While that sounds promising, its definition sounds like pure bull: “an imperceptible form of action” that may “feel like [you’re] doing nothing.”

But that nothing really is something. As explained in the Tao Dei Jing, one of the seminal texts of Taoism, it’s “moving in accordance with the flow of nature’s course, acting without forcing.”

The opposite of what I had been doing on Tuesday rides: casting aside my doubts and coaxing — often forcing — myself to ride hard.

Not out of stubbornness, however, but past experience.

It had taught me there’s benefit in doing what you don’t want to do — or even feel you can’t do — at times. But this is now and that was then and should the “at times” now be eight out of 10 Tuesday rides?

The question led me to do what I consistently tell you to do: experiment.

And it was such a positive one I’d be remiss not to share it with you. It’s recorded in my training log as “Wu-Wei Tuesday,” just above the pre-ride goal: “To ride in accordance with the flow.”

I didn’t know if that goal would allow the ride to get hard or not, only that if it did get hard, it was not going to feel forced. To help insure that, I decided not to check my heart rate until the end.

What I did check out at the start, though, was an incredibly clear sky. Which made me remember how that used to motivate me to climb the hill on which Penn’s Peak sits so I could enjoy the view.

A not-so-pleasant remembrance, though, quickly followed.

One of struggling so badly up a lesser climb just a few weeks before, so badly that I had said to myself I’d never ride to Penn’s Peak again. Not only is the ascent steep and long, but there are also two other climbs nearly as tough that I need to surmount to get there.

Which led to a second experiment: Could I do those three climbs today without the effort feeling forced?

It required total focus and easier gearing than in climbs past, but yes. The ride was a success.

I felt so good after the Penn’s Peak climb, in fact, that I did two more.

When I finally checked the heart rate info for the ride, I was not surprised to see that my heart rate never exceeded 88 percent of its max. But I was surprised to discover I had spent as much time between 80 and 88 percent of my max as I had on those recent Tuesday rides that had me feeling like a dead man walking.

Better still, instead of feeling played out, I was feeling pumped up — and still that way the following day. If your exercise hasn’t been making you feel that way, give wu-wei a try.