"Remember: Smooth is fast!!"
I heard the instructors saying this to the students of the Basic Underwater Demolition training(BUDs) over and over again. It was a gift from a very dear friend of mine, a documentation about the Making of a NAVY SEAL.
I heard it but I did not truly understand it until my skydiving- course.
Even when we were still practicing the key movements on the ground during the theoretical part of the skydiving- course we were told repetedly to execute the movements smoothly and a bit slower than we thought they should be.
Because during stressful situation movements become shorter, staccato- like.
Martial artist learned to first practice in an environment without stress, where movements can be executed in a smooth, somewhat exaggerated, slower and wider manner.
Only if you start with wide, relaxed motions, only then will there still be any movement left which is still useful during stress.
I want to take about 2 things which can be learned now from this statement:
1) The physical aspect:
Everybody involved in any sport does know how movement tends to change during application under stress.
Be it the martial artist who suddenly gets tight during sparring or in a fight when he should be relaxed and breath freely.
Be it...to be honest, there is no sport coming to my mind when you do not have that kind of problem...Well, maybe Soccer. ;-)
Even if you are playing, e.g., the piano and giving a concert...If you tense up, interrup your flow you got a problem.
This is why training, the steps of learning the technical aspects of your sport, should be happening in an relaxed environment.
Why?
Because our brain is a marvelous, little box.
It not only remembers the physical sensations but the emotional state as well. And as everybody knows emotions translate into physical/bodily reactions back again.
One of the most common examples I get to observe is the frequent shot people recieve when in the hospital.
Sometime in tha past they associated a lot of things with recieving a shot: pain(the injection itself and maybe a hurtful inflammation afterwards), fear(we do not like when being hurt), deception(when mommy told you "this will not hurt"), violence(they had to held you down to give you the shot), disappointment(mommy lied to you), relief(when it is over I feel better).
(To some adults this seems exaggerated but to a child without the proper connections a ability to construct a future based on the events currently happening it may very well seem like this.)
Even when we do know better as an adult("It does not hurt that bad..."; "It´s for the better"/"If I get that shot now I will not suffer in the future", etc.) some of us still experience some sensations when facing a needle.
Breathing changes...Somehow it feels like your chest is getting to small for your lungs, your breathing muscles won´t move so freely as they used to. Breathing becomes shallow.
Somehow certain muscles are very tense...Abdomen, neck, shoulders,...
Your heart is starting to beat faster...faster...faster...
You do not need all this tension, cardio- vascular stress.
It disrupts what some coaches call "flow", a term I really like. It increases your energy demands and robs your precious recources.
A lesson I´m still learning when having a sparring situation and somehow I get tense(which is still happening much)... I´m a quite physically fit individual but those tensions combined with the demands of perception, action and reaction, movement burn me out very fast. At least it happens to everybody. ;-)
Ok...Old dogs not only can learn new things, they can learn new ways of learning.
Still... They are old dogs and have already learned a lot of things in ways not very productive.
I will talk about "arousal control" and mental training soon.
Now we are off to number 2) The symbolism behind todays "Lesson from skydiving":
This lesson actually started building itself in my head when attending the Steve Maxwell workshop in July.
We were talking about the execution of movement, the ongoing empahsis on numbers/repetitions under the label of effort/output/power per time aka intensity.
We talked about the goal of training which can differ from person to person and the necessary adaptation of the means to the end.
To show you what I mean: if you want to build a muscular upper back and biceps strict pullups are a great way to accomplish this. Kipping pullups have their value but in a different context.
So it is not just what you do but how you do it.
"It´s not about the present, it´s about the way it is given" to quote my mother.
It is not about what you do but how you do it.
Simply starting you own company and trying to get as much money for yourself without a thought for the well- being of your employees, customers, family, friends will not be enough. Within months you will be out of business.
Simply going into the hospital, running test, diagnosing and treating according to lab results, CT- scans will not make me a successful doctor. True compassion for my patients and mindset of truely helping them to get back into (social) life will make them happy, healthy and myself a better doc.
Too many examples come to my mind to write them all down, many, many more I do not know.
When you stumble over a good example, post a comment below because this is one mather best learned by examples and experience.
Just keep in mind: it´s not just about what you do, but how you do it.
Train hard and enjoy life. Smoothly. ;-)
All the best,
Harry
Samstag, 25. September 2010
Sonntag, 19. September 2010
Lessons from skydiving (5) - No back to basics. Get them right the first time.
Like I said in the previous "Lessons from skydiving" the unique situation of a person jumping out of a plane is creating a very special environment.
The setting of one falling towards the surface of the earth through the air with about 200km/h, the fact of our body being moveable which creates streaming around it and the fact that if we do not have a parachute(left) or screw up badly we get ourselves in a whole lot of trouble.
When working with clients I sometimes spend a lot of time with single exercises. I think some of them actually get bored after some time, being eager to learn all there is about kettlebells, body- weight- exercises, etc.
Still... I keep on pushing details, restraining myself from overflooding them with the little things and always trying to focus on the big and important little things.
Why is it so important?
When I started with preparing for the schooling- jumps we went over the basics of good free- fall- posture over and over again.
Hips, head, knees. Get them right and you have won. That´s what they told us.
They were right.
During my first 5 jumps (you get only 7 with a trainer at your side) i was as stable as a used napkin flushed from a toilet of a plane.
During the 6th and 7th jump I was stable enough to, I need to quote my trainer,"be able to jump out of a plane without killing yourself or others".
Well...
My first solo- jump: stable as one could wish!
Why?
My theory: When you are jumping with the trainers you got a program for every level/jump.
Basically I got out and was 1) nervous, 2)with my thoughts only at the moving portion of the jump and 3)only looking what the trainers were signalling me.
I lost sight of the three basics (hip, head, knees) with every jump.
With my first jump, being on my own, scared as sh*t since no one is there to stabilize me, I was forced to focus on those basics, and those three alone.
Screw the somersault, screw the rotations, screw everything else, there was only room in my mind for the big three.
So I approached the door, got into position, counted to five and pushed myself out.
The moment when you lift your head up, feeling the first air starting to stream past both sides of your neck, the two sides of your body, when you fall and suddenly get a strange feeling at teh whole front of your body until you recognize the air is forming a cushion, allowing you to take control.
When all I thought was to scan with my eyes for the horizon, the thin line between the world we live in and the sky on is falling through, for me during those moments thin enough to no even be clear in sight, vanishing the clear disticntion between the two worlds.
When all I thought was to make the hips the deepest point, first trying to force the back to arch, then slowly, when the eyes realized the blurred horizon, relaxing into the fall, the hips started to sink towards the earth.
When all I thought was to get the knees up which caused my legs to shorten and my position to de-stabilize, then suddenly, when i felt the cusion under by hips, my legs relaxed and lengthend, suddenly feeling the cushion at the dorsi of my feet...
When all of my thoughts concentrated on the basics, my mind and body became free to actually take a look around, conciously, experiencing one of the most beautiful moments of my life.
I think with age physical training is becoming more and more like skydiving...
You wanna get the biggest bang for your buck with each workout, you still wanna make progress concerning intensity, workload but the older one gets the more deliberatly one has to act.
When you are young you can almost jump into training, do a ton of workload(literally), get no recovery with sloppy technique and still grow, improve, develop.
To a certain point...
But it is not like young athletes are invincible.
It´s more like they have a greater coverage with their bank account.
They can withdraw again and again for a long time but one day they will be too far in dept as well.
Like Steve Maxwell said while talking about Joint Mobility, Yoga (of which I became a huge fan during the last several months): "Lots of guys in their thirtys or fortys wish they had discovered this stuff 20 years ago...It would have saved them a lot of (disadvantageous) pain and stagnation."
If you read the previous post from the "lessons from skydiving"- series you already know how mistakes can bite you in the a**.
The lack of basics in physical training is one mistake which will result in the biggest bite.
Because when you get hurt, you have no way to correct your mistake...Even if you reduce the workload dramatically the applied load on the hurt tissue will still be violative.
No mather how light the load on your crappy deadlift is, it does hurt you.
So take the first steps of your life- long training as a mental challenge: tame your spirits who want to do more and more and more...
Take it easy, be proud to develop Technique, take in the basic concepts and movement patterns of your physical activity, read about it, watch others do it, breath some air surrounding your activity.
With time and uncompromising technique success has no chance but to come to you.
Train hard, train smart and enjoy life!
All the ebst,
Harry
The setting of one falling towards the surface of the earth through the air with about 200km/h, the fact of our body being moveable which creates streaming around it and the fact that if we do not have a parachute(left) or screw up badly we get ourselves in a whole lot of trouble.
When working with clients I sometimes spend a lot of time with single exercises. I think some of them actually get bored after some time, being eager to learn all there is about kettlebells, body- weight- exercises, etc.
Still... I keep on pushing details, restraining myself from overflooding them with the little things and always trying to focus on the big and important little things.
Why is it so important?
When I started with preparing for the schooling- jumps we went over the basics of good free- fall- posture over and over again.
Hips, head, knees. Get them right and you have won. That´s what they told us.
They were right.
During my first 5 jumps (you get only 7 with a trainer at your side) i was as stable as a used napkin flushed from a toilet of a plane.
During the 6th and 7th jump I was stable enough to, I need to quote my trainer,"be able to jump out of a plane without killing yourself or others".
Well...
My first solo- jump: stable as one could wish!
Why?
My theory: When you are jumping with the trainers you got a program for every level/jump.
Basically I got out and was 1) nervous, 2)with my thoughts only at the moving portion of the jump and 3)only looking what the trainers were signalling me.
I lost sight of the three basics (hip, head, knees) with every jump.
With my first jump, being on my own, scared as sh*t since no one is there to stabilize me, I was forced to focus on those basics, and those three alone.
Screw the somersault, screw the rotations, screw everything else, there was only room in my mind for the big three.
So I approached the door, got into position, counted to five and pushed myself out.
The moment when you lift your head up, feeling the first air starting to stream past both sides of your neck, the two sides of your body, when you fall and suddenly get a strange feeling at teh whole front of your body until you recognize the air is forming a cushion, allowing you to take control.
When all I thought was to scan with my eyes for the horizon, the thin line between the world we live in and the sky on is falling through, for me during those moments thin enough to no even be clear in sight, vanishing the clear disticntion between the two worlds.
When all I thought was to make the hips the deepest point, first trying to force the back to arch, then slowly, when the eyes realized the blurred horizon, relaxing into the fall, the hips started to sink towards the earth.
When all I thought was to get the knees up which caused my legs to shorten and my position to de-stabilize, then suddenly, when i felt the cusion under by hips, my legs relaxed and lengthend, suddenly feeling the cushion at the dorsi of my feet...
When all of my thoughts concentrated on the basics, my mind and body became free to actually take a look around, conciously, experiencing one of the most beautiful moments of my life.
I think with age physical training is becoming more and more like skydiving...
You wanna get the biggest bang for your buck with each workout, you still wanna make progress concerning intensity, workload but the older one gets the more deliberatly one has to act.
When you are young you can almost jump into training, do a ton of workload(literally), get no recovery with sloppy technique and still grow, improve, develop.
To a certain point...
But it is not like young athletes are invincible.
It´s more like they have a greater coverage with their bank account.
They can withdraw again and again for a long time but one day they will be too far in dept as well.
Like Steve Maxwell said while talking about Joint Mobility, Yoga (of which I became a huge fan during the last several months): "Lots of guys in their thirtys or fortys wish they had discovered this stuff 20 years ago...It would have saved them a lot of (disadvantageous) pain and stagnation."
If you read the previous post from the "lessons from skydiving"- series you already know how mistakes can bite you in the a**.
The lack of basics in physical training is one mistake which will result in the biggest bite.
Because when you get hurt, you have no way to correct your mistake...Even if you reduce the workload dramatically the applied load on the hurt tissue will still be violative.
No mather how light the load on your crappy deadlift is, it does hurt you.
So take the first steps of your life- long training as a mental challenge: tame your spirits who want to do more and more and more...
Take it easy, be proud to develop Technique, take in the basic concepts and movement patterns of your physical activity, read about it, watch others do it, breath some air surrounding your activity.
With time and uncompromising technique success has no chance but to come to you.
Train hard, train smart and enjoy life!
All the ebst,
Harry
Sonntag, 12. September 2010
Turn around...Sometimes it is useful
Most of the time I try not to look back too much.
Simply because my challenges are right here, now, the present time of my life.
Sometimes I indulge myself in looking forward, into the future, dreaming what may come.
In the past I was looking back a lot, the things I had done, some of them seemed to haunt me.
So nowadays I learn my lessons and let the past be.
About 40 minutes ago my computer crashed...Since I wanted to continue watching "The Jackal" I rebooted it.
It took some time and I somehow decided to pick up my current training-log which goes back to the 27th of October 2009.
I browsed through the pages, reviewed the workouts, the weeks and months going by...
If someone would be coming to me, showing me such a detailed log, all the notes of where the pain begun and where it spread to...How personal records where broken on a regular basis (sometimes 2 times a week) and at the same time how joints first got sore, then painful, then almost not moveable...
How the weights went up effortlessly, how numbers became bigger(be it the time worked or the weights lifted), how sleep spread thinner and the mood hit rock bottom.
How the spirit soared during the workouts, how it crashed when pain visited the following day...
I´d tell that person he/she is in way over her/his head. I´d tell that person it is time to slow down. Time to take a week off, no training at all, re- evaluate her/his personal goals again and be honest about her/his true capacity.
As a child I was quite fat.
So i got no good base considering my joints, tendons, ligaments, muscles...
One thing I have always been: stubborn.
Thank god one day my stubbornness turned against my lazy life, my eating habits, my movement patterns, my weaknesses.
I started to get back in shape, although I have never been there...
The problem was the real training, away from all the bullshit machines in the commercial gyms, away from all the people who use the narcissistic upper- and lower body split:
-day 1: train all the muscles you can see in the mirror above your belly
-day 2: train all the muscles you can see in the mirror beneath your belly.
When I started improving my physique, I unknowingly started to improve my mind as well.
I became stronger, faster, more competitive, mentally tougher.
I suffered through my workouts and reaped rewards. Some of the guys like Dominik Feischl (), who know me since I first touched a kettlebell and when I still struggled with 2 pullups, know how much stronger I became.
Still, I know now I was in way over my head.
I reaped rewards, simply because my body had to adapt in order to survive in some way.
I was stubborn enough to go on and on and on, push harder, farther and higher, but I was too dumb to realize my will, the pure power of mind could only outrun some aspects of biochemistry, some aspects of life.
Regeneration was not one of them.
When I start something I want everything at once. It took me years and lots of set- backs to develop ways to control myself in this matter.
Another thing it took was the words of Steve Maxwell.
When we were sitting at the end of the workshop in July, Steve talked to us about regeneration.
When a Coach with an experience of over 30 years is telling you, you are working too much, one is starting to think.
I even took one whole week off after the workshop.
Several months ago I would have went to the workshop, had come back with a minor injury, taped it and got back under the weights.
This time the advice stuck with me.
I shifted 2 gears back since then.
Do not get me worng, my workouts are still hard as hell, that´s a given. YOu need hard work to get results.
But the time between workouts is more and spent more relaxed. The food got more. Sleep got more.
And know what?
I´m happy.
Enough said?
I lost nothing of my strength, conditioning, I gained zero fat and gained about 3kg of muscle since July.
My sleep is great, I actually like waking up some days now and go to work. ;-)
Sometimes it is a good thing to turn around and look at your footsteps in the snow. Because when we do we can stop running in circles and continue on our way ... to the next circle.
Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry
Simply because my challenges are right here, now, the present time of my life.
Sometimes I indulge myself in looking forward, into the future, dreaming what may come.
In the past I was looking back a lot, the things I had done, some of them seemed to haunt me.
So nowadays I learn my lessons and let the past be.
About 40 minutes ago my computer crashed...Since I wanted to continue watching "The Jackal" I rebooted it.
It took some time and I somehow decided to pick up my current training-log which goes back to the 27th of October 2009.
I browsed through the pages, reviewed the workouts, the weeks and months going by...
If someone would be coming to me, showing me such a detailed log, all the notes of where the pain begun and where it spread to...How personal records where broken on a regular basis (sometimes 2 times a week) and at the same time how joints first got sore, then painful, then almost not moveable...
How the weights went up effortlessly, how numbers became bigger(be it the time worked or the weights lifted), how sleep spread thinner and the mood hit rock bottom.
How the spirit soared during the workouts, how it crashed when pain visited the following day...
I´d tell that person he/she is in way over her/his head. I´d tell that person it is time to slow down. Time to take a week off, no training at all, re- evaluate her/his personal goals again and be honest about her/his true capacity.
As a child I was quite fat.
So i got no good base considering my joints, tendons, ligaments, muscles...
One thing I have always been: stubborn.
Thank god one day my stubbornness turned against my lazy life, my eating habits, my movement patterns, my weaknesses.
I started to get back in shape, although I have never been there...
The problem was the real training, away from all the bullshit machines in the commercial gyms, away from all the people who use the narcissistic upper- and lower body split:
-day 1: train all the muscles you can see in the mirror above your belly
-day 2: train all the muscles you can see in the mirror beneath your belly.
When I started improving my physique, I unknowingly started to improve my mind as well.
I became stronger, faster, more competitive, mentally tougher.
I suffered through my workouts and reaped rewards. Some of the guys like Dominik Feischl (), who know me since I first touched a kettlebell and when I still struggled with 2 pullups, know how much stronger I became.
Still, I know now I was in way over my head.
I reaped rewards, simply because my body had to adapt in order to survive in some way.
I was stubborn enough to go on and on and on, push harder, farther and higher, but I was too dumb to realize my will, the pure power of mind could only outrun some aspects of biochemistry, some aspects of life.
Regeneration was not one of them.
When I start something I want everything at once. It took me years and lots of set- backs to develop ways to control myself in this matter.
Another thing it took was the words of Steve Maxwell.
When we were sitting at the end of the workshop in July, Steve talked to us about regeneration.
When a Coach with an experience of over 30 years is telling you, you are working too much, one is starting to think.
I even took one whole week off after the workshop.
Several months ago I would have went to the workshop, had come back with a minor injury, taped it and got back under the weights.
This time the advice stuck with me.
I shifted 2 gears back since then.
Do not get me worng, my workouts are still hard as hell, that´s a given. YOu need hard work to get results.
But the time between workouts is more and spent more relaxed. The food got more. Sleep got more.
And know what?
I´m happy.
Enough said?
I lost nothing of my strength, conditioning, I gained zero fat and gained about 3kg of muscle since July.
My sleep is great, I actually like waking up some days now and go to work. ;-)
Sometimes it is a good thing to turn around and look at your footsteps in the snow. Because when we do we can stop running in circles and continue on our way ... to the next circle.
Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry
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