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