Skill Takes Practice
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Time comes and goes, we say with cool resignation disguising disdain. I'll graciously and greedily receive my preserved iron honor from my generous friends-in-steel and return wherever it is I came from and do it all again. Chins and dips, sets and reps, pump and burn. Ready, aim, fire!
Speaking of aiming and firing, here are some dopey questions to keep you from your responsibilities: Your recent workouts, were they targets posted on a bale of hay; did you hit them regularly, or does your aim stray and you miss them altogether?
I rarely score a bull's eye, seldom fail to hit the target, but never do I miss the bale of hay.
~ Does your accuracy depend on skill, technique, steady practice or natural instinct? Do you shoot from the hip, aim carefully or fire at will?
~ Everybody has skill if they care to develop it. Skill requires practice. There are few things more striking than watching a finely honed skill in action.
~ You learn techniques from schools, books and teachers, but the best methods emerge from the inside.
~ Nothing and no one becomes great without practice.
~ Natural instinct -- a gift -- is rare and often neglected, misused or unappreciated. It, too, must be nurtured, practiced and regularly applied.
~ Shooting from the hip can be fun on carefree days, necessary when under pressure... or disastrous if we allow it.
~ Careful aim is most reliable -- steady, focused and sure. Disciplines are formed, muscles are built and power is exerted.
~ Random fire is juvenile, pointless and dangerous.
Our weapon of choice is, of course, a bomb, having graduated from cap pistols, water balloons and cork guns. You'll see some wild warriors on the gym floor still employing slippery spitballs and devious darts of the suction-cup variety. They're shocking, awesome and devastating. You can follow the tiny projectiles with your eyes as they glide in the general direction of the target. Bink! Another workout in the bag.
The quality of our workouts depends on numerous factors and various dynamics: sound level, people presence, equipment or lack thereof, air flow and temperature, time, mood, energy, aches, pains and parking. Some of us address and tackle these variables directly and systematically, accepting the inevitable and favorably controlling the controllable. We make the workouts work. We modify crooked circumstances to make them suitable, even advantageous.
But once in awhile we want to walk in the gym and find everything absolutely right.
Clad in your favorite T-shirt you stand at the doorway expectantly, the rubber-matted floor scattered with heavy iron and friendly faces. No pressure! It's neither too early nor too late and time is plentiful and free of obligation. No sweat! It's neither too hot nor too cold and the sounds are right on. No strain! Fueled and fortified, no pain or weariness burdens your bones. No doubt! The bench is waiting for action and you get a pump just loading the bar.
There have been occasions like this, you remember; they set the gold standard. The outstanding, near-perfect days offer hope as you attempt to emulate them, recall them. You believe in them. Maybe today... a 9.5 on the scale of 10... a day to last a lifetime. One exercise leads to another, each set and rep calls for more. The wild crowd inside your head roars as you complete the final rep. You glow. These workouts are made in heaven.
Grab what you can each day and make the best of it; there's tomorrow, always tomorrow.
Then there are those who, unburdened by or unaware of the variables effecting training and life, dance through their exercises like the foxtrot: One, two, three, push... four, five, six, pull... turn, dip and swing. Cute moves. Dancers neither hit nor miss the target, its existence no more a reality than the dance floor. They just pop like corks in bottles of cheap bubbly.
I've gone to the gym when absolutely everything was wrong. I was out of town and didn't want to train. Commitments limited me to 60 minutes, barely enough time to crank up the body. I missed another meal. Rats! A slug of Bomber Blend en route to the gym will do in a pinch, but that won't set the iron on fire.
This must be the place, Rocky's 24-Hour Fitness Palace.
Punk sounds mixed with static invade my ears and muggy, hot-cold air saturates my lungs upon entering a gym with wall-to-wall people decked in designer gear and clutching cell phones. Oh, boy! Where are the honest-to-goodness, down-to-earth slobs when ya need 'em?
No platform? My head aches. Yet, something from somewhere kicks in -- an involuntary reverse response, overcompensation, the will to survive or an overt refusal to submit or be dominated -- and I begin to glide. It's not magic, it's not a miracle.
What is it: musclehead dumbness, ironhead stubbornness, disdain, serendipity, transcendence? I can't put my finger on it -- an accident, a coincidence, need, faith, hope, luck -- and I have one of the best workouts of my life. I find a corner and unravel a thread of inspiration; I strike a chord, reach a pitch and set a tone, revealing rhythm and harmony amid the chaos. Time skips a beat.
The sounds grow faint, the faces fade, yet the weights and benches and equipment are at my fingertips. Without plan or thought, I lift the most alluring and handy resistance-providing devices I can grasp in an energized moment, and with focused, pumping reps follow their lead till I vibrate. Releasing the equipment enables me to breathe deeply with appreciation, acknowledge my robust engagement and its rumbling momentum, and search for and discover the concluding matchless movement, whatever and wherever it might be. The hour is full and I'm satiated.
Moving targets are hard to hit (the rockin' scene at Rocky's Fitness). Missing is the norm. Targets that remain the same, because of their sameness (the old garage and barbell and boom box) often blur or lose their importance. Hit or miss, who cares?
And, not every day are we ready, willing and able to think seriously, focus intensely, work devotedly, play intently and aim carefully. Merely taking aim before the targets of steel is worth a gold medal.
Close enough, you hit the bale of hay.
Once in the sky, real bombers hit their targets without taking aim. They just point and shoot.
Happy landings... Godspeed... DD
*****
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