Makes Perfect

It is called practice for a reason. A very good reason. I believe it is hard-wired in all homo sapiens (Latin for wise man) to consider what might happen if we decided to seek improvement, to act on an impulse sparked by a thought presented for our consideration from a mysterious ‘higher power.’  Have you ever looked at a piece of art hanging on a wall and thought that you might have the talent to do something similar, if not better? If only you had the time, the oils, stretched canvas and brushes, the inspiration and the freedom from all your current social, filial or financial responsibilities?  

Have you, as I, listened closely to a soothing piano concerto and imagined yourself tickling the ivories? Have you progressed, as I, to a level of competency on the guitar, ukulele or drums only to realize that your trajectory of learning, growth and improvement has leveled out so flat it makes pancakes look like granite pinnacles? Has your athletic performance, as mine, plateaued? Is your writing stale and more sleep-inducing than melatonin? Is your world, the dynamic and relentlessly changing circumstance surrounding your consciousness, a friendly place? Are you happy? Are you satisfied with the methods and results of your stress management tactics? Do you, as I, think there is something more available to us if we could…just…own what we see in our mind's eye as appropriate, just, fair or something we are somehow deserving of? 

You want to know what I deserve?

NOT A FUCKING THING. 

You want to know what I am entitled to?

DITTO.

You want to know how I, as you, should deal with the reality of those pair of vulgarities? 

You do? It would be much easier to pretend that you don’t, to stick your head in the sand and ignore the reality, look conveniently the other way as the days of our lives float by like white cumulus dumplings. To see only the right when it is to the left that compassion and empathy reside. To give up, toss the towel and succumb to helplessness, despair, depression and feelings being overwhelmed by the crass harshness and mean-spirited gas-lighting from the hyper-capitalists seeing you as nothing more than a consumer of durable goods. Not you you (as I)?

It is a common default response to this farrago of modern life, and the challenges it presents to all but the richest 1% of us, to move away from the hottest part of the fire. To take a few steps back and reduce the heat. To self-medicate and numb nerves irritated, inflamed and raw. 

And we end up dumbed-down, loaded-up with toxins, mindlessly clicking through a thousand channels of digital distraction. Is anyone you know caught in the spiderweb of this insidious scenario? 

Yeah, me too. 

Accept the reality of the situation. Life is no longer suffering when we accept that it is. You can call a hammer anything you like but it is still going to hurt if you pound the wrong nail (missing the steel one a hitting the flesh one.) Red is red even to a blind man.

The only viable, positive, empowering and earth-changing solution is in our practice. The practice of being us, identifying our demons, working on our weakness’ and keeping vigilant to the power of the now. It truly is all we have. Now is your practice. 

Under these conditions we commit to the present and simply do what must be done. I don’t feel much like doing anything today after ‘my’ team lost a game late last night, but I will not discredit eternity by feeling sorry for myself, wasting precious time or lashing out. This is the opportunity and here is the challenge. It is a perfect scenario for learning, accepting, loving and growing.

It is 'good practice' because this isn’t the last time I, as you, will be placed at the scene of the crime. This is our 'good fight.' Practice your response. Respond with more practice. If perfected.

It makes perfect. 

Nor Could I

The session is over. A hard, demanding set of high-intensity intervals. Two kids, new to our program, are moping up as I approach to gauge their instant reactions. I am particularly interested in their opinions today because I took a different path to the mountain top, a tactic specifically designed to indoctrinate them into our way of doing things, and importantly, to address the myriad reasons behind the protocol’s gold-standard structure. 

Their comments are typical of newbies; 'Cool, awesome, I am so hungry.' I reassure them that the secret will be revealed to them, in their own time and at their own pace, should they make the courageous decision to commit to the program and choose consistency over convenience. They both smile gregariously and finish their janitorial chores.

I move a row back and address a regular who has been going through a series of medical procedures involved with the degeneration of bone density in her lower back. She had another cortisone shot three weeks ago and I inquire about its effect, particularly on her activity level and precisely on her ability to reach the intensity levels asked by the just finished protocol. She says it feels OK and actually uses the word ‘better’ in her brief description. After a pause she recognizes that I am sincere in my interest in her health and fitness (and by proxy happiness) and she continues, ‘As you suggested I tried to stay with the progression and actually held the 17 for the first time ever' (17 is a resistance number I asked the group to hold for 20 seconds and then default into their GZ, groove-zone, for 40 seconds and NOTE THE DIFFERENCE). As she talks I am inwardly glowing as this is precisely the take from the experiment I was looking for. She adds. ‘I told myself that I could do (almost) anything for 20 seconds so I wanted to prove it to myself - and I did.' 

I am doing rhetorical back flips as she talks. The only thing keeping us from growth, improvement and the countless positive emotions that come from our efforts, is fear. We fear the amount of work, the level of intensity and the responsibility of managing change. We feel castigated to an unsatisfying tenure of living like a pawn in the chess game of life instead of the like Kings or Queens that we truly are. 

I am feeling confident that she had actually ‘got it’, the it being the meaning behind my hour-long soliloquy on stress, rest, growth, good vibrations, laser-like relaxed focus, the groove-zone, power, the golden ratio, purpose, meaning, nirvana (seriously) and our sublime mission of persistence along the rocky road leading to the state we call optimal dynamic flow. She smiles sending me an ‘I like this because of its authenticity’ vibe. I smile reciprocally and turn to walk away to poll another team-mate. 

After a single step I dramatically trunk twist and confess,

‘I could never fake this.' 

'Nor could I.’ She is still smiling. 

100% Certain

I am not 100% sure how to interrupt this. Trapped between the rock of judgment and the hard place of compassion, I consider the application that best suits my current needs and highest truth. Should I be aghast that glaring mistakes have somehow managed to slide undetected into the final, printed and published text, or immediately self-motivate myself with a ‘you can do better’ cheer. A social Rorschach test if you will. 

This theme, choosing the proper response, has been a common one of late. But with the differentiation in the subtlety. I think it is fairly easy to say that the current administration, led by a shameless thief and pathological liar, is not leading by example and is interested only in the enrichment of a dirty family business and that of a close-knit cabal of crooks. That is as binary as it is black and white. There is no middle-ground insouciance of political objectivity. One either pledges loyalty to the syndicate or persists in the moral high-ground promotion of ethics, compassion and peace. Which do you see? It pains me to say this but the 'divide and conquer' strategy of modern-era republicans works as advertised. The ONE thing keeping them in power is their clear cognizance of the fact that they could never win anything if everyone was allowed to vote in a fair election. See Mitchell, Mitch as a perfect example of the extent they will go to remain in power. Because power is money and they evidently will sell their red souls to the devil in Russia to keep it flowing. This, at your expense America. 

So I sit on the deck watching another sublime setting of the late summer sun and consider what my individual response should be. I am appalled. I am furious. I am disgusted. I am saddened that almost 40% of America doesn’t care about the loss of our democracy. The utter disdain the hacking conservative hypocrites hold, hiding behind dogmas supposedly separated from the state, coupled with a blatant disregard for the rule of law and our constitution, promoted daily by a state sponsored media outlet is a cancer. Is a fucking gun, extreme bigotry and racism worth the price we are currently paying for the expressed anger, hate and self-loathing of the lemmings in red Chinese-made ballcaps? 

So small. So puny. So pathetic. I am embarrassed to have had the unfortunate mix of deoxyribonucleic acid and spatio-temporal circumstance that combined to classify my collection of flesh and carbon as Caucasian. How the fuck does the cosmic rolling of genetic dice make me in any way superior? I doesn’t. The Bible says so as does our very Bill of Rights. Science simply sees it as big brains or a small penis. 

What gives me the daily opportunity to present to the universe, and hence by default, to my fellow man, is my relentlessly changing awareness that there are things more important in this life than the collection of toys and pursuit of green swaths of paper bearing the images of dead presidents. Or the hoarding of natural resources. Or the interrupted right to bear arms of military grade fully automatic capability. Or the disingenuous and dishonest opinion that anyone the slightest bit different is the enemy, and somehow responsible for all the imagined or real failures that haunt that 40% so mercilessly. Dudes: Gays, blacks, browns, women, Muslims, fetuses, tree-huggers, granola-heads and libs ARE NOT THE PROBLEM.

Your attitudes and violent actions in response to their simple quest for self-expression are. 

The idea of putting brown babies in cages as being good policy while suggesting that wedding cakes should be illegal for same-sex couples is laughable. If it wasn’t so fucking terrifying. 

I am 100% certain of this.

I Could Rob a Bank

I am verbally noodling on an impossible dream. A secession of ‘what if’s’, floating further and further away from any practical reality. I might as well have been planning on how I would spend a million dollars from owning a winning lottery ticket.

It seems that my old property is back on the market. The condensed history of this, the fortuitous purchase way back in 1985, the subsequent thirty years of building, the expansion, the good times and bad, all ending with a tearful forced fire-sale due to my failure to adequately protect myself and major assets from a catastrophic medical condition. In other words I lost my home because I didn’t have health insurance enough to cover the astronomical cost of a diagnosis of a condition known as chronic atrial fibrillation. At the time it appeared as if this was the only way out of the nightmare. In retrospect I can see now, five years later, that I made a horrible choice.

There were other options that, for reasons difficult to accept at the time, I rejected as inadequate. With a single signature I could pay down my debt, remove a major source of stress, focus on health and recovery, support my brother in a business venture, and walk away with a couple large in the front pocket of my Levis.

I chose the easy way out. And have regretted the decision every day since. Specifically I recall the foggy morning upon completion of the deal, walking away from thirty years of devotion to a dream. The impact landed on my soul like ten tons of bricks and suddenly, as much as I tried to be tough and objectively face the reality of the situation, I wept uncontrollably.

I had lost my home. I walked with shaky knees and an empty heart towards an unknown destination facing the fact that I was now, officially homeless.

I tried to shift my emotional, internal anguish into a positive by responding with a practice famous in Zen circles as ‘letting go’. But the past tense of my perceived failure shaded my present moment discipline through the lens of relentless gloom. To be accurate there were many times when the individual responsibilities of ownership seemed outrageous as I wrote check after check to rent someone else’s additional dwelling unit, no longer concerned about a leaky roof, fallen trees or maintenance of a well. I was amazed at how much this actually cost me as I chuckled about no longer paying a tax tied to the current market value of my cabin in the woods.

Five years later, we laughed about the guy I sold it to actually increasing the value of the property by tearing down the cabin, cutting my prized cedar trees and leveling the dirt into a ‘build your dream home here’ lot. I can laugh at my lack of craftsmanship and architectural design skills, but I will forever remember with warmth and love the cold winters spent huddled around the wood burning stove listening to Louie Prima while sipping Chianti.

My old neighbor is in my spin class. I watched him build his home twenty-five years ago and fixed bikes for his kids. He knows that it is difficult for me to drive by the old place as the pain, even after five years, isn’t with it. Yesterday after our class I mentioned that I was finally emotionally fit enough to call the realtor and see about the asking price. Straight faced he asked if I wanted to know.

You know?

Sure I called six weeks ago when they first posted the for sale sign.

350?

185.

I could rob a bank.

If I Only Had a Brain

It started innocently enough. 

We are absolutely (I was anyway) ripping through our opening set of Super Eights. It is, as well as being the first day of school for the local kids, our opening number. We do ONE to start, I will detail the protocol later, and build from there, adding one each subsequent week until we have reached the hallowed numerical pinnacle of eight. We then execute eight for eight weeks. We do them every Wednesday morning at 0530 in the cycling studio of our local club. 

I designed a slight variation today after a review of past protocols (using the handy search feature of this site), a change I felt might add that little something to inch us closer to an empirical glimpse of the value and rewards this demanding drill offers. 

A calculation stumbled upon in research for another project reminded me of the simplicity of this thing we call exercise physiology. Nailed at its most basic is the equation:

STRESS + REST = GROWTH

I was once sternly reprimanded by a client for dispelling the myth of academic overkill. That echelon where language and theory claim superiority over practicality and utility. My client was fascinated by the data provided by the emerging power technologies at the time and was somewhat offended when I suggested to her that all of the data, graphs, charts, zones, percentages, ratios and peaks represented distractions from the simplicity found in the simple formula of raising one’s heart rate through consistent and repeated efforts of high intensity with rest periods between them. She wanted the smoke and mirrors as I was offering bread and butter. 

But that was on a cruise ship in Glacier Bay, this morning we got real with Day One, Super Eight:

10 minute warm up (explanation of set)

02 minutes in groove zone, one seated and one standing

12 minutes SET ONE

30 seconds at 85-90% of RPE, seated.

90 seconds recovery (30 seated, 30 standing 30 seated)

Repeat four times

04 minuets groove zone (alternate seated & standing)

12 minutes SET TWO (rep number two is ALL-OUT, Super Eight number one)

04 minutes groove zone

12 minutes SET THREE

04 minutes groove zone

12 minutes SET FOUR

02 minutes groove zone

02 minutes 7/120

Stretch, floor routine, done.

It was during the last groove zone (the golden ratio of resistance, cadence, presence and flow) that I riffed up and again presented the basic fundamental of the stress plus rest equals growth equation, adding that the intrepid individual may juxtapose the formula to any other area of passion.

Because it is like the Scarecrow in Wizard of OZ, right now you are at your peak, endorphins are freely flowing, actually creating an enriched and powerful rush of blood to working muscles and to your cerebral cortex. Your ability right now, this very minute, to use your creative powers to make cognitive, analytical introspection and analysis are at their zeniths. What are you feeling? What have we accomplished? How did we respond to the demands of the drill? What changes can we institute to continue this magical trend? What is the difference between an isosceles triangle and a right triangle? Is the diploma the same as knowledge? And lastly,

Will stress plus rest get us that brain? Or have we had it all along? 

You Get to Pick - As I Have

Classy

Two intercollegiate football teams, bitter rivals, are playing their kickoff games to the 2019 season. They each have national recognition and high expectations for the campaign. One team is playing at home against an inferior opponent and the other on a neutral field against a quality, nationally ranked foe. 

These two games graphically illustrate the value of a balanced and complete education and how it relates to the kids playing, the coaching staff, alumni, sponsors, family, friends, and for the sake of emphasis, potential future recruits. Here is what happened, my analysis is based upon actual events.

Team A, playing at noon under beautiful blue skies and a stadium about 3/4 full of adoring fans with a regional TV subscription-only cable audience, is winning handily as they enter the fourth quarter of play. The coaching staff starts to intermix under-classmen, second and third stringers and even walk-ons. With less than one minute remaining they are up 47-14. They have the ball and are driving for the final nail in the coffin TD inside the opponents ten. By all observations, should they so desire, they could easily add another score to the margin, look better in the eye of the played committee but add unnecessary insult to existing injury to the interstate opponent. 

The head coach has his QB take a knee. Sportsmanship added as another layer to the victory. This is a decision labeled as classy by all but Alabama alumni. 

Three hours later in another time-zone, Team B has a 21-point lead midway through the third quarter. Their big opening win of the season against a ranked opponent would more than validate the fawning national press and inclusion to the playoff conversation. Due to injury the opposition is playing a true freshmen with the odds of his leading his team, in this hopeless situation, being a long shot at best, impossible at worst. 

Incredibly, with less than a minute to go, they get the ball back needing now just a field goal for the win. Something amazing is happening and this is a live example of why so many people find this to be the most exciting game in college sports today, because anything can happen. And it currently is. But the underdogs will need some help. From their defense. Team B is driving, hoping to run out the clock and keep the ball from the freshman with the golden arm. Deep in the red zone Team B is looking at a third and long. Blitz. QB goes down hard with possible knee injury. By rules he must sit out at least one play. Coaching staff chaotically scrambles to insert his backup. For one play with the game on the line. They must also manage the clock and call the right play. In the confusion they burn their last two timeouts. After the second time-out they try to put injured QB back into the game, a move immediately flagged by the refs and they call time to physically escort him to the sidelines, per current rules. QB two, back in the game runs a slow developing option and gives the ball to RB who is immediately smothered and the ball is turned over on downs. Opposition freshman QB comes in and four plays later tosses the game winning TD with nine seconds remaining. 

Team B head coach tried to but failed at cheating. He got caught red handed and red faced. He mismanaged the clock in the heat of battle making an almost comical series of bad decisions. The day after the debacle they try to spin it as not being aware of the rule change. Right. 

Bad sportsmanship, intention to cheat, and then a hollow cover-up added insult to the real injury of an ugly loss. 

Please feel free to add your own moral to this story. If winning at all costs is so important that even cheating is merely a means to an end, you lose even in winning. If the integrity, character, morals and ethics of a program are important to you and your potential scholar-athlete son, you will win even if losing. 

You get to pick. 

I have. 

What We Also Call Winning

W is for Win

One of the most helpful questions any writer can ask of their nom de plume, regardless of genera or format, is this one: Then what did they do? All action, the driving force, mixed with healthy a dose of conflict, hides behind a good story. The action will set up a scenario where the protagonist(s) are faced with the challenge of making value judgments. The story ends when they fail to act. If our the hero decides the effort required of him exceeds his skill set, or if the heroine deems the task too tall for her. When this happens we all lose. We lose interest, we lose hope and we lose the game. We look elsewhere for our motivation, inspiration, role models and, at its most base, entertainment.

It was with great anticipation that yesterday, the first Sunday of the 2019 college football season that we had the graphic real-time opportunity to gauge who gets it and who doesn’t. Half of the teams are now 0-1. The other half are all 1-0. As advertised, there was blood, carnage, drama, non-lethal fistfights in the trenches and blunders of monumental proportions made by ‘management.’ There were dropped balls, missed opportunities the color of gold, bad decisions, bad attitudes and bad language.

All, with the exception of the felonious managerial errors, committed by kids, under the white-hot spotlight of stadiums full of rabid alumni, sponsors, friends and family alongside TV audiences roughly the size of third-world countries. Welcome to the pressure cooker scholar-athlete.

Most likely if you have been marching down this long and lonely path with us for any legitimate length of time you have heard me opine of winning and losing. On the differences between them and the answer to the age old question asking if indeed winning is the only thing.

The short answer is no. I will expand that theme as succinctly as possible today and attempt once again to impress upon you the reality of the myth, or maybe better, the truth hiding inside the lie. I wish politics was so easy.

Suppose I blurted out in a crowded bar immediately following an ugly loss by he home team, that the only true winning is losing. Would you expect that someone, ANYONE, would buy me a beer in celebration of my deep understanding of human psychology and intramural athletics?

No. I might even be forced to find my car with a bloody bandana pressed to my nose. But after further review (sorry) it has long been my contention that any player, team or community that is serious about improvement, must lose. Get beat in the first game. Lose and lose ugly. Get curb-stomped, spanked and left laying by the side of the road bruised, beaten and embarrassed.

Then, and only then, will the need for self inspection, analysis, commitment and dedication to duty be called into play, because, up until now it has all been talk. You, we, they, us must take a brutally honest assessment of the current situation, analyze the reasons behind the humiliation, find the weak links, isolate the instances of breakdown and FIX THEM.

In college football, in non-bye weeks, you have seven days to accomplish all that. One of those days calls for recovery, and one for a taper, so in all actuality, the coaching staffs have a just handful of days, to regroup, re-motivate, reeducate and reload. Five days to change the culture.

If this is done successfully with a modicum of tact, skill, diplomacy and compassion, the teams that currently stand at 0-1 have the change of witnessing the true phenomenon of team sports, the gathering of momentum. Everyone must buy in and be willing to sacrifice, to grow up in a hurry, to trust their pit buddies and to shake the stinging loss, the mistakes, the errors and the fumbles from their consciousness in order to get back to the positive approach required of champions.

Everybody gets hit. Everyone gets knocked down. Guts are checked and commitments accessed. All loss is in the past tense. We may have failed once but now we are moving towards success. Growth and effort count if the future is to contain improvement. We call this the personal evolution of the individual athlete along his or her path to establish respect among their teammates, coaches and opponents.

Or, what we also call winning.