Here’s an extract of a text I shared a few weeks ago in our community of students. I thought it was good to share, so here it is: _______
Today, a dream of mine was fulfilled: I started surfing.
I’ve been saying I want to do this for about 8 years now, and 1. Surf isn’t easily accessible in Canada, and 2. there was always something else to take care of.
But I’m not writing this to talk about that.
I’m writing this because I have a some takeaways to share:
So, I’ve been working in this movement field for over 10 years now and at some point, I tend to forget what it feels like when you’re at the very beginning of trying to get good at a movement and how it feels like when things are hard and don’t work out.
Well, today’s surf lesson with the instructor was a VERY good scenario where I got to experience how it is to be a newbie again 😂
However, although I’m a newbie at surfing, I got a learning methodology that now allows me to fast-track my progress when learning new movement skills.
If I had known those tricks earlier in the process, I would’ve been way farther than where I am now. So, here are the main takeaways, hoping that this can help you fast-track your gains:
1. Understand the point of diminishing returns.
Doing something new is hard. It’s normal.
That said, it’s normal to get tired fast. We were in cold water, and the waves were the biggest I’ve ever seen. Things were going well for the first 45 minutes, but after that, the process just got a lot more strenuous.
The cold was freezing my brain, I was getting tired of fighting waves, and the more I kept going, the worse my performance got.
I started pretty strong and was able to ride some waves on the 3rd attempt, but the more it went, the more I sucked, up till a point where I couldn’t catch any waves and I started making stupid mistakes I didn’t make initially.
Now, knowing this phenomenon, I didn’t strictly blame it on me at some point.
What I mean by this is that the reason I sucked at this point was not simply just because I was bad at surfing, but also because I had reached the threshold of diminishing returns.
Therefore, instead of getting frustrated because things didn’t work the way I wanted, I just leaned into it and started focusing my attention on other things that weren’t requiring as much energy, such as wave pattern recognition, board stability drills, etc.
THIS happens ALL THE TIME with training and movement correction, and the quicker you can spot your threshold, paradoxically, the quicker you’ll progress. That’s because you’ll always be “in the zone” of progress, and you won’t get unecessarily strained.
If you approach a session and you’re dead after 25 min, stop, rest, and start again later. Even if your brain is telling you “But it’s just 25 minutes!”.
DO NOT push harder, as it will cause even more strain on your mind and body and will make things worse.
I initially planned on staying an extra hour after the first 1h30, but noticing my state, I decided I’d be done for the day.
I took notes of the things I needed to work on next time and then got back to it the next morning.
This is a life game. Not a home run.
2. Understand the WHY you’re doing things… but DO first.
Sometimes, there are just so many “whys”.
If you try to understand them all, you’ll end up taking a course in engineering and physics. At the same time, you don’t want to dismiss the “whys” altogether.
So, there’s a sweet spot you want to aim for.
When the stakes aren’t high (they generally aren’t in the context of movement enhancement), I think it’s best to just do the thing without thinking too much first, then after a little while, start digging to understand why.
If you do the opposite, you’ll end up doing more mental masturbation and not achieving anything.
Today, I had 15 questions I wanted to ask the instructor when he said it was time to jump on the board. Then I caught myself overthinking and decided to shut up and jump on the board, even if I was completely clueless as to what I was doing.
After a few attempts, I had an EXPERIENCE I could relate to when the instructor explained to me more details and started giving me some “whys.”
In fact, I could appreciate a lot more those “whys” now that I had spent some time “doing.”
That said, I’m not sure I could’ve fully grasped what the instructor would’ve said even if he tried explaining to me the “whys” before I at least tried a few times.
Circling back to the context of movement enhancement, I see many people getting stuck in the endless why and not getting things done. Well, if this is your case and if this is your tactic, you’ll likely just end up losing altogether:
You won’t get anything done. And you likely won’t understand the “whys” either.
So, get things done. Do many reps, and make the reps as good as you can with the knowledge you have now.
At some point, you’ll have a bigger database of experience to relate the “whys” to, and things will make much more sense.
Hope it helps.