Training, setbacks, and practice
Sep. 10th, 2014 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterIn a guest blog post I read yesterday, I encountered a new thought that relates back to one of the things I want to touch upon in this whole 'eat-poop-ride' pursuit, on training and setbacks. The guest blog post I've linked to at the beginning is written from the perspective of someone who underwent a major life transition where she and her husband lost their restaurant and home and then shaped for themselves a completely different, simple homesteading life in the mountains. Clearly, this sort of thing is a huge transition and challenging undertaking, so good coping mechanisms are important. I think the outlined strategies could be helpful to many people across many circumstances, but the strategy that stood out for me in particular was the call to "maintain a regular practice."
This idea is quite different from the basis for training guides. Training guides are goal-directed, while the author of the blog post quotes someone as saying, "[A practice] is something you choose to do on a regular basis with no vision of an outcome; the aim is not improvement, not getting somewhere. You do it because you do it … you have an opportunity to meet your own mind, to examine what it does, its plays and shenanigans.”
And this is an important distinction. Maybe when we experience major setbacks in training, that means its time to go back to the source and rethink what it is that we're doing, return to the "bedrock of self-care from which [we] will grow [our] dream[s]."
This is me getting back out on a bicycle after the PBP, riding by myself without being concerned with how fast or far I'm going. This is me getting out in a rowing shell on mornings when I'm not sure why I'm there, but I still know that I need to go out on the water.
So maybe the lesson is this, in the face of setbacks in sport and life in general. The setback is a reminder to go back and re-evaluate our regular practices. Sometimes the setback is a permanent change, a chronic illness or disability, and calls for a change in practices. But so long as we are living, thinking, breathing beings, we are all capable of regular practices, and regular practices are, indeed, the foundation from which other aspects of our lives will grow.
This idea is quite different from the basis for training guides. Training guides are goal-directed, while the author of the blog post quotes someone as saying, "[A practice] is something you choose to do on a regular basis with no vision of an outcome; the aim is not improvement, not getting somewhere. You do it because you do it … you have an opportunity to meet your own mind, to examine what it does, its plays and shenanigans.”
And this is an important distinction. Maybe when we experience major setbacks in training, that means its time to go back to the source and rethink what it is that we're doing, return to the "bedrock of self-care from which [we] will grow [our] dream[s]."
This is me getting back out on a bicycle after the PBP, riding by myself without being concerned with how fast or far I'm going. This is me getting out in a rowing shell on mornings when I'm not sure why I'm there, but I still know that I need to go out on the water.
So maybe the lesson is this, in the face of setbacks in sport and life in general. The setback is a reminder to go back and re-evaluate our regular practices. Sometimes the setback is a permanent change, a chronic illness or disability, and calls for a change in practices. But so long as we are living, thinking, breathing beings, we are all capable of regular practices, and regular practices are, indeed, the foundation from which other aspects of our lives will grow.
