Two things have stuck in my mind in a good way. They really help me to figure out what to do next or where I’m going wrong. One is “Follow through.” Whether it’s a golf swing, bowling toss, tennis volley, or stroke in swimming, you only get the full benefit if you follow through. You don’t stop right at the moment of contact or release. You don’t measure the arc from top of swing to touch or release of ball. You use your effort to move all the way through the arc, all the way through the full range of motion, so that the focus of your action gets the maximum energy, the fullest intent, the most expression. If you aim for just that moment of change, then the best parts of the action are lost in moments before you intend to use them. They will be lost in the getting there and your results will be less than stellar.
The second thing that sticks with me is “Stick your butt out!” The most common phrase I hear a the gym to this day. We don’t use our glutes and ham strings enough. We don’t trust the back of our front to have our backs. LOL We are so forward thinking, we forget we have a hind end and that it can and does do more than provide a cushion for when we’re sitting. Our back-end allows us the freedom to deal with things in the front. All that weight and structure and hydraulics back there allows our arms the freedom to do things they otherwise couldn’t. Yet we pay so little attention to our ends that when we need them, we’re not even aware of them or what they can do. In fact we try to keep them tucked away and get ourselves into all kinds of postural difficulties.
These two things stick in my mind because they are indicative of how people struggle with things in other aspects of their lives. We stick in situations that cause us misery because we’re afraid of ending things, we’re bad at it, we don’t know how, we don’t like the results. We’re clumsy and awkward and it’s too scary so we avoid it. If we do manage to end something we have no grace at it. It’s like we’ve returned to grade school and gym class. We try too hard and hurt people as the ball goes wildly in the wrong directly. We try too little and it goes no where. We try and miss the ball completely. We don’t follow through on the swing and so what we get is an utter mess. Hence fulfilling the self-fulfilling prophecy of our being bad at endings. What we could do instead is pay attention both forward and back. Recognize there are endings built into the beginnings. Practice our swing by thinking about them as graceful and beautiful things instead of trials to be endured or cheese graters we’ll have scrubbed against our skin. The more we welcome them as part of the game, the better we’ll get at them which is not an invitation for more endings to occur, but a graceful way of accepting them.
