The Relativity of Performance

  spring metal 
  Originally uploaded by zen

If we are not moving forward, we are losing ground.  That's the basic premise at any rate.  I was reminded of it this morning while watching a video clip of Paul Chek.  He was talking about how everything is in movement.  Even seemingly still objects are not still.  Everything on the Earth is revolving around the Sun.  And at a quantum level, there is so much movement that we can't even predict it let alone measure it.

So what does this have to do with wellness and performance?  Basically, if you aren't improving, you are regressing.  There is no "maintenance."  But life, and training, would be boring and injurious if this were a linear concept.  We can't keep putting more weight on our bench press every single session until the end of our days.  Eventually, we either hit a wall or something in the chain breaks.  So the alternative is constantly going in circles, letting the achievement of one goal pass in order to pursue a new peak.

This can be daunting, as we generally like to do more of what we are good at.  Success is easy on the ego.  A true challenge can be a bit of a grind at first.  But if we get stuck just doing more of the same, we start moving backwards.  Performance is relative to the previous performance.  And if you aren't moving forward, your moving backward.

I lived through this a few months back when I decided I had to back off of the Trial by Fire Clubbell exercises (Mill, Swipe, Hammer Swing) and focus on something else for a while.  I had become somewhat of an "expert" at these exercises and they were starting to define me in my own mind.  Meanwhile, intuitively I knew there were other things I needed to address.

It was tough but I made my move.  I set off in a completely new direction with new and seemingly impossible objectives.  But consistent work is starting to show concrete promise.  And although my goal of performing a gymnastics planche still seems a bit far-fetched, it no longer feels impossible.

The key to allowing yourself to move on, in my opinion, is understanding that you are not just chasing your tail when you put something aside for a while in order to shore up another area of your development.  When you look at your progress in two dimensions from above, it may look like a circle.  But as soon as you gain three dimensional perspective you see that you are actually working your way up a spiral.  When you see your constant process of improvement in this light, it is easy to imagine that the sky is the limit.