Ladies,
Excuse a tired old horse. The long train of winding thought about to pour through these tracks of virtual ink may seem disconnected, or at the very lease cobbled together in some inscrutable pattern. Be brave! In the end, perhaps, the train will pull into the station of reason, and quite possibly usable wisdom.
Those who've been around this team a while have no doubt heard it expressed, "One of the best ways to win a fight is to dictate the terms of the conflict". It's a core tenet of an ancient Chinese warlord by the name of Sun Tzu, author of "The Art of War" - essential reading for any military leader.
Ignoring the cliche of comparing athletics to war for just a second, it might be useful to ply the existential application a bit deeper. What is war? What is athletic competition? Boiled down to their essence, it's when people want the same thing and are willing to go to extreme lengths to get them. Simply put, these are venues when extreme selfishness is not only a virtue, it's glorified.
Wow.
It may sound mercenary, but the absolute truth is each and every one of you want the same thing. You want to have your hand raised in victory above all others, team members and opponents alike. You can't all have it; that's a mathematical certainty. Only one person can win. Yet you engage every day in the act of pursuing this goal, to be the winner. This would seem to be insanity defined, and it would be if things were so simple.
Yes, you all want the same thing, yet you also all understand none of you has a chance to get it on your own. This is the foundation of cooperation, the symbiotic relationship of shared need and benefit. Day by day you work side by side, everyone helping everyone, but it's understood that when race day comes, everyone goes for the win. Point blank, that's the way it has to be. Nothing personal, no hard feelings, but there can be only one.
Sun Tzu's most famous tenet of war is quoted as, "To know your enemy is to conquer him". The obvious application would be to learn the strengths and weaknesses of your opponent and then work the situation into your favor. Dictating the pace of the race is a great example, as are other tactical moves like sprinting over the top of a hill, surging late in a race, etc. There is however another enemy to be considered.
You.
That's right, the truth is you are usually your own worst enemy. You are the one in charge of you, and often you have failed to do something necessary or misapplied your energies or made a tactical error mid race, or simply broken down mentally. Your mind is your most powerful weapon, but if you don't use it properly, it's like turning the weapon upon yourself.
You must be able to think throughout a race. Clearly. You have to be able to assess the competition, review your race plan, measure your effort against that plan, monitor your form, urge yourself to endure the pain, be sensitive to changing conditions and adapt, decipher clues of weakness around you, all the while focusing on the goal - to win.
One thing is true; your mind will quit before your body does. Your body is dumb, it only does what the mind tells it. There are certainly limits to what the body will do, but mentally most people have a buffer zone, the difference between what you can do and what you are willing to do. Most of you have probably been in a situation where you knew you could do more, but you chose not to. THAT is the part of the mind that has to be conquered.
That brings us back to the body. Biologically, our bodies prioritize need at all times. Energy is distributed to where it is needed, but under times of stress the body will begin to limit energy from lower-prioritized areas and martial it for the most necessary regions. For example, this is why most of you can't eat and run at the same time. Blood that would be necessary for digestion is shunted away to the muscles so they can sustain effort. That's why your muscles pump up when you exercise - more blood is more oxygen and glycogen in the cells.
Put your body under enough stress, and another very vital organ begins to lose blood flow... your brain. Your higher-level thinking processes begin to take a hit, and focus becomes far more difficult. Some of you may have even run hard enough to experience tunnel vision. Instinct takes over at this point, overriding your cognitive processes. Now this is very important - whatever you have imprinted during your training is the most likely outcome at this point. If you have fought for everything in practice, you will fight for everything at this moment. You won't think about it, there won't be a decision, you'll just do it. The wild animal takes over.
While there is a time and place for the animal, your best race won't start there, nor will it be there mid race. You have to be able to think. How then to take advantage of both? Easy - "To know yourself is to conquer yourself". By the time we get to State Series, you need to know yourself so well that you know exactly where that line is between the thinker and the animal, ride that line, the very edge, until it's time to unleash the animal. When you can do that, you have reached the apex of what your body and mind can do. That may or may not place you on the podium, but it will have been an absolute victory in your private war, and in the grand scheme of things a far more substantial step in the development of you as a complete individual.
Excuse a tired old horse. The long train of winding thought about to pour through these tracks of virtual ink may seem disconnected, or at the very lease cobbled together in some inscrutable pattern. Be brave! In the end, perhaps, the train will pull into the station of reason, and quite possibly usable wisdom.
Those who've been around this team a while have no doubt heard it expressed, "One of the best ways to win a fight is to dictate the terms of the conflict". It's a core tenet of an ancient Chinese warlord by the name of Sun Tzu, author of "The Art of War" - essential reading for any military leader.
Ignoring the cliche of comparing athletics to war for just a second, it might be useful to ply the existential application a bit deeper. What is war? What is athletic competition? Boiled down to their essence, it's when people want the same thing and are willing to go to extreme lengths to get them. Simply put, these are venues when extreme selfishness is not only a virtue, it's glorified.
Wow.
It may sound mercenary, but the absolute truth is each and every one of you want the same thing. You want to have your hand raised in victory above all others, team members and opponents alike. You can't all have it; that's a mathematical certainty. Only one person can win. Yet you engage every day in the act of pursuing this goal, to be the winner. This would seem to be insanity defined, and it would be if things were so simple.
Yes, you all want the same thing, yet you also all understand none of you has a chance to get it on your own. This is the foundation of cooperation, the symbiotic relationship of shared need and benefit. Day by day you work side by side, everyone helping everyone, but it's understood that when race day comes, everyone goes for the win. Point blank, that's the way it has to be. Nothing personal, no hard feelings, but there can be only one.
Sun Tzu's most famous tenet of war is quoted as, "To know your enemy is to conquer him". The obvious application would be to learn the strengths and weaknesses of your opponent and then work the situation into your favor. Dictating the pace of the race is a great example, as are other tactical moves like sprinting over the top of a hill, surging late in a race, etc. There is however another enemy to be considered.
You.
That's right, the truth is you are usually your own worst enemy. You are the one in charge of you, and often you have failed to do something necessary or misapplied your energies or made a tactical error mid race, or simply broken down mentally. Your mind is your most powerful weapon, but if you don't use it properly, it's like turning the weapon upon yourself.
You must be able to think throughout a race. Clearly. You have to be able to assess the competition, review your race plan, measure your effort against that plan, monitor your form, urge yourself to endure the pain, be sensitive to changing conditions and adapt, decipher clues of weakness around you, all the while focusing on the goal - to win.
One thing is true; your mind will quit before your body does. Your body is dumb, it only does what the mind tells it. There are certainly limits to what the body will do, but mentally most people have a buffer zone, the difference between what you can do and what you are willing to do. Most of you have probably been in a situation where you knew you could do more, but you chose not to. THAT is the part of the mind that has to be conquered.
That brings us back to the body. Biologically, our bodies prioritize need at all times. Energy is distributed to where it is needed, but under times of stress the body will begin to limit energy from lower-prioritized areas and martial it for the most necessary regions. For example, this is why most of you can't eat and run at the same time. Blood that would be necessary for digestion is shunted away to the muscles so they can sustain effort. That's why your muscles pump up when you exercise - more blood is more oxygen and glycogen in the cells.
Put your body under enough stress, and another very vital organ begins to lose blood flow... your brain. Your higher-level thinking processes begin to take a hit, and focus becomes far more difficult. Some of you may have even run hard enough to experience tunnel vision. Instinct takes over at this point, overriding your cognitive processes. Now this is very important - whatever you have imprinted during your training is the most likely outcome at this point. If you have fought for everything in practice, you will fight for everything at this moment. You won't think about it, there won't be a decision, you'll just do it. The wild animal takes over.
While there is a time and place for the animal, your best race won't start there, nor will it be there mid race. You have to be able to think. How then to take advantage of both? Easy - "To know yourself is to conquer yourself". By the time we get to State Series, you need to know yourself so well that you know exactly where that line is between the thinker and the animal, ride that line, the very edge, until it's time to unleash the animal. When you can do that, you have reached the apex of what your body and mind can do. That may or may not place you on the podium, but it will have been an absolute victory in your private war, and in the grand scheme of things a far more substantial step in the development of you as a complete individual.
No comments:
Post a Comment