Home on spring break in New
England means one thing to my family, yard work. Coincidentally,
yesterday was my birthday and I found myself outside ripping figure 8's
on my Cub Cadet chasing down stray leaves. Even worse, as I sat there,
getting covered in a layer of sand that actually made me look like a
glitter-pixy, I was thinking about how all this related to strength and
conditioning.
But back to my grass-capades. My dad, I, and the wind are all taking
turns moving some leaves. We have a fairly big yard, nothing crazy, but
let's just say that when I was mowing on one side, and my dad was raking
on the other, there was enough room between for the wind to "help out".
Sluggishly, as I sat on my mower, I thought about the implication of
sitting on my spine's health. Then I thought that I probably shouldn't
be sitting at all, and that the riding lawn mower is one of the many
contributions to the obesity epidemic. Then I thought, screw it, it's
not that important, and it's my birthday, ride on.
Mowing forward. Immaturely, I thought that if the wind had not shown up,
the entire job would have been a whole lot easier; a typical reactive
approach. But then I thought about the many times I've heard coaches
refer to importance of having an extensive “tool box” in order to be
proactive. Here are the tools: me and my dad (pun intended and
deservedly so for raking on a windy day). I then realized that we
couldn't hope to control the wind, but in fact, if we had more tools (in
this case, people) we could have handled the wind. Ah, I've heard this
before.
In strength and conditioning, there will always be windy days, huge
gusts of wind, probably even tornadoes. These "gusts" can be anything
that attempts to knock you off course. For example, a new research
study, book, fad training strategy, or just some individual who likes to
argue will all attempt to discredit your ideas. The "gusts" won't always
be intentional. Injured athletes, athletes with different training ages,
equipment malfunctions will always present themselves at the most
inconvenient times.
A selfish, narrow-minded approach to strength and conditioning is like
raking leaves by yourself on a windy day. You may get the job done
eventually, yet inefficiently. Or even worse, you may become overwhelmed
and leave a mess bigger than that which you started with.
