Perfect Practice In Your Everyday Life
Have you ever practiced walking? How about standing? Have you ever practiced brushing your teeth? I assume the answer to these questions is a resounding “No.” In fact, I would wager that you think the way you walk, stand, and brush your teeth is just “the way it is” since that is the way you have done it your entire life. What if these mundane tasks in our daily lives have become “the way it is” because we have practiced doing these movements or habits in a specific way for so long that we just accept we are unable to change them? I want to present an idea that has changed the way I view the world and the way I view what is possible – PRACTICE.
Have you ever practiced walking? How about standing? Have you ever practiced brushing your teeth? I assume the answer to these questions is a resounding “No.” In fact, I would wager that you think the way you walk, stand, and brush your teeth is just “the way it is” since that is the way you have done it your entire life. What if these mundane tasks in our daily lives have become “the way it is” because we have practiced doing these movements or habits in a specific way for so long that we just accept we are unable to change them? I want to present an idea that has changed the way I view the world and the way I view what is possible – PRACTICE.
Once you accept that the human body is something that is in a constant state of change, you can start to direct this change using some very complicated internal systems, in not so complicated ways, through practice. Our bodies are loaded with this awesome stuff called myelin. Think of myelin as little information packets. Every time you do something, literally anything, myelin is coursing through your body, forming patterns in your brain of how to do that action. Yes, every time you squat and your knees come in, you are literally creating a brain pattern for your knees to cave in. Do this enough and it becomes a pattern. Patterns become habits and habits lead to you accepting things as “the way they are.”
In a normal day, I will talk about exercise with over a hundred people. Most of these conversations revolve around our workout of the day and the movements involved. The conversation usually goes in one of two ways; “I love burpees” or “I suck at burpees.” The burpee could be substituted with any movement performed at CFPB. The burpee is a great one because it really elicits some passionate hate or love. As a coach, my goal is to challenge you to perfectly practice these movements. I promise you do not suck at burpees. However, you do perform terribly every time they come up because you do not practice the movement correctly. You flop to the ground without maintaining a tight core. You lay on the ground feeling awful about yourself because getting up quickly just sounds so painful. You never use your hips to fire your legs through. You always land on your toes causing an unbalanced landing position where you have to reset every time to go into the jump and you turn a three second movement into a six second movement as your fellow burpee’ers leave you in their dust.
So how do you practice? This can be different for every movement but the idea is to find a number of reps that allow you to practice the movement perfectly. As soon as you get tired or your form breaks down, you stop. I usually couple the movement I suck at with something I am good at. This weekend I worked out with Dr. Rob and Dr. Bill. Both of them are about 6’13’’ and dominate me in wall balls. So what did we do? EMOM 20 minutes: Odd minutes 10 burpees and even minutes 10 wall balls. With their height, wall balls are a joke, so we juice the weight up to 25#. The burpees are harder for them so we pick a number they can do perfectly and practice the movement. Suck at muscle ups? Practice strict pull ups on the rings with a false grip. Maybe even add some pause or weighted dips into your regimen. The Olympic lifts can be broken down into tons of different parts and practiced in many different ways. As long as you are practicing perfectly, there are endless ways to work on things that we find challenging.
The idea of practice is something you can implement in every aspect of your life. Just like getting better at burpees, you can practice being more productive with your time, watching less TV, or maybe even reading a full book. The possibilities are endless as soon as you stop accepting your behavior and actions as something you are stuck with, and realize they can be molded to suit your beliefs. So, have you ever practiced walking? The answer is yes, with every step you take. Ever practiced standing? You practice literally every second of your life. And, have you practiced brushing your teeth? I hope you practice at least twice a day, but sometimes I don’t so I will not judge you. Find the areas in your life you want to improve and start practicing getting better at them. You do not suck at anything; you just haven’t practiced it the right way long enough.
