Harness the feeling of hitting the safe spot, how does the hold feel, what is the movement feel like in the eddy, how can you grow that sensation? HOW do you feel when you hit the safe spots? The sudden good handhold on a tough climb, the dropping of the headwind as you enter the trees on a long run, the broad eddy after a series of challenging rapids? WHAT is that sensation? Relief. Relaxation, spreading through your body freely and easily. Remember the last time you were stuck there in the thick of a tight spot and then, boom, up came a rest point. You exhale. Not just breath out! Your muscles ease off and you can take a moment to look over what is coming up without the instant need to perform. AND then you look over the next few moves, or down the next winding section of river and spot the next rest point. Take a breath. Inhale, really feel it, and throw yourself into it. "Per aspera. Ad astra. Through difficulties, to the stars." How can you hold onto that sensation of relief? Find the feeling of it, and let it breath calm into your fingertips and spread down to your toes. Even if the moves are only moderately difficult. Spread that feeling through your body. Let relief take over. UNLIKE the sensations of fear, or jealousy, seen as very negative emotions that I have written about up-setting here, relief is something positive. It is something that we want to view and find the mental triggers for, and then learn how to use them as a tool to make ourselves keep on performing. Better. Again and again. WHEN I focus on Relief as a sensation I feel tense climbing holds under my toes, edges that are sliding my toes off, and fingertips that are searching for a positive edge to pinch onto. I hit a big hold, unexpectedly or knowingly, and I feel a wave of relaxation course through my whole arm. It spreads across my aching shoulder and into my leg right down to my toes - which are still on the too small edges. FOCUSING on canoeing, I am edging aggressively and powering upwind. As a coach much of my time when I am pushed is when someone gets it wrong and I have swimmers to deal with. I am powering up wind and counting heads bobbing up and down. Everyone is out and no one it climbing onto the boat. My paddling pace does not slow, the water just becomes 'thinner'. The strokes of my blade are easier, I snap out the paddle and the recovery to the next stroke is swift, not feeling like it is taking forever. I power on, by the time my boat stops next to the upturned boat the swimmers know where to be, what to do when they get there and I have the boat partially out of the water. (Kayaks are on my front deck and empty by the time I stop, on a good day!) RELIEF to me is not a sensation, it is an experience. And it is a state of mind that I want to explode into as many holds on the cliffs, and edging moves between eddies, and bounding uphill sections of my runs as I can. RELIEF is turning for home. Relief is rolling onto the top of the cliff and hitting the plane of Flat. Relief is still water on a blustery day or flooding river. Relief is seeing the beach we will have lunch on. Relief is a lowering of gradient, a sudden drop in a hammering headwind. Relief is an easing of the rain as I push pedals hard and crunch through gears. Relief is a seat and a cup of tea when the weather, the boats, the group and the Gods were all against me. ONE of my tops, by Higher State, has in the neck Per aspera, ad astra. "Through difficulties. To the stars." That is Relief. The moment the difficulty stops, and you realise you are there, in the stars. The stars do not have to be a three minute mile, an olympic gold, a First or A-Star grading. The stars are wherever you place success. And hitting those points of Relief are pure success. Embrace the sensation, let it flow over you. WHAT makes you feel Relief? Take that sensation. How can you feel it now? Practice. Succeed now. Succeed more.
0 Comments
FEAR is a very big word. There is a world to be written about Fear. Here, I address Fear as a navigation tool. How can Fear help you to get to your dreams, targets, destinations? FIRSTLY you have to feel the fear. You have to see what it is that is making you afraid. I get scared when I am climbing up to, or more often above, my gear, stretching the limits of where I feel it is necessary to be, reaching for the next hand hold, then the next, and the clip comes from the one after that! Or, I find the holds are slippery, or turned to slip me off balance and throw me out and spit me off. I get scared running when I hit deep puddles and end up wading and it is dark and cold and I am a long way from home. (This winter has given me lots of chances to get wet and cold and scared.) WHAT is it that I am fearing when I am out climbing? Taking a fall, failing, hitting the wall and being injured, humiliation as I feel I ought to be able to do this route. Yes. Lots of the fear is bound up in my sense of who I feel I 'should' be. I should be able to climb this route, I should be stronger, I should be better. The belief that I should be able to carry on, but do not quite know where the reserves will be coming from. “...being brave is not the absence of fear but rather the strength to keep on going forward despite the fear.” FEAR has nothing to do with stopping. It is choice that makes you stop. Fear has nothing to do with failing. It is choice that makes you fail. Choose to accept the Fear. Choose to take it as a power-full indicator of where you are; emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally. Power-full negative emotions will provide strong signs of what is going on at hidden levels and give you an insight that will not be found if you ignore the Fear, or brush it off. WHAT is it that is making you feel that Fear? Is it risk of mental or physical pain? Do you risk being humiliated? Do you have potential for increased pain and suffering as you go along the route to your end point? AS a runner I often found myself this winter aiming squarely at the centre of the deepest wettest sections of paths so I can get the soaking out the way and then turn my focus from dry route finding to powering on through the rest of the run and enjoying the moments of feeling strong going up a hill, or free pacing back down the other side, or pausing to listen to an owl in the woods nearby, or... Worrying and Fearing about getting wet feet has been pointless. I have found myself wading up to me thighs on footpaths, frequently knee deep, I have crossed fords wading over bridges that are normally three feet clear of the water level. SPENDING my time in Fear about this, or that, would make me turn around and go home. It has not been a comfortable winter. It has been cold and wet and involved a lot of drying out my shoes after the runs. And scrubbing mud from between my toes too! The benefits of facing down the Fear is that I have found empty trails, swollen rivers to watch, by ways and footpaths to splash along and come out the other side to squelch away from. "turn around the Fear..." It has been a bad winter when the running events get cancelled due to flooding, of the course and car park in the case of the Wokingham Half. Meanwhile, I stick to the high ground from time to time. Endure the dry luxury of road running once in a while. And the rest of the time, I suck in the Fear and get my feet wet. HOW to turn around the Fear, find it as a navigation tool and aim to turn it into deeper insight. Using Fear to see what you want takes practice, it is an emotion that we spend our life dodging, avoiding and escaping. LOOK over your favourite sport, look at times you have backed off when Fear came knocking, look at how you could have chosen to turn it around. How you could have reset it to be beneficial, to grow from it rather than shrink to it. |
Archives
December 2017
Categories
All
AuthorAndy Clubley-Moore: joyful outdoor sports activist, writer, father, husband. Lover of life, activity, success and barefoot living. |