Your Training Needs More Romance

Don't get caught up in the complexities of physical training and get lost worrying about which program you should follow.

If you're already analytical, you'll just go full blown neurotic. Focus instead on finding the things that spark joy in your heart. Find the Marie Kondo version of physicality. Move towards what sparks your soul.

The things that you really love.

Why do you want to move?

What is it you’re seeking in the thing?

In the climbing, the fighting, the dancing, the lifting?

Is it connection?

A feeling of accomplishment?

Is it a deeper breath or the wind on your skin?

Is it the wonderful places you go within yourself while you’re doing Your Thing?

Is it drinking a hot chocolate or lighting a candle, playing your favourite tunes?

Is it hanging out with your dog and ripping a handstand?

Is it the feeling that you can achieve and become something which you previously thought only existed in storybooks and on posters on the wall?

This is what movement is.

It starts with a genuine outflowing desire.

The activity is just the way that desire expresses itself.

It’s the human, felt aspect of becoming and expressing our potential, that leads us directly towards the types of movements that are good for us.

And when you choose an arena and explore the edges of your potential there, you’ll naturally stumble towards what you need — because you'll be confronted with deficits.

The activity isn’t necessarily good for the body, at first.

But it’s good for you. The being…

It gives you a reason to pour love into your body, and to gain the skills to know how.

Sometimes there’ll be significant obstacles. Injuries, even. But nothing some curiosity, joy or an unreasonable dream can’t fix. Equipped with these, you’re fine. The fun keeps you sane. Because then you can bolt on a particular training system or protocol — and apply it to the thing that you're not so good at in order to improve — without that system owning your thinking.

Which means even more fun. Even more wind in your hair. Even more hot chocolate.

The more you orient towards aliveness and beauty in the simple things, the easier it became to show up consistently and optimise the details later.

When the desire is built, you’ll show up consistently and imperfectly, and increase your error rate.

This is great. Make errors and make them consistently.

Consistent errors are perfect errors, because you can fix them reliably with one tweak to your process.

But you can’t optimise a process which hardly exists in the real world.

The problem is, people start by obsessing over the details, thinking about which system is the right one, thinking about which system has been best marketed online

It’s Punctional Fatterns! It’s Goata! It’s another gloata!

It’s a floata and it won’t flush because it’s full of hot air!

Bro. You just need more experience moving in a wider variety of ways and having fun while doing it.

So many of these systems just want disciples. Parrots. People willing to stuff themselves into a box long enough to become cuboids. And outside of the head doing the mental gymnastics, no original life is being lived. Someone who knows how to live for joy would immediately see the sad little spell being cast.

Movement isn’t the issue. An appreciation for nuance and detail aren’t the issue either. Rigid identification with certain ways of doing things — that’s the issue. And it happens when we get lost in the weeds rather than touching life’s erogenous zones and being touched back.

End of the day… if a method creates strong, thriving humans who can move well, it has a place. And if it does the opposite? Throw it in the bin.

Fuck the dogma.

Study the art of loving life, not fixing yourself.

The dogmaitc approach leads people who are already slightly analytical into fuller neurosis and trying to optimise something which can only be lived and done imperfectly.

That's the best way to get good at things. To just live them and do them imperfectly again and again. To find your weaknesses, find your blind spots, and then become strategic and methodical in addressing those deficits. And to always, always remember why you started. Keep the spark alive, my friend.

Jack