Movement. It’s all the rage these days. We want to move naturally because somehow we’ve started to move…unnaturally? And so in our olden age, we’re out there crawling and rolling around like babies to hark back to our natural roots. We see babies squat, and we want to do that too. Babies know how to breathe, [...]
Movement.
It’s all the rage these days. We want to move naturally because somehow we’ve started to move…unnaturally? And so in our olden age, we’re out there crawling and rolling around like babies to hark back to our natural roots. We see babies squat, and we want to do that too. Babies know how to breathe, too! (We forgot how to do that as well. I’m holding my breath as I type this.)
Yeah, there’s a touch of sarcasm there. I don’t doubt we’ve somehow regressed from a movement standpoint, but I am such a wild navigator of the Internet to know that — surprise! — not all babies crawl. In fact, some say this whole “crawling” thing might be a relatively new thing.
Amazingly, babies of the Au hunter-gatherers of Papua New Guinea skip the crawling stage altogether. Instead, parents carry them everywhere– without any apparent ill effects. Tracer found that babies were carried upright in a sling 80 to 90 percent of the time, and on those rare occasions when mothers put them on the ground, they were propped up in a sitting position rather than placed on their stomachs. As a result, Au kids never learn to crawl, though they do go through a “scooting” phase of energetic “bottom-sliding.”
And Au kids are not alone. It’s the same in other traditional societies, such as in Paraguay, Indonesia, and Mali. Anthropologist Wenda Trevathan agrees that babies were probably rarely placed on the ground in the past and stresses how easily we can fall into the mythology of judging all human infants based on Western cultures.
– Source
So much for *ahem* “naturalness.”
Alas, the movement of movement continues. Movement itself is almost becoming a sport of sorts, and that’s something I’ve had a tough time wrapping my head around. Somehow I got mixed up in this whole world because I trick.
To be honest though: I trick. I don’t think of “movement” as some heavenly godsend or some duty of mine as a human being. I thought doing flips and stuff was cool, and so that’s what I do. I thought lifting weights was cool, and so that’s what I do. I thought gymnastics ring training was cool, and so that’s what I do.
I say this to remind you: don’t tangle your Schwartz.
If you want to move, then go ahead and move. I’m not going to judge you. But if you’re doing this “movement” thing to lead you to some kind of athletic greatness, you probably need to rethink things. As with most everything, some is good but more isn’t always better. You want to have some capacity for movement, but being a “movement specialist” means you can move, not that you have the capacity for any sort of skill.
This is something I think about a lot because I was once that dude that did everything under the sun to get better at tricking, save for actually tricking. This, I think, is why I suck at tricking so bad and why I’ve thought about it so much.
Below is a little matrix of things that go into a skill — things that I’ve found to be important, at least.
SKILL
1. PSYCHOVISTIBULAR =MENTAL ACUITY, BALANCE, KINESTHETIC SENSE, VESTIBULAR AWARENESS
2. MOVEMENT =RHYTHM, FLUIDITY, PRECISION, SPEED, CONSISTENCY, INTENSITY, AMPLITUDE
3a. NEUROMUSCULAR = TENSION [ RATE / MAGNITUDE / DURATION ], ELASTIC – FRICTION, STAMINA, SUPPLENESS, FLEXIBILITY, MUSCLE “COORDINATION”
3b. ENERGY SYSTEMS =LACTIC – ALACTIC – AEROBIC
For now, I’ll just pretend like I know what the words mean as I explain it a little bit.
I think it’s hierarchical, meaning that if the first bucket faults, the rest faults.
If you’re afraid, then the first bucket (psychovestibular) is out of whack. And if that’s out of whack, everything below it will be out of whack. I don’t care how high you can jump, if you can’t get over the fear of going backwards, you won’t be able to backflip. I don’t care how strong you are, if you can’t balance you won’t be able to express your strength.
Likewise, the bucket below psychovestibular is the movement buckets, which is based off of (*ahem* stolen from *ahem*) Kurt Mienel’s framework. For absolute execution of a skill, that bucket usually has to be solidified, too. You might not be afraid of a baseball, you might have your balance, and you might even be the strongest guy in the world, but if you can’t swing a baseball bat, you won’t be a very good ball player. That’s the second bucket, which is probably best paralleled with technique in any given skill.
The buckets below are important too, so don’t think I’m not saying that’s the case. In fact, I don’t know what I’m saying so maybe I’ll just leave it here for now. Hopefully this makes some sense to you, but the point of it all is that skills are skills and generally need some specialization.
Training for energy systems and strength or any of that stuff is below the importance of technique. Unless, of course, you aren’t strong enough to pick up the bat.