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Landing a 900 When You're Too Overwhelmed to Move.



Today I feel like a dizzy swoony Dinah Washington draped over a microphone singing, "what a difference .... a week makes." Despite the longer lit days and the drawn out dusk hours, the summer is moving at lightening speed. So MUCH is packed into each little grain of sand in our hour glasses. It's not just the smooshed, scribbly penciled in events on our calendar, but the unplanned ones. A planned weekend of rest and recharge was shared with grief and an unexpected loss, an intimate Pilates pop up turned into a huge event and quite the adrenaline spike, our little girl is finding her footing in new camps and new faces during the day, but with sweaty disoriented sleep and growing pains during the night (I swear her shoe size has grown 2 sizes bigger since the beginning of summer!). Soon we're headed to Europe, not just as a light family vacation but to make a bigger decision that would mean a serious transition and change for our family. Which is of course exciting but I'm also getting really sad to think about leaving - and just scared! So yeh, I'm kind of an awkward mess heading into this trip.


Needless to say we've all had quite the growth and rewarding moments this summer, but it wasn't without nervousness, sadness, and being pushed outside our comfort zones. I'm gonna refer to an old blog I did back in August that actually helped me a lot these past weeks. When I needed to be brave and take risks even though it's more comfortable to not do anything. It was an interview with Tony Hawk of all people. Tony, of course, is known for the air he gets under his board, like his famous 900, but also the jumps he makes in his career and as a parent. How taking bigger, scarier leaps is actually safer and more rewarding than a bunch of small ones because you're too nervous to go big. The smaller ones just exhaust you and actually make your process feel stuck, overwhelming, and your landing more dangerous. Even though he's obsessive and insane, I found his advice was really grounding and way of training made a lot of sense. I plan to use Hawk's method as inspiration for our training this week; bigger leaps with longer hang time, and breathing calmly through it instead of smaller, cautious, impatient movements.


Wrote 8.28.2023


"I'm listening to a podcast interviewing Tony Hawk.  As a 55 year old professional skateboarder, husband, and dad, he has quite literally mastered the art of pivoting. I think what a lot of these pro athletes have in common, especially the ones that have their head screwed on straight and longevity in their career, is they thrive in the pathless struggles. They never look up the average time of recovery or how long it takes to improve. They are so deep in that discomfort of being a student, improving and transitioning, they don't have timelines to reference to feel impatient about anything. In some ways not bothering with statistics or comparing themselves to the average numbers, makes it so they actually defy the odds and blow them out of the water. In Tony Hawk's case, he admitted to not being a natural skater and was very awkward when he first stepped on a board, but he was addicted to the learning process. 


Never saw falling as holding him back. He saw it as an opportunity to keep solving the trick like a math problem, and that was that fire that inevitably made him better than his more naturally talented friends. There were so many cases where not landing one trick helped him accidentally solve another trick. When he had an injury that kept him from skating, instead of pushing and shortcutting himself, he would get accurate assessments on his body, temperature checks. Sometimes that meant not skating at all.  Sometimes it meant putting weight on one foot more, angling his footing and adjusting his sail, so he can continue to train safely. His skating looked different and maybe in the moment looked more time consuming, but in the end he recovered stronger and faster than anything recorded on paper. The man broke his femur in his fifties, the longest and pretty crucial bone in the body. Coming back after that requires a combination of masterful self awareness and delusion to norm.  Someone like this only finds a steady equilibrium when they are challenged. A real love for problem solving rather than rushing towards the solution.  

 

This week we're going to play with hang time. Those pauses in space where there are no supports and we can get impatient waiting for the count to end (or start!) and ground to come back. Kind of like when your child has trouble finishing their sentence and you rush to finish it for them. We can do this in our movements, enabling ourselves from developing the words and strength on our own. Let's learn to tack and pivot through a pathless struggles. Be so immersed in the practice we don't even have time to feel impatient or rush a beautifully clumsy process. 


The part of Tony Hawk's interview that really stuck with me is he said he jumps higher as he gets older.  That it's not to show off, it's actually safer.  When your window of gravity is smaller you have less time to prepare yourself for landing. As a mom, wife, freelancer, and someone that loves to smoosh in a ton in a small window this really spoke to me.  I'm also someone that as I get older is nervous to take the bigger risks, make the bigger jump, afraid of how much harder the landing will be when I fall. When in reality it's probably safer to make that bigger leap. Right now I'm falling a whole lot more because I'm not taking that risk.  My everyday margin of errors are so small and there has been less time to set up my landings. Plus Tony Hawk's other reason is, flying higher is just FUN.





Excited to make your bodies sweat, smile, and finding comfort in the uncomfortable leaps."


XO,

Celeste



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