Posts : 1748 Join date : 2008-04-17 Age : 58 Location : Washington DC
Subject: SKATER'S HEART Thu Feb 18, 2010 2:03 pm
my best student's are overgrown kids--technically adults, who skateboard and buy into all that quasi-anarchy. not interested in that angle. what makes them the quick-study, the fast learning curve? they think like african wild dogs, and not lions. they don't assume prowess of an individual [yeah, i'm generalizing, but the rhetoric guides and influences...so it flavors the outlook of so many i've met].
they expect 'back-up' and all other things that don't reak of "you-go/i-go...just you and me, fair fight". the ego of that is gone, but another massive, "i write my own rules and will get you somehow" ego is there in spades. it lends to a superior [thus far] training ethic. let go of the "i win/you lose", and enter the "strong showing". the "i don't care if i win or lose, you're going to have a chunk taken out of you".
how liberating is it to think like that, suddenly the stop gaps are off. the inhibition is gone. laugh if you lose, laugh if you win. it's mental toughness i'm talking about and i see it over and over again. some of the guys i've taught have come back with stories that are part their hard work in training, and just part, "okay, lets go...enough talk".
it's amaizing just how far that can take an individual. the danger, of course, is the incubation period of positive fight outcomes flavoring one's outlook so that one now expects only to win. what now? if one loses with a massive ego, they stand the risk of feeling like they've fallen off an emotional cliff all over again. it's the skater version of "white belt mind" that has to be nurtured and kept.
the: "here i am, i don't change...you'll always have trouble with me because i have nothing to lose" mentality.
it is a piece that is admirable--not swallowing the whole skater package, even as i used to skate...i couldn't give a rat's arse flea about the political quasi free warrior stuff. but i will always have a healthy respect for the fighting ethics that i've seen in higher numbers from skaters.
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