Training Tiger Woods

A couple of weeks ago I had an interesting experience at the gym. Before my weight workout, I played a little with a soccer ball, hitting some passes against the wall and playing with a dribbling technique I've been exploring. Then I did my weight workout, which included a few exercises that target the legs. After I was done, I went back to the gym to play with the ball again. I discovered that I could kind of let the leg hang and then let the whole weight of it swing from my core rather than use my muscles to swing it. It's kind of hard to put into words. It was like I let myself truly feel its weight and then I allowed its weight to swing. When I succeeded, the result was effortless power. It was almost like I wasn't even using my muscles.

I thought back to a time over the Labor Day weekend when I was watching many hours of the U.S. Open and thought I had an insight about how the pros hit overheads so hard, so I went to the tennis courts by my house to experiment. Basically, I tried to feel the racquet heavy in my hand, and then I allowed the weight of the arm and racquet to swing rather than swinging it. I still remember the last overhead I hit that day. I was using an old ball with very little bounce. My smash landed in the service box across the net and then bounced clean over the fence.

I'm still struggling to put this insight--for it does feel very much like an insight--into words. Right now I'm calling it allowing. The experience of it is action entirely without struggle. I'm very new to the sensation, but I'm exploring it every chance I get. As I continue to experiment, I'll share here what I learn.

Have you ever watched a baby learn to walk? They have this bouncy, rolling gait as its system learns about balance and movement. It’s not effortless, but there’s no sense of struggle either. It’s open and easy with a beautiful sense of flow. And then, at the first sign of trouble, they just sit down. You can almost see their brains processing the data, then they are up and moving again. Recalibrating and making corrections as they totter down the carpet. When did we lose that? That love of movement and willingness to explore? When did we become reluctant participants in physical activity?

For many, it goes back to middle school. As puberty began for some and not for others, our bodies began to look and function differently. Our ability to run, jump and play became as different as our complexions and voices. As we were becoming unique individuals, schools were busy teaching us conformity. And one of their greatest weapons in the battle for conformity was gym class.

Back in my day, we had those awful gym uniforms. Baggy shorts, school t-shirts and, believe it or not, jockstraps. We’d play sports, it didn’t matter if you could play or wanted to play. You were expected to play. If you couldn’t hit a softball, too bad. If you were slow and didn’t like soccer, too bad. Act out, and they made you run laps. For many, it became the most hated hour of the school day. Imagine that. For many kids, the most hated hour of the school day was going outside to play.

Probably the worst part was how they measured success: the Presidential Physical Fitness Test. It comprised the mile run, and two-minute sit-up, push-up, and pull-up tests. The more you could do, the higher your grade was. Physical maturity was never considered, nor was body type or any other thing that makes us unique. If you couldn’t do it, well, you didn’t pass. I still have a certificate of achievement for doing well on that test, signed by President Jimmy Carter. I have a similar certificate for maxing my physical fitness test when I was in the Army. Essentially, it was the exact same test. These are the tests that they use to determine the physical fitness of our military and it is nearly the same test they use to measure our children fitness level today.

For many of us, the struggle with exercise and movement that we develop in school follows us throughout life. For example, my daughter, who’s 23 now, received a C in gym class the fall semester of 7th grade. When I asked her why, it turned out that she couldn’t run a pass pattern. They were playing flag football and they were tested on the ability to run certain pass patterns. She couldn’t do it, and she received an F for that segment of class. She asked me why running a pass pattern was important enough to give her a C in PE? I really had no answer for her. I didn’t get it either. I do know that it really upset her though. I also know that to this day, she still hasn’t developed a healthy relationship with exercise and movement. It’s like a part of her said, If that’s what I have to do to fit in, then no thank you.

Overcoming a negative relationship to exercise and movement can be extremely challenging. Doing it with the current athletic model can make it nearly impossible. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be looking at the relationship of struggle and the athletic model.

We're making a slight change to our publishing schedule here on TTW. Publishing on Mondays was getting in the way of us getting that necessary-for-sanity time away from work. From now on, Jerry's pieces will go up on Tuesdays.

Back in December, I got to teach a ski lesson to a 25-year-old former tennis pro. The day before, his first on skis, he'd taken a lesson with another instructor, who had gotten him out of the beginner area and up the chairlift onto the main part of the mountain, which by my measure is a successful first day.

We went up the chairlift and did our first run so I could watch him ski. He showed a body pattern typical of beginning skiers. He could ski in a wedge under control, but had all sorts of unnecessary tension in his body, particularly in his arms--beginners tend to clench their poles fiercely, causing tension to run all the way up the arm--and his torso, which he hunched over.

"Let's try this," I told him. "This is a technique called centering." And, as Jerry has described here before, I had him take a balanced, athletic stance, engage the core, raise the diaphragm without tensing the shoulders, and breathe. After a few breaths, I asked him, "Do you notice how free the breath is, how you can easily bring it up from your base all the way to your shoulders?" He did, without any difficulty. "Now that you have that feeling in your body," I said, "try to maintain a centered breath and let's ski a little."

The transformation was immediate. The hunched torso disappeared. He stood more erect, maintaining an efficient, athletic stance. The tightness in his arms dissipated. And his skiing, which had been tentative, began to flow. His balance was better, his movements were more precise and controlled, and he skied with a great deal more confidence.

He was delighted, and now that he had an entry point into feeling what his body was doing, he was excited to explore. On the next run, I gave him a fuller understanding of centering by describing the movement of Novak Djokovic on the tennis court. "Djokovic is astonishing," I told him. "The way he moves, even when he's running down shots that he shouldn't possibly be able to get: he's always in center." Unsurprisingly, to someone who'd spent God knows how many hours on a tennis court, this made perfect sense. "I don't know if you know this," he told me, "but Djokovic is a fantastic skier."

I learned more about him as we continued to ski together. He told me about his professional career. He had taken one year on the challengers' tour when he was seventeen, but had been unable to make his way far enough into the rankings to even begin to cover the considerable expenses accrued through all the travel. He had also suffered all sorts of injuries--at seventeen!--because of the constant pounding his body was taking from endless practice, high-stress match play, and travel.

Over the course of the rest of the day, I provided him with little technical tips, the kind of non-intuitive things that make learning to ski such a challenge, and he picked all of them up very quickly. He made great strides over the course of the day. Interestingly, he quit for the day not long after lunch, admitting that he had so exhausted himself the day before by holding so much unnecessary tension that he felt he needed to stop early, lest he injure himself.

In this story we can see the difference between the common athletic model of fitness and what we're doing with the principles and techniques we talk about here. The athletic model is, in many ways, built on struggle. It is built on pushing the body through the messages the body sends about exhaustion, fatigue and pain, teaching oneself to ignore them in the drive for excellence. While most of the students I introduce centering to immediately release tension, ski with more freedom, and accelerate their learning, he was an extreme case, as befits someone with unusual athleticism. And yet, as much of an outlier as he was among the people I teach--and thus among all people--even at seventeen, an age when recovery is far easier than it is even ten years later, much less twenty or more, he wasn't enough of an outlier to remain healthy in the face of the demands of a professional tennis career.

Yet so many of us labor under the misapprehension that, but for a lot of dedication and a little luck, we could have achieved similar fitness levels as pro athletes. That while maybe we lacked some of the elements of raw talent that point to a professional career--hand-eye coordination, or raw speed, or whatever--our workouts and our overall approach to exercise could match that of professional athletes. What doesn't occur to us is that the simple ability to work out at that level without injury is a rare talent as well. And yet we apply that approach--pushing our bodies against the signals it sends--to how we work out, practice sports, and even live our lives. How many people do you know who say things like, "I've learned to get by on five or six hours of sleep per night?"

This approach is a recipe for disaster.

Because please notice that that bit about how it's only those talented few who can work out at that level without injury isn't even true. Even among these preternaturally gifted individuals, seasons or more lost to injury is the norm, not the exception. Think of your favorite athletes. How many of them haven't had surgery to fix some damaged something or other? The answer is a paltry few. Now for someone making millions of dollars a year plying their craft, this kind of long-term cost might be worthwhile. But for the rest of us, shouldn't we use a different metric to measure the success of our fitness regimes? Maybe one that leaves us feeling better and having more fun?

Have you ever known someone who was good at everything? No matter what they did, they could do it well. It’s like they received a special blessing at birth and live a very charmed life. I used to have a friend like that. He was something special. I would feel better about almost everything when I hung out with him. It was like his sense of ease and grace was contagious. In my fifty years on this earth, I have only known one person like that. At the time, I didn’t realize how rare and special he was.

For most of us the tendency for struggle has been programmed into our psyche. I learned how to struggle from my parents. I am the middle of five children. Growing up, my father was a career soldier. He served 28 years in the army and retired as a Master Sargent. So we moved every couple years to some new place, rarely developed any kind of lasting friendships, and never had enough money for anything but the essentials. We rarely went without what was needed, but there was never a time when money wasn’t tight and a topic of loud discussions.

There is something to be said for growing up this way. I grew up willing to work hard for whatever I got and knew I would have to fight to get ahead in the world. When life got hard, I would put my head down and fight my way through it. Living this way builds lots of character and resiliency in a person. But it also leaves you somewhat jaded with a very peculiar outlook on life.

Now, it was not my parents’ intention to teach me the fine art of struggle. They were just living their lives and doing what their parents did before them. My mother was one of seven children in a small rural town in Ohio. Her grandparents were farmers and everyone worked the farm as soon as they were able to contribute. My father was the 14th of 18 children. His parents were immigrants from Italy. You can probably imagine the struggles of feeding, clothing and raising 18 children.

Now, I can’t say that I knew either set of grandparents very well. But I doubt that their intention was to teach their children and future generations how to struggle. In fact, my father’s parents came to America to offer their children a better life, like so many of our grandparents did.

I am offering up this brief look into my past to help make a point. Most of us have learned to struggle by watching those that raised us. It wasn’t their intention; they were just trying to survive. If you are reading this, you know that life is hard and will give you all the struggles that you can handle. For many of us, the ability to struggle through and overcome has become a badge of honor. Hey look at me, I survived!

Like the fine art of struggling, living with a sense of ease and grace is a skill that can be taught and learned over time. Whether the lessons come in a classroom, the weight room or a ball field as we learn to thrive in one arena we can transfer that ability to the rest of our lives.

The core idea behind the Training Tiger Woods project is teaching people how to thrive. How to use centering, balance and breath to walk the world with a sense of ease and grace, while unlocking the untapped potential that resides inside each of us.

Back in August, 2014, a few weeks after the various stressors in my life just got to be too much and everything pretty much fell apart, and a little before our first official session, Jerry came to watch me play soccer. He didn't tell me he was coming and I didn't see him. I didn't know he'd been there until he told me about it at our next poker game.

"What did you see?" I asked him.

"I saw a lot of stress," he said. "You say you love the game but you don't really act like it on the field."

He said this matter-of-factly, without any particular judgment, but I remember I had to fight to keep from bursting into tears. It was a raw time, and there's a way that certain pieces of truth can hit you and force you to confront things in your life. I say I play soccer because I love it, but on the field I experience a lot of stress and not much fun. I already knew I had to make substantial changes in my life--indeed, by the time we had this conversation, I was already doing things to drag myself up from the lows I'd fallen into--but here was a very concrete and hard-to-confront reality: even the things I love I didn't know how to enjoy right then.

We're a year-and-a-half removed from that day, and I've come a long way. It's not that I'm incapable of joylessly churning away at things that should be fun or that I don't do it anymore. But now I'm likely to notice when it happens and try to figure out if it's something that can be changed or if it's inherent in the activity. For example, the indoor soccer leagues here in Boulder have games that start as late as 11:10pm. The games themselves are usually fun, but the cost is tremendous--I won't get to sleep until 1 or 2am, and I wake around 7am, so the whole day after the match is pretty much worthless. Now, I tell my teammates that I simply won't play the 11:10p games.

Diving into stress is a pretty common way for adults to approach competition. I don't know if we learned it from our parents when we were kids or from our coaches when we played youth sports or from watching professionals (for whom winning and losing has a very different significance from that of amateurs) or from all of the above, but people put a lot of ego into winning and losing. Most of my soccer teammates treat the game like there's more at stake than just a fun day at the fields. I unconsciously used to do the same. Now I'm trying to break that habit.

It's hardly just in athletic competition that I can choose stress and struggle over pleasure and ease. I've done more grinding out writing than anyone should do in their life, despite a recognition from way back that my best writing tends to come from approaching the words and sentences with a sense of flow and play. At this point, I've built some of that play into the techniques I work with, but I still have a near-daily struggle to trust that my work can actually be fun.

If you think back to the original idea that motivated the work and writing Jerry and I are doing here, you'll notice that what we're talking about right now applies pretty directly to Tiger Woods (and many other professional athletes as well). There's no pleasure or joy for him in playing the game anymore, and the constant grinding pressure he's put himself under has led directly to the injuries and mental/emotional hole he finds himself in now. Jerry and I are both convinced that the only way he'll start winning again is if he finds renewed pleasure in playing the game. Which is another way of saying he needs to learn to play again.

Honestly, that's true for almost all of us.

Two weeks ago Ben wrote about his trip to Vegas to play in the annual soccer tournament. At the end of that piece he surmised that if he had to make the choice today, he would choose not to play next year. That it was hard on his body and just wasn’t fun anymore.

Last year, I went with Ben to the tournament. We had been working together for about six months at that point and one of our major focal points, prior to that trip, was how to play in a three-day competitive event, have fun and limit the negative repercussions associated with playing a tournament. So, I was curious on how things would go.

As a consummate team player and a highly competitive person, Ben seems to bring lots of stress and intensity to the pitch. He knows what the right play is and expects himself to make that play. He’s harder on himself than his teammates, but can get frustrated when this eclectic group of guys fails to play as a team. When we combine that with the stress of playing a minimum of three very intense games in two days, it’s potentially a recipe for disaster physically and energetically for any aging athlete.

In the year between the Vegas trip I went on and this one, Ben had made great strides in controlling the physical and energetic stressors while, increasing his level of fun when playing soccer. Before this trip, we talked about strategies to maximize fun and limit the physical and energetic stress of the Vegas event.

My conclusion after talking with Ben is that it went as well as it possibly could have. He did everything he could to limit the stress. He took care of his body and maintained his sleep schedule. He ate as well as a person can in Vegas, and yet if he had to make the choice today, he would not play in the tournament next year.

Now, I’m not judging my good friend Ben. Until a couple of years ago, I would do the same thing, except my game was racquetball. I would travel to these four-day tournaments and play as many as three matches a day. The stress would be high, I wouldn’t eat well, and I would be wrecked physically and energetically for up to a week after. No matter how accomplished I was in my energy and meditation practice, I couldn’t control the costs associated with playing these tournaments.

So why do we do it? Why do we go out and put our bodies on the line to play a game? Why do we put ourselves in these stressful situations knowing in advance what the potential costs can be?

The short answer is usually because we tell ourselves it’s fun! What Ben and I have both learned is that when you break it down and examine the reality of the experience, it really isn’t. It’s all cost with very little actual benefit.

Over the next few weeks, Ben and I will continue to look at the nature of struggle.

Much of what I've learned about practice and learning came from my experiences learning to play music back in my younger days.

When learning an instrument, once you get past the very rudiments of technique, you'll be given scales and arpeggios to learn. Scales and arpeggios are pretty boring to practice, but any instructor worth her salt will tell you that they're the foundation of musical technique. They're a practice that never goes away. Even concertizing musicians work on scales and arpeggios.

Beginning musicians work on simple pieces of music, too, to begin to put technique into practice. If you played a classical instrument as a child, or if you've ever been to a little kid's recital, you know the kind of pieces I mean, the ones written by music educators and collected into books with names like "Delightful Easy Piano Pieces Vol. 14." They're tolerably inoffensive and completely forgettable. These pieces give students with limited technique the opportunity to do something that is (more or less) making music. These pieces serve as bridges to higher-level pieces, which makes them useful, but they're not something anyone really wants to listen to--again, if you've been to a kids' recital, you know exactly what I mean. You play these pieces until they stop being useful, and then you set them aside.

For some practitioners, interleaving all of this is theory. Studying the subject for underlying patterns can, when used appropriately, facilitate understanding and learning. The risk with theory is that it can "put the cart before the horse," as my dad would have said. People sufficiently committed to theory seem to forget that theory usually arose from practice. When the opposite is true, as with 20th-century serial music, the results might sometimes be intellectually satisfying, but often lack the aesthetic and intuitive grace that drove progress in the field in the first place.

Here's why I'm saying all of this: This week, I participated in an introductory certification exam run by the national certifying association for ski instructors, and I really struggle with the association's methods. For one thing, they have built an enormous edifice of theory around skiing and insist on its importance in learning and teaching. But I do not believe that a vast intellectualized structure of words is how anyone actually learns a complicated physical task. This is not my experience. For another thing, they test us on what they call "skills," which are, I deduce, meant to be the equivalent of scales and arpeggios--exercises to build and strengthen foundation. But I am quite unconvinced that that's actually true. It seems to me--though let's grant that the association's teachers are much stronger skiers than I am, so their opinion can't be discounted--that most of the "skills" they test us on arise from proper technique rather than teach it.

And when the skills do properly apply to learning to ski, the focus can be misplaced. For example, one of the skills that they test us on is the wedge turn, which is the way that beginners learn to turn their skis. On Monday, I watched one of the examiners do a series of wedge turns, and his were the best I've ever seen. He was a paragon of balance and relaxed execution in the movement. Now, the wedge turn is a simple and effective way for beginners to learn to turn, but it's also fundamentally inefficient, which is why intermediates learn to turn parallel and quickly leave the wedge behind.

To achieve such smoothness in wedge turns, the examiner clearly had devoted many, many hours to their study and practice. Now, for this to be worthwhile, the wedge turn has to be the equivalent of scales and arpeggios, that is, something so foundational to skiing technique that it should be practiced no matter how far up the ladder we advance as skiers.

But I strongly suspect that what I witnessed was not the equivalent of a concert pianist practicing scales and arpeggios as a foundation to higher-level technique. I think I was watching a concert pianist who has, for some perverse reason, committed a vast collection of children's pieces to his performance repertoire, analyzed them endlessly, then concertizes them, and then insists that anyone who doesn't do the same isn't really a pianist.

What arose from these practices was a kind of thin-lipped, mirthless approach to skiing. By analogy, I witnessed the dissection-by-theoretical-analysis of charmless children's pieces, their joyless performance, and then a dogmatic insistence that this is the One True Path.

I understand that I'm speaking of a professional certification, and thus it probably should have a certain rigor. But, metaphorically speaking, what's the point of practicing an instrument if the end result is utterly devoid of music?

One of the major problems with pursuing fitness goals at this time of year is respecting the energy limitations of the season. One of the ways to do this is to work on your base fitness level. Another way is to work out so that you are actually building energy rather than burning it. Increasing flexibility does both of these things, while increasing sport performance.

Rather than talk about golf specific stretches, I am going to talk about the mechanics of stretching as a function of the Training Tiger Woods Program.

Establish Your “V”

In a post last year, I talked about establishing your “V” while centering. The “V” is the imaginary lines from your shoulders to your navel when you’re in the centered position. This position aligns your body and allows for an open flowing breath. When stretching, if you are centered and capable of an open flowing breath, you are certain to have perfect form and will be able to improve your overall flexibility.

Intensity

When stretching it is critical to limit the intensity to a 5 on the RPE (rate of perceived experience) chart below.

Rate of Perceived Experience - Stretching

1-2: Hardly feels like you’re stretching; breathing is normal and feels easy.

3-4: The muscle has slight tension. You could hold this position comfortably for a long time.

5: There is an awareness of tension in the muscle. You can hold this stretch comfortably.
Breathing is unrestricted and natural. As you hold the stretch, the muscles begin to relax and the RPE level decreases.

6-7: Muscle is tight. It would be uncomfortable to hold this position for very long. Breathing is restricted.

8-9: At this point the stretch actually hurts. The intensity will prevent you from focusing on the stretch and often causes you to hold your breath.

10: Here you are approaching the point of injury, with the range of motion being forced.

Duration

Stretches should be held for 5-10 centered breaths. By focusing on your breath you will be able to feel when the muscle actually releases.

Specificity

For now, don’t worry about golf specific stretches. Increasing basic flexibility improves overall fitness. Later, this will make sport specific stretches more effective.

Session Length

Begin by picking 4-5 common stretches that you like and know how to do. Hold each stretch for 5-10 centered breaths. Repeat 2-3 times for each stretch. This shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes per day.

Conclusion

I have added stretching 5-10 minutes per day as a part of my goals for the winter quarter. By following the guidelines that I have set here, I can ensure that I am protecting my energy expenditure while increasing my health and fitness levels.

I wrote last week that my goals for the Vegas soccer tournament were, in order, to stay healthy and uninjured, to have fun, and to win the thing. I thought it would be worthwhile to examine how that all went.

Between good luck (no unlucky falls), good will (no one tried to hurt me), and staying in tune with my body, I came home pretty beat up (four matches in two days takes a lot out of a guy) but uninjured, and I've been good about rest and recovery since I've been home to try to keep it that way.

As for winning: we made it through our round-robin group but lost in the quarterfinals, 1-0, on a late-game counterattack.

Which leaves the goal of having fun. Unfortunately, I didn't have nearly as much fun as I'd hoped. It's funny that it took me until my fourth go-round at this tournament to realize this, but it's actually a pretty stressful tournament. All teams play two game on Saturday and another before Sunday lunchtime. That's a tough schedule. And though the games are only 60 minutes long rather than the normal 90, the abbreviated play doesn't help all that much. Yes, it's easier on the body, but it leads to frenetic matches.

Also, many teams get put together just for this tournament, so they lack cohesiveness. Teammates who know each other well know how to rely on one another. Not being able to fully trust your teammates adds to the stress.

In the past, being stressed while playing soccer was normal enough that I didn't particularly notice it. Engaging in stressful situations and calling them fun is just something people in our culture do, and I was no exception. Now, I'm more aware of this approach, and it strikes me as a little odd. And this points to a crucial question: Is it worth it? Will I participate in this tournament again? Right now, I think the answer is no.