Here’s a few random thoughts from the week:
Subjectivity
While a 24kg Kettlebell is a 24 kg kettlebell and there’s no debate about it, your response to that bell is your own. It is entirely subjective. So while one person uses it to warm up with, an other may max out with it. One person toys with it, another struggles.
This subjectivity is what makes coaching an art and a symbiotic process. Knowing a clients strength and weaknesses can help predict their subjective responses, but they have to let you know in first place.
Staying on subjectivity, pain and injury.
Through our Anatomy in Motion and NKT tests, we have a bit of a reputation for helping people with pain and injury and are often referred to by physiotherapists to provide a rehab program transitioning into regular training. Through this, and the fact that most of our athletic population in Wg-Fit tend to be from a full contact sport, we see that pain means very different things to different people.
While pain science is a developing field, it is fascinating seeing how, it is, from my perspective at least, pointing back to some very old thinking. That thinking that experience, perception and attitude have more to do with how a person experiences pain than anything else. For example, knocking your shin off a table hurts. Knocking your shin off your opponents skull doesn’t. Despite the fact that you kick a head way harder than you bang into a table, your expectations, your perceptions are different because of the context.
Objectivity
A 24kg kettlebell is 24kg’s. It doesn’t give a shit how you feel today, it is 24 kgs.
100 reps is 100 reps. Wether you like it or not.
5 minutes is 5 minutes, you can’t argue with Father Time.
These are objective markers that you can do nothing about. So if you manage to snatch that 24kg bell for 100 reps in 5 minutes, or you don’t. Then you did or you did not.
This is an objective test. And that is highly valuable. It cuts through the bullshit, the opinions, the feelings, the stories you tell yourself. You either got it or you didn’t.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Subjectively it may have felt hard, or you may not have felt like doing it at all. But if you did it, what does that tell you about your subjective thoughts? Does it mean that you can alter them? Does that mean you should question them?
Damn right it does. But never outright ignore them, just question them. Objective tests and acts are a great way to find out if your subjective feelings are valid or not.
And that’s a very random Friday post, I guess the coffee shop was serving good coffee today!
Regards
Dave Hedges
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