Warping the Mind One Swing at a Time

So I play golf. Play is sometimes a debatable word as sometimes I forget that it's a game and I take it seriously. Luckily these instances are few and far between as if they weren't, well let's just say some municipal courses wouldn't let me back on to play.

Also, I have a personal trainer. I'd like to say we play around but he is definitely working, as he has to not only put up with my charming personality when I'm comfortable, but he has to put up with it when I'm uncomfortable, hot, tired, pissed off, in pain, dreading the results of the workout, or my favorite part, trying to will myself to understand just what it is that he wants me to do.

I bring up both of these topics as they frequently involve me trying to grasp some concepts that force my mind to have to adjust to some new paradigm of thinking that other people would look at and say "no problem."

Now, it's not that I'm slow in the head - well, comparatively - it's just that I don't understand certain things like other people do.

For instance, my trainer, Colin, introduced me to the fun of deadlifts. And it really was an introduction - the weights weren't all the way on the floor, there wasn't much weight, and he really wasn't asking me to do anything that, spoken aloud, doesn't make sense:

"Step into the hex deadlift bar, squat down with the proper squat form, pick it up, set it down."

My brain, on the other hand, heard approximately this:

"Step into this metal cage with weight, squat down while not falling over which you can barely do anyhow, then actually pick the damn thing up again without falling over while being mindful of your back posture and making sure to not throw out your back, then set it back down again while not screwing up your back, missing the platform built out of weights that you can't see because you're supposed to look at the ceiling, oh and don't make a lot of noise or draw attention to yourself because you will undoubtedly become even more self conscious, get distracted, and kill three small children and your trainer, not to mention your dog that you had when you were 7."

In other words, my brain gets in the way. A lot. Wrapping my head around things...is rather difficult. Not really because I don't understand them, as for the instance above I get what's going on and what my trainer wants to accomplish. I've got a working knowledge of the human body that skirts close to borderline inappropriate for a non-medical professional, and my understanding of kinesiology would be better suited towards getting a degree in the field versus my nerdtastic need to understand how things work.

But the brain frequently gets in the way.

I keep driving that point home because I've run into the same issue this morning during a golf lesson. For about 35 minutes a golf pro yelled at me to stop moving my wrists during my swing. Now I understood exactly what he wanted. But translating that from words to applying it was tricky. I was forced under the gun to stop an action that I had drilled my brain into believing was good and change the habit. On the spot.

In other words, I had to warp my fragile little mind and fast, as wasting time with a golf pro is a pricey matter.

I came to the realization that when put on the spot, the mind can warp itself to the occasion if you just get out of its way. Maybe it might take some practice, but forcing the mind to adjust to new situations frequently might be a good workout for it to learn to warp faster.

So, I'm going to challenge myself - and you the reader - to warp your minds a couple of times each week. Learn something new, and learn it fast. I'd suggest golf as it's highly complex (take stick, hit ball...no wait that baseball...), or perhaps baseball, or cooking a new dish on the spot for a loved one, anything to cause you to think fast and accept a new concept.

Warp your mind, and the rest will follow.