The pain you feel today is the strength you will feel tomorrow.
—Unknown
The Off-Skates Derby Program is in full swing! The ladies are learning how to use the appropriate muscles, loosen up their hip flexors and ways to move their feet quicker. Here is a quick teaser to show you what we've been working on.
“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Traumatic brain injuries are becoming an increasingly heated topic of discussion in sports the past few years, along with initiatives changing the way the are handled in youth sports, revisiting how a football helmet is designed for impact and how brain trauma results in long term effects in professional athletes.
image source from NYPL
In a documentary that airs this week on HBO, the crash reel focuses on snowboarder kevin pierce and his journey from the building of his career to a shot in the 2009 olympics, to the accident itself, followed by the long recovery and acceptance that the person he woke up as was no longer the person he used to be.
Playing any sport has its risks. a traumatic brain injury, no matter how severe, is a permanent injury. It is like no injury your body will ever sustain. When I fell during a practice back in 2012, I laid on the ground in a daze. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized i had a concussion. The weeks that followed were more than frustrating. Not only did I have to stop skating, I had to stop everything in my life. my recovery was slow, taking several months before I could even focus on a single person talking in a crowded room. As an athlete all you can think about after an injury is when you can return to it. For kevin, like any athlete with a dream to be the best, his snowboarding days were far from over. But his determination to get back might overlook the harsh reality that he shouldn’t return to the slopes ever again. because if he did, just one more fall could mean death.
The crash reel airs this week on HBO the 17, 18, 21 and 23rd. for the full listing of times and dates go here.
My old speed coach used always ask us one question.
"How many hours does it take to master a sport?"
He would always answer it with a number that seemed unreachable. But that's the point. You never stop putting in the hours.
It is easy to set goals. But the act of reaching them is the hardest part. You have to commit. You have to put in the time. Even if it means saying you will put in 1 million hours into it. Rule #1 in goal setting is to set a goal that is attainable. But don't be afraid to set one more goal that is just beyond your reach. Why would someone do that to themselves? The constant feeling of failure or impossibility? Because then there is always something to fight for in order to master your craft.
Let's take this girl, Karen Cheng. She set a goal to learn to dance in a year. She started with no rhythm and no background. But she did it anyways. And now she knows how do dance. Really well. Why? Because she practiced every day. Not just once a day, but every moment she had the chance.
As an athlete, I think about strength training all the time. I would lunge my way from my desk to the water cooler at work. Do calf raises at the bus stop. Tighten my core while brushing my teeth. It's not that hard if you don't think about it as work you do in a singular moment of the day. If you shift your focus from the work itself, to the goal in mind, imagine how quickly the time will go by.
So reach for that 1 million hours of practice. If my car can do 1 million miles, maybe it doesn't seem so far out of reach.
Source: http://www.danceinayear.com/