Back in long lost days of yore when I learned the increasingly rare skill of mixing records, I stumbled on a learning technique purely by happenstance.
I didn’t start with turntables and a mixer— or records— but a software program that, if it wasn’t the first of its kind must have been very close, and that, back in the 90s, required you to point and click with a mouse. So when you wanted to adjust pitch, volume or whatever, you’d point the cursor at the relevant knob or slider on a visual representation of the mixer or turntable, click and drag ie- up or down and then, following a long, looooong, latency you’d finally hear said adjustment.
So in learning a skill that can make an octopus feel short-handed and in which timing is everything, I was confined to doing one thing at a time, with a delay.
First, you have to ‘beat-match’ the two tracks— get them running at the same tempo and phrasing. You then ‘mix’ the tracks using EQs to bring forward or push back elements of each to best effect— again with latency— before the outgoing track finishes and you’re left with the incoming one alone. And repeat.
If you still have no idea what’s going on here, that’s understandable and I’ve included a brief clip here if you’re interested, but the relevant point is that all things considered, I was essentially attempting the impossible.
I struggle to think of a metaphor but if you imagine trying to drive a car with a mouse you’d be pretty close.
I only knew the beat-match and mix bits I’ve outlined in theory from talking to friends— who lived 5 hours away— and from magazines, so in those pre-internet days, I was muddling through.
I was just trying to do what I could before I had the equipment and could finally start learning for real, but, certainly early on, I had no reason to believe I was learning anything of relevance.
I guess you could argue I was learning the tunes but I could do that in far less frustrating fashion by simply listening to them. Like a normal person. Nonetheless, I stuck at it and, as it turned out I was learning the most important skills of all. Not despite the handicaps and a setup that in no way resembled the physical mechanics of mixing, but because of them.
Most importantly, I was training my ear. When records are well out of synch it’s obvious. It’s called ‘trainwrecking’: an ugly offbeat mess about as musical as a suit of armour falling down the stairs. And sounds it.
A record one-hundredth of a second out while barely discernable, and not at all to an untrained ear, will, one hundred seconds later be a full second out and there goes that suit of armour again. I learned to hear this distinction and make the correction even with the latency.
Making it even more difficult was that I was ‘mixing’ tracks from albums like the Global Underground series that were already mixed—so without long, sparse intros and outros purposed to be mixed with another tune. I had 2-3minutes less time and space for any mix so I learned to work fast.
Such that on that long-awaited day when the decks and mixer finally arrived and I got them all set up— reading an instruction manual, not YouTube— I put on a record — a friend’s, because I still didn’t have any— and the first record I’d ever attempted to mix. And matched and mixed it. And that too is, apparently, essentially impossible.
It wasn’t perfect by any stretch but compared to the crowded already mixed tracks I was used to I now had space and time. I could easily discern when something was out and if it was faster or slower. Best of all, I could fix it. With my hand. And zero latency.
Everything about it was far easier than what I had been doing.
I was so good at anticipating and correcting for the latency of the software that allowing for lesser lag on high-torque turntables was also easy so, in short order, I was then able to beat-match using only the pitch control and never touching the record, an advanced technique called ‘riding the pitch’ that few DJ’s ever learn.
All skills that came from a year of making things very hard for myself but only because I couldn’t jump straight on turntables. Had I done so, I would’ve learned the same way as everybody else and never appreciated the difference.
But this difference was so obvious and —to this day, I can beat match far quicker than anybody I’ve met, including the pros—that now, I look for opportunities to do the same thing: to hobble my learning.
In jujutsu, I try to focus on the principles of a technique before the mechanics, breaking it into component parts to understand the whys and the why not.
This will mean spending entire classes on a grip or a weight shift and early on, is far slower than just going through the motions. But it’s time well spent because later, as with mixing, progress accelerates. Not the tortoise plodding past a sleeping hare, but a tortoise becoming a cheetah and eating the hare for breakfast.
As soon as I understand the relevant principles and basic mechanics of a technique I’ll then bring my non-dominant side up to speed, and then favour it.
Similarly, while I’ll always learn a technique fresh in body and mind— you do yourself no favours otherwise— later I’ll often exercise before class, exhausting myself so I also have to further manage and battle fatigue.
But, while I was lucky enough to stumble on it, and further fortunate it announced itself so obviously, this is hardly a new concept:
Train hard, fight easy.
A martial maxim but you’ll also hear about the guitarist who developed a stretch and finger strength by learning on a guitar too big for them. The futsal player that graduates to football and makes it look as if the world slows down around them.
Instead of this being an esoteric concept or one confined to elites, it’s clear that we should train in a way that makes our real-world performance easier.
That is the point.
But for all the many advantages— and like so much else I crap on about here—you’ll rarely hear it in any fitness domain.
Fitness is never understood as a skill, and there’s a lot of hand-holding, smoothing the path, and making every fitness foray nice and easy.
Before you rush out off to the gym to get on the rings and smash out some handstand pushups, I mean nice and easy in that fitness is a fairweather friend. Everything has to be just right or you can forget it.
So your every fitness endeavour falls at the first hurdle: the sick kid, unscheduled work trip, or surprise party. But the best of the bunch announces itself even before things start and sounds not just innocuous but standard:
- I’ll start Monday.
Right. Well, let’s— generously— say you do. You have close to zero chance of success because either you don’t truly want what you say you do, you don’t believe what you’re doing will get you there, or you don’t believe you will do it.
Because if I have a path to something I want and I know it’ll get me there, I’m starting yesterday. And so would you. So one of these pieces, all critical to success, is missing.
But much of this is further hampered by our societal conditioning around fitness—start and finish, weekday and weekend, on and off — a conventional approach that makes developing a sustainable fitness practice impossible. Not in the I’ll get damn good at this way I detailed above but in a never going to happen way.
That’s why every Leftfield coaching program starts, you may have noticed, on a Friday. Just that simple shift makes things different from the outset. More specifically, it makes the same things—exercise, diet etc. — different from the outset.
I’ve run programs in the past when it was obvious that some had set themselves back a month or more just in the weekend before they started. And it’s not just the weekend before the start. Weekends are typically trouble full stop. People will make progress during the week only to cancel it all out on the weekend. Every week. So they end where they started.
Could this happen later in the week? It could, but it’s far less likely because crossing the Thurs-Fri threshold holds no significance. Of course, Sunday-Monday doesn’t either, in fitness terms, but that’s something we have to learn.
When you look at your program on a Monday morning—or Sunday evening— and stick to it all week, the weekend rolling around seems like a good time to forget all about it. Indeed, about everything in your life is saying you must do that. And you don’t want to be working against everything in your life. More to the point, you won’t be for long.
But when your program cycles later in the week you face the weekend with more spring in your fitness step. You’ve just started another week so you take care of the weekend— the trouble spot— out of the gate. That makes you feel superhuman because you have never done that before. And then, by comparison, the remainder of the week is easy. More routine. So you’re not staggering to the end of your ‘fitness’ week, the closer you get the more confident you become and then you’re ready to go again.
You eat the big frog first. You train hard to fight easy.
But the other reason many fall off the wagon on Friday is that following the program is usually a nightmare anyway and either far too restrictive or intense and, it’s important to note this is NOT what I mean by making things hard — another Leftfield light that dawns early for all Leftfielders.
Not only am I not under any illusion you can cram 3, 6 or 12 months of training into less than half that time, I’m dispelling it because that’s not how the body works.
It’s serious training, make no mistake, but as I point out until I am blue in the face— and you could and probably have read every one of them and still not understand what I’m talking about—everything is better for it. Not just in a go to the dentist you’ll be better for it sense but in a mood and energy and everything sense.
We’re never setting a stage that only guarantees you will yearn for freedoms— and make the most of them— before the fitness suck-fest begins anew.
And is further why we don’t just start on Fridays to best manage these trouble spots. Because the Monday problem is also the New Year problem, so there are a couple of Leftfield offers during the festive season, because it’s the festive season.
And for all the same reasons. To rewrite your conditioning, and turn a problem to your advantage. To prove not that you can ‘enjoy’ your Xmas and still get fit but that your Xmas is, by every measure, better for it: that you can have your Christmas cake and eat it.
The first is—helps you find the answer— coaching A XMAS MIRACLE
It starts this Friday, November 22nd.
The second is —gives you the answer—consulting: A one-time call early in the week beginning December 16th so you’ll be all good to go on, you guessed it, the Friday. I’m not taking registrations for this yet but you can read all about it here: BEFORE AND STILL
As ever, in any case, do or do not, it all only serves to confirm the underlying meta-skill of mixing, jujutsu, fitness and life: whether a record playing, somebody looking to manhandle you or Christmas, something is happening.
Something that is.
You can struggle against it, deny it or put things off until later, it will happen all the same. But these limited ‘options’ can become a world of possibility if instead, you accept, welcome, blend with, and play your part.
Intentionally creating, or using, environments, routines, or times of the week or year that are harder to follow than usual, makes maintaining regular habits or navigating life's challenges feel easier in comparison and builds resilience, adaptability and confidence.
Train hard, live easy.
Enjoy your weekend.
- OLI