So we were looking at cultivating curiosity as the counterpoint to an unwarranted surety in this (all things fitness) domain that leads to behaviours with no physiological basis, and, worse still, killing off further enquiry and possible development.
Making the case that in the absence of a more-often-than-not reasonable state of fitness in our lives, we might at least entertain the possibility we have something to learn in this regard.
Failing to see fitness as a skill condemns our fitness efforts to fits and starts. Curiosity is the precursor to the promised land of flow but first, we have to stay in the game, and as chief flow guy Steven Kotler says:
We're all capable of so much more than we know. Motivation is what gets us into the game. Learning allows us to continue to play. Creativity is how we steer and flow is how we amplify all the results beyond all reasonable expectation.
Learning allows us to continue to play. So that we don’t return to the couch for 3-6 months before dusting ourselves off again, so we can go and not-learn the same thing again, in the same boring dismal doom loop.
I have nothing to learn. And so I learn nothing. Repeat.
And if that’s not already a problem enough— and it is— should we decide learning a thing or two here is a great idea, the chance of us then looking anywhere useful is vanishingly slim and following another spin on the fitness or dietary industrial complex we’ll be headed back to the couch anyway.
And it will always be so. Until you come to the TLDR conclusion: the best source of your answers is you.
And when you understand that, you can learn from anybody.
YOUR BEST TEACHER
You do this first by optimising the learning process. I’ll get into this side of things in more detail next time but, for now, just imagine the best teacher you ever had and treat yourself with the same courtesy and respect. One part compassion and one part never letting things slide about covers it, right?
Then seek out expertise, sure, but you should:
1. be certain it IS expertise. And;
filtered through your own experience.
Their (expert) insistence on number 2 is often indicative of 1. In any case, if you get 1 wrong, your observance of 2 will minimise any harm. Noting I don’t mean harm in terms of physical safety. Assuming common sense, fitness safetyism is overblown — and massively so when compared to inaction. But you can waste time and money.
Results should be immediate (not aesthetically but subjectively) and obvious but, most importantly, unless wasting time and money is the idea, sustainable. If you’re not sure about that, return to step 1.
But nor is expertise, strictly, necessary and learning from somebody a step or two ahead is often more effective because they have a better understanding of what your struggles are. The curse of knowledge means the expert can overlook what they find easy. Help can come in many forms and many stages. Broadly speaking consider the roles of coach, consultant and mentor.
Not a trainer. A trainer writes and/or ‘trains’ somebody through a program producing a wholly predictable outcome in a given timeframe because all other variables (including adherence) are controlled for— as with professional athletes, actors or soldiers. Unless you can similarly control all other variables then neither a trainer nor an (exercise or diet) program that doesn’t allow for these inevitable vagaries will be useful. Noting this also makes a program the least valuable piece of the puzzle when even the crudest —military boot camp— produces fantastic results. If you follow it.
Look elsewhere:
A coach will help you find the answer yourself.
A consultant will give you the answer (after you tell them)
And a mentor will tell you what they would do if they were you.
And if you’re incredibly fortunate, you might (cough) stumble on somebody who, at different times, wears all 3 of these hats. But we must make a further distinction between knowledge and skill.
A coach needn’t be able to do 'the thing' as well as you. Or even at all. As made most obvious in elite sports, coaching ability is determined by how well they can elicit the desired performance. Is there any coach in elite sport that can do what their athlete does? Often they never have.
But nor is expertise strictly necessary. Or desirable. I’ve been meditating for 25 years, but only went on my first retreat recently— described by the master himself as ‘Vipassana kindergarten.’ So I do not consider myself (anywhere close to) an expert. Beyond very general pointers, I can only be helpful because of my general knowledge of meditation as opposed to my skill in it.
What I offer in this regard would not substitute for expert instruction but I could point you to:
S.N Goenka
Alan Watts
Douglas Harding
Richard Lang
Sharon Salzburg
Pema Chadron
Daniel Goleman
Thich Nat Hanh
Joseph Goldstein
Sam Harris
Ram Dass
Daniel Ingram
To name a few off the top of my head. Now, if you haven't heard of even one of those names, then— if meditation is something you're interested in —already I've helped. But I have also done so in a (non-expert) manner that none of those experts can, because each of them will, in some respect, lead you down their path.
Not yours.
Again, I’m not suggesting that’s a bad thing, I am saying that in any discipline it’s often a specific and individual turn of phrase - i.e the way one teacher explains something you might have heard described hundreds of times from one or multiple other teachers— that unlocks new vistas, making our success a product of width as much as depth.
Fitness is far less esoteric but in any and every case, we’re best to first—and then periodically— cast our net wide. And should you do this with credible fitness and diet sources you’ll find consensus. But further understand that readily available expertise is itself a problem and not only one of curation and sorting the wheat from the chaff. Like anything on tap 24-7, 365 we value it less.
My retreat experience and years of practice would have made me a meditation expert in my hometown 30 years ago and had I been fortunate enough to have received such advice I would have followed it. To the letter. But when I can get a second, third and ultimately infinite opinions— in my pocket— I’m just as likely to keep looking. Especially when looking seems useful. I can even keep looking until I find what I want to hear.
So then I’m coaching myself anyway. Only in the worst way possible. Because if you’re set on not changing you don’t need permission, just ask yourself the most useful coaching question there is:
If you were coaching you, what would you advise?
But, a word of warning, don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to because this immediately creates enough detachment that your problems and solutions may well be obvious. And sometimes revealing an unwillingness to do anything about it.
Expertise then is no pre-requisite for instruction. The sole qualification for any teacher is only that they are willing to teach. And sometimes not even that.
You’ve seen the T-shirt:
WHAT WOULD JOHNNY CASH DO?
The Man in Black might not be too useful in the fitness department but your imaginary mentor can come from anywhere and this serves the same purpose as the self-coaching question: a tool to shift perspective from looking out to looking in.
But if you are truly interested in learning, you’re best to seek out somebody who knows less than you with respect to BOTH skill and knowledge. Not because paying attention to how not to do something is as instructive as its opposite but because this affords you the best learning method of all: the opportunity to teach.
When one teaches, two learn.
Robert Heinlein
If you learn with the intention to teach and then explain it to somebody, you’ll quickly discover what you don't know, and get a better understanding of what you do. But here too, the Protégé Effect will still do its thing if you teach yourself.
Because when the student is ready the teacher will appear.
A saying that, as a kid, had me long lamenting my apparent unpreparedness for secret ninja training. Believing it to be about teleporting teachers I guess I wasn’t. I was yet to understand that when you can learn from those who know even a tiny bit more than you, or not, or less, then there are teachers and opportunities to learn everywhere.
But now… now I understand, Master Splinter.
… Master?
Master?
GODDAMN IT!
Anyway, it’s really not hard to find good help these days just look in a mirror. And if you don’t believe that you can prove it to yourself because —for all the reasons outlined above— peer-to-peer coaching will be a feature of the new Leftfield Training course.
Not a feature. The feature.
After all, it’s all very well that you come to integrate fitness, nutrition, sleep, and mindset into a cohesive practice that feels natural and sustainable.
A flexible and adaptive framework that adjusts to the individual’s progress and life circumstances ensuring its ongoing relevance and effectiveness, no matter the starting point.
Even when it incorporates all the best techniques of behaviour change and habit formation.
It all pales next to not just the knowledge and skills to self-coach and troubleshoot but the experiential practice of doing so across a multitude of situations.
It’s an extension of an earlier model of group coaching when it became obvious that group interactions— the variety of, and shared, experience and troubleshooting between participants— proved more helpful than 1:1 coaching. Given the Leftfield ethos of doing nothing for somebody they can do themselves it’s taken an embarrassingly long time to recognise this obvious upgrade.
Each week you’ll be set a task specific to you and your circumstances but— following a framework— the cohort will do the coaching, mentoring and consulting. I’m available for anything people don’t feel comfortable sharing but, other than that, I’ll be on the sidelines and chiming in only to keep things on track where necessary.
Unlike a program, a fitness practice doesn’t end when a problem arises: it’s all problem-solving. And it always will be.
And when you know you can identify any problem and correct it, you can do it all.
This is THE skill.
But, supremely valuable and life-changing though it is, we’re not in the clear just yet and it all still hinges on one more sticky little proviso. So, unfortunately— in your best interests, of course—next time I’m going to be knocking you all down a necessary peg or two. No more Mr Nice Guy.
And you ain’t gonna like it.
Quit your whining.
- OLI