Falling In Love With Moving Slow
Ultra-endurance athletes, Jiu-Jitsu, and a path to mastery.
One of the burdens we each face in our individual journey through life is figuring out how to stay present in the moment without rushing to get to the next phase.
When we’re kids, all we want to do is grow up. When we’re old, all we want to do is be young again. Its universal and leads to so much unhappiness, yet we fail to solve the root problem.
Last weekend, I was on a bike ride with one of my mentors and complaining about how I was beginning to feel burnt out in my training. He reminded me that the mountain athletes who accomplished big things were committed to the sport for life because they loved it — not because training hard somehow made it fun.
Duh.
Sure, it’s nice to feel strong and set records, but most training is long slogging days with no crowds or support. If the work isn’t fun, no one could sustainably bear it.
In fact, it’s common in the ultra-endurance world for a new athlete to rise through the ranks and win events for 2 or 3 years, and then disappear.
It’s easier to fall in love with the process than it is to push yourself forever.
In fact, it’s essential.
It turns out that most elite endurance athletes do most of their training at an excruciatingly slow pace, keeping their heart rate low. This builds an aerobic base capacity that affords them more efficient recovery when they do tempo and threshold workouts later on. If they skip the hours in this heart rate zone, they would be prone to burnout, overtraining, and injury.
Let’s be honest, there’s no sport or industry where it’s particularly fun to go slow. We humans are addicted to breakthroughs, activity spikes, and high-intensity-interval-training workouts in the Nike app.
The goal of the ultra-endurance athlete is not to go fast, the goal is to go far.
Similarly, in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, you must wait 48 years after your black belt to even be considered eligible for the grand master’s red belt. 1 The system is set up this way to remove the motivation to strive for it. It helps reminds students to be humble and remove ego and status from their practice.
A funny thing happens when you’re forced to slow down
You see the world more clearly. You see yourself in it. You see others in it. You think more clearly. You can smell, taste, and remember more moments.
You rely less on instinct and intuition and you begin to feel more awareness of your own thoughts and logic. 2
It’s fun to move fast, but mastery comes from moving slow.
And mastery gives us so much. It can give us confidence, the power to change the world around us, and in many cases, economic value.
When we look back at our life from our proverbial death beds, I think we will all want to see special memories, purpose, and well-spent time.
And it seems that falling in love with moving slowly through the world is a damn viable path.
Sources:
1 What Is A Red Belt In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu? by Evolve Vacation
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