Reflections on a Life in Training
FAVORITE QUOTES
I learned as a child not to trust in my body
I've carried that burden through my life
But there's a day when we all have to be pried loose
Bruce Cockburn "If It Was the Last Night of the World"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02TUsZzF6es
Repetition is the mother of skill.
Yogi Nora (and many others)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD_vAoxFZ80
This brings us to a few final important points about intensity. Intensity and results are directly proportional, but intensity and comfort are inversely proportional. Choosing for greater intensity is choosing for more fitness, but, also, greater personal sacrifice in the form of discomfort. Expecting elite fitness from comfortable efforts is naïve, while going too fast is dooming. No formula can sort these issues out for you; the intuition of athletes and coaches everywhere has smartly outperformed all formalized approaches. Knowing the taste and feel of intensity is no less than coming face to face with the real cost of elite fitness.
Greg Glassman, "A Beginner's Guide to CrossFit"
http://journal.crossfit.com/2004/10/a-beginners-guide-to-crossfit.tpl
Even beyond this, for CrossFitters, highly developed human performance is art and personal participation in these arts, at all skill levels, is a transcendent experience.
Greg Glassman, "Why Fitness"
http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/23_04_why_fitness.pdf
If you want a simple way to remember the relationship between asana and concentration (dharana), it is this: If you learn a lot of little things, one day you may end up knowing a big thing.
B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life
I can't give you kung fu. I can only teach you kung fu moves. Kung fu comes from your own practice. It's not something I give you. It's the same as me lifting 200 lbs. when you can lift 100 lbs. I can give you pointers so you can increase the weight . . . . I can teach you the method; what it is you need in order to gain more strength, but I can't give you lifting 200 lbs. . . . . So with kung fu, I can't hand it to you.
Master Liu Xiaoling, private video clip
The ideal student is one of middle age because he accumulates knowledge and experience as he matures. Confucius said, “A person at forty will not be diverted.” This originally referred to ethical cultivation, but can be applied to any kind of learning.
Robert W. Smith, Pa-Kua: Chinese Boxing for Fitness and Self-Defense
As you take great pains to learn, continue in devotion in what you have learned. Learning is very difficult, but it is twice as difficult to keep the ground gained. Soldiers say that it is easier to win a battle than to occupy the territory gained.
B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life
When I don't work out, my body feels worthless.
Rich Froning, First: What It Takes to Win
Don’t be a lazy person.
Me (my personal mantra)
The next pitch I throw may be the best pitch of my life.
Phil Niekro advising Tim Wakefield on what he should say to himself while on the mound as retold in the documentary Knuckleball!
Don't worry, I'll play angry music - it will be ok.
Coach Marcos Hernandez, before a particularly challenging WOD
Crawl when you have to, dance when you can.
Pete O'Day (my Husband)
Propositions can be true or false. Your body is the testing grounds for these methods. . . . Once you have learned from yourself what these methods mean, they will have fulfilled their purpose. Useful methods do take effort, as do useless ones, but the effort of hours or even minutes can yield dividends throughout your Tai Chi practice. In any event there is no bull in Tai Chi Chuan, your ability is soundly grounded in what you have done to acquire it.
Robin Johnson, Stalking Yang Lu-Chan: Finding Your Tai Chi Body
I can't complain but sometimes I still do.
The Eagles, Life's Been Good
If it's easy, it's probably not worth doing.
Me (another personal mantra)
Please, remember me
As in the dream
We had as rug-burned babies
Among the fallen trees
And fast asleep
Aside the lions and the ladies
That called you what you like
And even might
Give a gift for your behavior
A fleeting chance to see
A trapeze
Swing as high as any savior . . . .
Iron & Wine, The Trapeze Swinger
Helena:
Oh, when she’s angry, she is keen and shrewd!
She was a vixen when she went to school.
And though she be but little, she is fierce.
Hermia:
“Little” again? Nothing but “low” and “little”!—
Why will you suffer her to flout me thus?
Let me come to her.
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Never so weary, never so in woe,
Bedabbled with the dew and torn with briers,
I can no further crawl, no further go;
My legs can keep no pace with my desires.
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
There’s no magic other than you have to be consistent.
Running Coach Dathan Ritzenhein in Outside Magazine
