A Short Note On Increase In Foundation

This note is more of a detailed corollary to the image/explanation I posted yesterday regarding how any lasting improvement of a skill must be coupled with a corresponding increase in other skills from which that new skill is based upon.

Though later last night, and this morning I decided I could elaborate on my prior image, and create a more detailed and tightly knit one, which is located at the bottom of this note.

For example, we attain a certain basic skill in life, such as walking, represented by the green triangle #1 in the diagram.  Once we first learn how to walk, we have reached a small goal, or “peak”.  Which is great.

But in all truth, that “peak” will serve more as a mere foundation for when we learn how to “run”, the larger red triangle #2 in the diagram.  As a result, we must further increase our ability to walk if we are ever to run well.

Additionally, now both walking and running must greatly increase their already enlarged foundations if they are ever to support the incredible needs of being able to run a marathon, represented by the black triangle #3.

This is to say that even though you have reached a certain “peak”, such as walking in the first triangle, or running in the 2nd triangle; if we ever choose to go beyond those attained goals, we must realize that we will need to swallow our pride from reaching those “small-milestones” and realize they are but mere drops in the bucket if we decide to go on a path of improvement.

One might argue that, “How could you continue to master something as simple and nearly unconscious as walking?”

In short, I have noticed, and experienced myself to a certain degree that anyone who has delved deeply in to a practice that they have continued for years upon years, whether it be dance, music, engineering, martial arts, knitting, running; they seem to always have such a specific and highly detailed understanding of even the most fundamental of subject matter/technique.

For instance.  When I first learned how to run, it was pretty simple, as was with most people.  You just…run.  Then I got to Jr. High, and High School, I got better and better, realizing things I needed to do to improve miles times, proper hydration and the sheer endurance to withstand pain.

But now looking back on that, and I thought I was very good at running then, I see how limited and relatively undeveloped my understanding of running was even then.  But what was undeveloped about it? Not the gross movements and general understanding, but rather the details, the small technical differences that make the difference between an average runner and a good runner—a good runner and a great runner-a great runner and an olympic runner.

If that is the case from relating my present to the past, the conclusion can be made that in the future, I’m sure I will look back on myself even now and scoff at my prior self with the knowledge I will then know about running.

I’ll never forget one day I was talking with a new friend I had made and found out he was a very very very experienced runner, and I had many questions for him.  And the things he explained about how the foot just hit just right, at a particular instant for a certain type of run, but differently for another type of run, how to train for long distance, rather than short distance etc etc etc.  So many little details about things I thought I already knew about, but from the perspective of someone with far more experience than me had much more detail and mastery regarding them.  In particular I remember him saying even the way you walk on a daily basis, the way you are just slightly on the ball of your foot, but not on your toes, and how the heel should just barely touch on every step.  Proof that a great runner has a far deeper understanding of something as simple as walking than the average individual.  It’s as if ascendence of a quality undoubtedly calls for a greater understanding of basic fundamentals.

So running, just about all of us knew how to do that since we were very little.  It is the same general concept when we were 5 as it is to the olympic athlete in their 20’s who has trained they entire life.  Though the difference between those two individuals lies in one notion, the desire for improvement which invariably calls for an increasingly larger foundation.

Though I am using running as an example, this general idea can be applied to anything we so choose to excel and improve in. 

What is it that you want to become the best at? 

It all starts from the bottom up

:)