I’ve been learning trampoline skills for over a decade, and have been practicing weekly for the past 6 years.
For almost that whole time I’ve been working on my back summersault. Of the skills I regularly practice, it’s the only one still in safety lines.
Taking the back summersaults out of safety lines has been a goal for the last few years.
Recently I’ve had several practices where my coach has told me that my back summersaults were “out-of-lines” worthy.
In response, I have commented that it’s hard for me to imagine how I would do them on my own.
This is an issue that arises in all tricks on flying trapeze and trampoline.
When I work on a trick in safety lines, there’s a sensory experience of the lines. The lines create a drag. You feel them. And it’s hard to perceive where my work ends and the work of the coach pulling the lines begins.
My coach tells me he isn’t doing anything with the lines. He isn’t making me rotate. He isn’t keeping me in the rotation.
I know he is telling the truth. I can see this when I watch the video of my practice.
Initiating rotation in a back summersaults is the piece I have a hard time “wrapping my head” around.
It’s my nature to want to understand what’s happening and how it’s happening.
My coach reminded me that I don’t need to understand it because I’m already doing it. I just need to keep doing what I’m doing.
Understanding vs Doing
Even if I could “wrap my head around” back summersaults to cognitively understand how I am initiating rotation, what would that get me?
There are times when understanding how to do something can help us do it, times when understanding offers no assistance, and times when the cognitive understanding of “how it works” can actually get in the way.
Understanding how it happens or how it works is of no use if I’m not doing it.
It doesn’t necessarily help me do it better.
In fact, breaking down the movement to fully “understand” it is likely to interfere with my process. Sometimes when we fully analyze something it can create more fear in the body.
My coach’s point here is important:
I don’t have to understand cognitively how I initiate rotation, because I’m already doing it.
My path to taking the back summersaults out of lines is about continuing to do what I’m already doing.
Doing it consistently. Grooving the neural pathways of the muscles that are doing the movement.
It’s about trusting that my body knows what it’s doing and getting my head out of the way. I don’t need to think about it more. I just need to do it, and notice that I am doing it.
The Limits of Cognitive Understanding
This path is not only the path to taking my back summersaults out of safety lines. It’s also the path to any other achievement.
It’s certainly the case for movement related endeavors, but is also applies to creative work and building a business.
The attempts to understand something more fully, to break down how it works and how it’s happening, is often what gets in the way.
Here’s an example: I have been writing and publishing a daily blog for over 6 years, yet I struggle to be consistent with sending a newsletter and sharing my work on social media.
I get caught up in over-analysis and perfectionism.
What is different about sharing my work on social media or in a newsletter?
At the most basic level, it’s not. I’m already writing every day. I just need to publish it in more places.
The Underlying Principle
Whether it’s a physical skill on the trampoline, making a big career move, building a business, sharing your work publicly, or anything else, the underlying principle is the same:
Self-trust.
Getting out of your head and trusting your body to do what it has learned how to do.
When you drill a movement thousands of times, you groove a pattern. You create training effects.
The path toward any accomplishment requires trusting in the work that you’ve put in, in the training you’ve done, in the pathways you’ve grooved, and in the skills you’ve developed.
It’s about trusting your body to do what it knows how to do.
It’s not about trusting the world or other people. It’s about trusting yourself in the world.
The TL;DR
You don’t need to understand how something works or how you’re doing something in order to do it.
You simply have to do it repeatedly, until it becomes reflexive and you trust your body to do it on its own.
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