Possible to surpass my physical limits? (skateboarding)

[littleBIG]

I love skateboarding. However it's extremely difficult to get good at it because it has physical limitations, you simply can't practice it too much. I couldn't find any skater that became pro if they start after 18 just because of how hard the sport is (you can check for yourself). However, I have only one life and I want to give my best to try. I practiced for about 30 hours this week and my legs are killing me. Funny story, one day my legs were very sore, and I realized one thing: soreness is merely a sensation from the body telling me i need to rest, it doesn't actually physically stop me from skating. I can just ignore the feeling and keep skating, At that moment I felt like I was Goku and I have surpassed the laws of human physique. It worked for about 2 days. The soreness is not just a sensation, it's physical. My legs literally just refused to do what I want. I would be doing a trick in my head, but my body wouldn't execute on it because it was too fatigued. I'm also thinking that if I just keep skating, I might force my body to adapt to recover faster, that's why I skated on average 4-5 hours everyday this past week (imagine jumping up and down for 4 hours straight). Some of the days I was actually surprised my legs were able to recover when I thought they wouldn't. I'm learning and making progress but it's not enough. If I want to become pro in my lifetime I would have to find ways to make faster progress than this. Thoughts? I know people have surpassed their physical limits in history. 

[h inandout]

4-5hours! woah.  I went to yoga every day this week and my body needs full recovery. haha.  Do you have a coach?  Do you have supportive friends?  Do you do other fun things to keep your spirits up?  Are you financially stable?  Do you have a bigger reason for wanting to be a pro?  Do you do any kind of cross-training?  Do you regularly take time to learn about mindfulness and meditation?

I personally believe that you're allowed to have ridiculous at any point in your life, and honestly it makes your experience of them all that much richer.  I was just reading about Diana Nyad - look her up! ha!  

I want to be a musician, and it's a slow as hell process because I also have to do adult things along the way, so I feel ya.  I posed the questions above because they are the one's I am asking myself right now.

[littleBIG]

@h inandout Ha I thought yoga helps your body recover?

To answer your questions:

I dont have a coach and the tutorials on the internet are pretty bad, i learn by watching slow motions and figuring it out in my head. My friends don't care. Other fun things..? Not really. Financially stable not yet.

Bigger reasons to become pro? Hmm, 1. I want to be as good at as I possibly can. 2. I plan to make quality tutorials after I become good at it. 3. I want to show that it's possible to get good at it when you start late. 

Not doing any cross train and meditation yet.

I actually wanted to be a musician too  but i guess I didn't want it bad enough to be putting hours and hours into it. Best of luck to you!

[Slade]

@littleBIG mastery is a hugely important concept for getting good at anything and I highly recommend you read Mastery by George Leonard. As well as, look into what deliberate practice is. I know there’s a ted talk on YouTube explaining the importance of deliberate practice. Another thing, there’s an 80/20 rule when it comes to everything in life. 20 percent of the activities you do lead to 80 percent of your results and vis versa. For example with skating, your 20% might be to practice form and balance or something along the lines of that and the 80% is wearing the right shoes, having good bearings and wheels etc.. I’ve never skated so I don’t know what the 80/20 is for skating but the point is, there’s a small number of specific things you can do when you practice skating that will lead to the majority of your results. That’s the 20%. And that’s where you should focus 80% of your time. And vis versa you should only focus 20% of your time on the 80% that doesn’t lead to the majority of your results. 

I’ll give you another example, I used to do real estate sales and for me, my 20% was making cold calls, going on appointments, and signing listings agreements. Those things are what lead to give me 80% of my results. By focusing the majority of my time on those activities I was able to progress a lot faster. 

Read Mastery by George Leonard and apply the 80/20 principal to your skating. I can honestly say that I believe you can make it as a pro skater and I hope that you don’t ever let a limiting belief hold you back. 

[littleBIG]

@Slade Thanks my dude, i will now read this book because of you  so if you put more time into the 20%, doesn't it become the 80% eventually? (hmmm)

[Slade]

49 minutes ago, littleBIG said:

@Slade Thanks my dude, i will now read this book because of you  so if you put more time into the 20%, doesn't it become the 80% eventually? (hmmm)

Simple answer is no. Haha again idk what the 20% is for skating but for real estate sales it stays the same. 

The 20% is the basics. The fundamentals to success in whatever field you’re in. I do motocross as well and the basics to that are body positioning and being smooth. That’s the 20% that if I focus on and get right it will give me a large 80% of the results. Once you have the 20% mastered then you can pay more detailed attention to the 80% to polish up your skills. 

Edited February 26, 2018 by Slade

[littleBIG]

@Slade interesting, I thought the 20/80 refers the amount of time spent on something 

In this case, I might or might not already have found my 20%. For the past year, I only practiced 3 tricks, and most of the time I only practiced one trick, the most basic one, the ollie (the jump) while all my friends are practicing all kinds of tricks. I wanted to perfect my ollie before moving on to other tricks. I wanted to figure out inside out how exactly to do this trick, like how to distribute my weight, the motions of my legs, etc. In fact, I spent 2 months trying to learn a flip trick when I wasn't good at the ollie yet, and I just couldn't do it. I went back to the ollie and got better at it, and the flip trick came very easily. Today I'm still just practicing the ollie, it's so simple and basic, yet there is so much to improve at it 

[Slade]

@littleBIG genius. The Ollie is like the foundation for any trick in skating. You’ve got it. So spend 80% of your time skating practicing that and the other 20% and you’ll be really efficient with your practice.

[Leo Gura]

@littleBIG Do less actual practice, and more very precisely visualized practice.

Practice the moves very methodically in your mind's eye. It will become even more effective than actual practice if done right.

Careful with injuring yourself. Remember, no career success is worth ruining your legs for life. The damage you do now could come back to haunt you in your 40s, 50s, and 60s. So be careful.

[d0ornokey]

@Leo Gura what the fuck? just imagining it is even better??? mind fucked 

next time my mom tells me to get out of bed and do some work, ill tell her "mom im working shut up" 

Edited February 26, 2018 by d0ornokey

[Saumaya]

41 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@littleBIG Do less actual practice, and more very precisely visualized practice.

Practice the moves very methodically in your mind's eye. It will become even more effective than actual practice if done right.

Careful with injuring yourself. Remember, no career success is worth ruining your legs for life. The damage you do now could come back to haunt you in your 40s, 50s, and 60s. So be careful.

@Leo Gura Can you elaborate on what is visual practice? I am curious

[Max_V]

@Saumaya The book PsychoCyberbetics talks about this.

Our mind can’t differentiate ‘real’ experience vs imagined experience, so when you do something correctly in your minds eye, it saves in your memory as “correct way to do it” thus now being able to do it in real life

Pretty cool heh? 

 

[Thinh]

@d0ornokey I think Leo means delibrately practice. As I notice, when I practice it's not me the body is the one who learns but it's like there a creature (I think it's awareness). It's very hard to describe. And in my opinion it's hard to be conscious of this learning unless you have high consciousness.

[Saumaya]

3 minutes ago, Max_V said:

@Saumaya The book PsychoCyberbetics talks about this.

Our mind can’t differentiate ‘real’ experience vs imagined experience, so when you do something correctly in your minds eye, it saves in your memory as “correct way to do it” thus now being able to do it in real life

Pretty cool heh? 

 

So basically when you imagine that youre doing the practice correctly, it can help in real life too?

[Max_V]

@Saumaya yes! 

[Saumaya]

4 minutes ago, Max_V said:

@Saumaya yes! 

Hmm interesting..ill test it out sometime

Thx

Edited February 26, 2018 by Saumaya

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, d0ornokey said:

@Leo Gura what the fuck? just imagining it is even better??? mind fucked 

next time my mom tells me to get out of bed and do some work, ill tell her "mom im working shut up" 

They did a famous study where they split a group of basketball players into 3 sub-groups: one which was told to practice free-throws normally, one which was told to only visualize shooting free-throws, and one which was told to not play at all and not to visualize.

After a few weeks, the most accurate shooters were the visualization group.

All the best professional athletes use visualization.

But visualization is not so easy to do. When you're doing it precisely, it will be some of the toughest practice you've ever done.

The point is not quantity of practice but quality of practice. There is enormous value in clarifying moves in your mind. But you have to do it realistically. Don't confuse this with fantasizing about being a good skateboarder. That is not visualization practice, that is something else: visioning. Instead, you want to be visualizing which muscles you're flexing, your footwork, your mind state, your emotional state, where your eyes are looking, the timing of your jump, how your weight is balanced on the board, how a good jump feels mid-flight, etc. And all of that needs to be as true to real life as possible.

You're basically trying to create a realistic skateboarding simulator in your mind within which you can then run drills. Any serious athlete must do this or they won't have a chance at being the best.

You must apply consciousness to your skateboarding. Which means discovering what is TRUE about how the domain of skateboarding works. Right now you don't really know what is TRUE about skateboard dynamics. You are just winging it and hoping it works out. Which is why your results aren't so good.

Nikola Tesla famously designed the electric motor entirely in his mind using precise visualization. Imagine being able to visualize so well you can engineer a car engine in your mind. That's what you're shooting for, but with skateboarding.

[sgn]

Youtube tutorials is a goldmine. Didn't have that when I started skating 20 years ago 

Do you have an indoor skatepark to skate in in the winter? Or where do you live?

[littleBIG]

@Leo Gura Ah that's really good insight, thanks. 

Sometimes I watch slow motion videos and visualize myself in the video doing the trick.

If I visualize practicing in my head, how do I know if I'm doing a trick right without the feedback of physics? I could be developing a wrong way to do it. 

[littleBIG]

Regarding visualization, one time I was having trouble learning a flip trick. One night I had a dream where I was doing the flip trick perfectly. I remember seeing so vividly the board rotate under me perfectly. I still remember that image in my head. A couple days later I was doing the flip trick perfectly and I saw the board rotate the EXACT same way as in my dream!