January 13th, 2022

A quite short training in a cold, stormy, but dry night.

Warmup

Turn wrists, turn elbows, turn shoulders, use full range of motion
Go on all fours, put little weight on the hands, push body up with the wrists. Stretch lower arms in several directions. Carefully feel into your wrists, what feels good and what not.
Swing whole body, feel the blood pouring into your fingertips. Especially useful when the fingers are cold ;).
Swing even more until knees touch the ground.
Make circles with knees (around hips).
Make circles with feet (around knees.
Turn your ankles.

Play with obstacles: Try to find ways to move over and under the railings. Either one at a time or more in a row. Start slow, get used to the slippery wood. Keep moving! Repeat the “same” technique several times, try to get it more fluid. Make them your “comfort zone”. Either variate them or find new ways to jump or climb or slip over and under it.
Repetition: Find a movement that is a little scary, but not a “I can maybe do it once” style of challenge. Repeat doing it, again and again. Try little variations, change side. Try to keep tackling it, not too much pause in between
Balancing: Walk on the beams of the playground, get used to the slippery wood. When comfortable, make lunges or squats on the beams. Keep balancing for quite a while.
Bathing in the pond. Put at least your bare feet into the water, more if you want. Try to be fully aware with what you feel (outside and inside) while doing it. Try to become aware of the thoughts that come with that. Just play with it, no pushing.

Start slow, keep going. Technique training is harder in uncomfortable conditions. Is is more difficult to enter “playing” mode. You feel clumsy, things don’t work like they used to. What can help is to start slow, with “safe” techniques, repeating them with variations. And gradually enlarge this cloud of possible movements. Important here is not to stop and think for too long. If you doubt and don’t dare what you wanted to do, do something easier. After a while you will sweat a bit, forget about the rain, have a feeling of what works and what not and just play with that.
Surrender: Entering cold water. Cultivating the “observing what happens (without pressure)” can help build a habit of “feeling in and observing the situation” as soon as stressful situations arise, instead of panicking. The water stays cold without you doing something. You don’t have to “do” something like when running and you can fully focus on observing. And playing with the thoughts and feelings that arise.
“Repetition” or “an external rhythm”: During the repetition phase, there was not too much pause inbetween the repetitions to let your thoughts wander. Just exercise, -a few breaths- prepare for the next round. If you can keep this up for more than 5 minutes it lifts you into a good state to stay focussed.