Working with what you've got
There's always a way to move forward
There comes a time in everyone’s life where we come across someone who is an inspiration to us due to their sheer physical prowess. In the era of social media it is very easy for us to see people like Hafþór Björnsson breaking world records by deadlifting 505 Kg, or people like Eliud Kipchoge running marathons around the 2 hour mark. But when we see people like that on social media, we don’t get much of a backstory about how they used to be. We only see the super humans they are now, and not what it took to get there.
I know some people who are very good at what they do. I know martial artists who are incredibly good at fighting, runners who have incredible speed and endurance, and gym rats who are able to pull off incredible feats of strength. But when you talk to people like this in person you realize that none of them are good at everything and they all have things they have either resigned themselves to not being good at or wish they were better at something else.
Personally, I’m the kind of person who appreciates “balance.” I try my best to be as good as I can be at a lot of things, and after years of training I’ve got to the point where I’m pretty good at a lot of things that I do. I’m not elite at anything I do, but I can fight pretty well, I’m pretty quick at short/middle distance runs, and I have enough endurance to run 100 miles if I need to.
It’s very easy to look at some people and think that they are on some unattainable level of excellence. But the closer you get to some people, the more you realize that they are only human, and that moving in a positive direction to become like (or even surpass) people you admire is definitely possible.
Know weakness, then strength
When I was young I was not a sporty person at all. I was frequently sick as a child and needed to deal with exercise induced asthma for a lot of my youth. If I ran my lungs would tighten up pretty quick and even being outside in cold weather had me gasping for breath. Because of this I hated doing PE at school, especially when it involved going outside in the winter to get ground into icy mud during rugby.
I wasn’t capable or motivated to run around very much in school, but I was determined to get stronger in some way. At school I found that I was capable of lifting weights at the school gym (I chose weight room for every PE class I was able to as soon as I was able to make a choice), and I found that I was able to practice martial arts without triggering my asthma.
When I was young I didn’t really think too much about what I was doing and mostly just acted on instinct. I hated my asthma and things that triggered it, but I was motivated to get stronger so found what I could do and did my best with that. The end result was that I was stronger, more flexible, and had a decent amount of stamina, as long as I didn’t do any sustained aerobic exercise.
This situation of me largely avoiding sustained cardio but still doing martial arts and strength training kept going for a long time until I was decently strong, and a decent fighter. I did eventually grow out of my asthma, and it was from that point that I started being able to add more sustained cardio training to my regimen, but I didn’t really get into running until much later in life.
Running is something that happened to me during the pandemic. I was cooped up at home and not moving around well due to my dōjō being closed. Although I did some training at home, I still ended up having a sciatica like problem on the right side of my body which I needed to see a sports therapist about. They suggested to me that I started running to see if it helped out. It did, and I never stopped after that.
When I was young, my lack of ability to do sustained cardio opened the door to me being strong, and decent at martial arts. When I got older, the pandemic robbed me of my ability to train in the martial arts I love, but steered me in a direction to becoming a runner, which I focused on a lot and became (what I would consider to be) a decent runner.
The end result is that I am now (arguably) a good runner and a good martial artist. But none of this would have been possible if I gave up instead of working with what I had at the time.
Inspiration from life (David Goggins)
David Goggins has been an inspiring figure in my life for many years now. When I first came across is book, Can’t Hurt Me, I listened to the Audiobook version of it three times. Goggins is an absolute beast physically, but his mindset is one of the things that inspires me the most.
In Can’t Hurt Me, after already becoming a seasoned ultra runner, Goggins describes needing to have heart surgery and not being able to continue with his ultra running through the recovery process. In the time he was not able to continue with his running, he set his sights on getting the pull-up world record and focused on doing thousands upon thousands of pull-ups. Although the record has been broken since, David Goggins managed to get a world record by doing 4,030 pull-ups in 24 hours (he actually did it in 17 hours and stopped after breaking the previous record). He achieved this feat on his third attempt. (Note that the record has been broken since then).
Despite being mainly focused on ultra running for quite some time, he focused on what he could do, achieved something great during that time, then got back into the ultra scene where he is continuing to compete to this day.
Even after multiple knee surgeries, Goggins is still working with what he’s got and recently completed the Bigfoot 200 (a 200 mile race) in 66 hours, 4 minutes, and 17 seconds.
What a beast.
Inspiration from fiction (Shigurui)
One of my favorite manga of all time is シグルイ (Shigurui: Death Frenzy) by Takayuki Yamaguchi. The story focuses around a rivalry between two characters, 藤木 源之助, (Fujiki Gennosuke) and 伊良子 清玄 (Irako Seigen). Both of these characters sustain horrendous injuries during the series, and eventually work with what they have to become master swordsmen despite their disabilities.
Early on in the story Seigen is blinded and develops a sword technique called 無明逆流れ (Mumyō sakanagare : Avidyā reverse flow), to take revenge on those responsible for his loss of vision. 無明 (Mumyō), or Avidyā is a Buddhist concept that roughly translates to “ignorance.” The focus of the technique is that Seigen adopts an unreadable position (sometimes akin to a helpless blind man leaning on a walking stick), which is actually a cover for him holding a the sword in a position where he can strongly cut in the opposite direction of conventional sword fighting (reverse flow).
Because people are generally “ignorant” to his way of fighting many people are cut down by this weird technique. But even after learning of this technique and extensive preparation to fight Seigen using a 二刀流 (nitōryū: two sword style) technique, Fujiki ends up losing an arm and has to rebuild his body to fight one handed.
Extensive training using only one side of his body leads to Fujiki becoming the opposite of Seigen and developing a single handed downward cutting/pressing technique that generates strength that can’t be overcome even by two handed swordsmen.
A big part of the story of Shiguri is the drive overcome hardship and be the best, even when the world is against you and everything seems pointless.
I won’t give away any more of the story in case you want to read it yourself. Highly recommended.
Anyway, moving on.
All improvement is good
When I first started studying Japanese I focused a lot on how to interpret just the meanings of kanji. I had a heavy focus of learning complete kanji like 水 (water), 人 (person) and 弓 (bow), and also the radicals (部首: bushu) that have the equivalent meanings like, 氵(water), 亻(person), and 弓 (bow) (note that some look different and some look exactly the same). Once you learn about these parts of kanji you learn that whenever you see a kanji with 氵in it, it has something to do with water, 亻has something to people, and 弓 has something to do with bows.
酒 for example means alcohol and with a bit of imagination looks like a bottle of alcohol with 3 drops of water (氵) on the side (think condensation running down a bottle). 休 means rest, and lis literally a person (亻) leaning up against a tree (木) (resting). 引 means pull and is literally a bow (弓) with a line at the side (like a string). To fire a bow, you need to pull (引) the string.
The way I learned kanji was based on something like the Heisig method, but I never used books like Remembering the Kanji to memorize the parts. I just used resources here and there (including Slime Forest Adventure) and it worked really well.
Some traditionalists might say that my method is a bit odd, but the way I have analogized my language learning is like pouring sand into a tray. To be able to speak a language fluently you will need to cover all the parts of the tray. If you pour all of your sand (time and energy) into one corner (kanji interpretation for example) you will just be good in that area. But the higher you pile the sand, the more it starts to spill over into other areas. You should always try to get a good spread of learning vocabulary, grammar, reading, listening, kanji, etc, but hyper focusing on one area will eventually benefit other areas. Just like when you learn grammar you might come across new vocabulary words, when you hyper focus on kanji interpretation you might realize that words with similar radicals are often pronounced the same.
My method might not be for everyone, but I think this works. Not only for language learning, but for other things too. Doing a lot of slow running makes you faster when you sprint. Practicing a lot of basics at karate will improve your sparring. It all ends up working out in the end.
So if you are in a position where only one kind of training is available to you, do that. Hyper focusing on something for a while will probably help you in other areas. When I couldn’t do karate, I ran. The end result was, I lost weight, got faster, and gained a ton of stamina.
Final thoughts and take home messages
When you see people who are at the very top level of whatever they are doing they appear to be superhuman. But if you actually get a chance to talk to people like this, you will realize that they have flaws an insecurities, just like the rest of us.
Sometimes life has a habit of putting us in less than ideal situations. If you keep positive and try to make the best out of what you have, the end result will be positive. You may even end up becoming much stronger than you ever thought you could be.
If you are able to see people doing things that inspire you, follow them. It’s great to see people out their crushing it (especially if you want to emulate what they do). Inspiration can also be drawn from good fiction. Just because a story is fictional doesn’t mean it can’t have a massive positive impact on your life. If Goku powering up inspires you, be like Goku.
And finally, all progress is good progress. If all you can train for now is your grip strength, train your grip strength. That will be transferable later on. Improving a single aspect of what you do might actually have a knock on effect on other things you do as well. Just stay positive and keep moving forward.
Please forgive the card playing analogy, but you have to play the hand you are dealt. You might wish for a handful of aces, but if you only have a pair of twos that’s what you are stuck with. If you fold, you lose. But if you stay in the game and play the cards you have, you might still end up beating people who had a better hand than you but gave up when they lost their nerve.
Keep your head in the game. Osu!
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Osu!
Anthony
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