“Let Your Body Do What Your Body Can Do.”
I texted this to my good friend, Greg Schneider-Bateman yesterday as we were riffing on our daily swim endeavors.
I’m reminded of that line—“Let your body do what your body can do”—every day during my Wim Hof breathing session.
Greg messaged Monday morning saying, “Another shitty practice. I feel very confused in the water.”
Greg is a technician in the water—constantly analyzing and tweaking things about how he swims.
I’ve seen it do radical things for how he swims.
He’s so graceful to watch in the water.
When thinking about skill acquisition and mastery, the four stages of competence are a helpful framework:
Unconscious Incompetence
You don’t know how to do the skill—and you don’t even know that you lack the skill.
Conscious Incompetence
You realize you can’t do the skill well—you see your gaps and feel clumsy.
Conscious Competence
You can do the skill, but you focus hard—every step requires concentration.
Unconscious Competence
You’ve mastered the skill—it’s second nature. Think: walking.
“Turn that brain off!”
That’s how I responded to Greg when he shared about his shitty practice.
Greg: “I do think hard about every stroke. Attending so closely to trying to figure out what I’m doing that might work. Maybe that doesn’t serve me very well.”
Me: “Do you think about every step you take when you walk?”
Greg: “Now that you mention it, maybe I should. LOL. But I don’t. I’m definitely not relaxed in the pool; probably fighting the water.”
As I see it, that is where we limit our potential: refusing to let go and trust ourselves.
The transition from conscious competence to unconscious competence.
You work harder and harder and harder to perfect things.
You keep honing the skill.
You keep doing the drills.
You hold a tight grip.
Yet you never move to that place of trusting that your body knows exactly what it needs to do.
What could you unlock if you let go and trust?
My guess: something amazing.
Turn that brain off.
“Let your body do what your body can do.”
Onward.