Specific Training, or Becoming a Slinky, or Stream of Consciousness, or Something

Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't like...Slinkys.

(No, I have no idea if the plural of "Slinky" should be "Slinkys" because it's a proper noun, a product name, OR if it should just abide by the "ending in Y" rule and be "Slinkies."  I really don't know, but I'm going with the former.  Because this blog is my party and I can do what I want to.)

Slinkys are great.  A Slinky is simple, flexible, durable, has classic style, and only occasionally becomes hopelessly entangled with itself.  (On rare occasions this is fatal to it - not usually because it gets irreparably bent out of shape, but more because whoever is doing the untangling loses patience and hurls it in to the trash.)  On a stairwell a Slinky propels itself effortlessly along, going with gravity, trusting in the next step below, and when finally there is no step below, it composes itself neatly and calmly and waits for the next play time.  (Well, again, most of the time.  I think we've all witnessed a Slinky/stairwell disaster; you know, when the nice, even "slink, slink, slink" of the Slinky goes horribly wrong and is replaced by the "cling, clang, thud, thud, twang" of the Slinky/stairwell rhythm gone awry.)  Overall, the Slinky is an admirable plaything.  I'd like to be more like one.

How did I get on to Slinkys?  I started out thinking about the phenomenon of specific training.  I had training specificity smack me upside the head (figuratively, of course) earlier this week when I decided I was going to do a cross training workout that included the XC ski machine, the rowing machine, and the elliptical.  Everything was fine with the elliptical, which is a motion I'm accustomed to and much like running, but the rower took considerably more effort, and the XC ski machine?  Wipeout.  I lasted ten minutes on that.  I'm passably strong and fit.  I've run almost ten miles at a go.  But I couldn't make 15 minutes on a Nordic Track.

I know, the thought path to Slinky is still not clear here.

My journey back to being a runner, and being more fit in general, keeps generating life analogies for me.  This recent collision with the reality of training specificity brought forth another one.  It's common knowledge that the body adapts best to what it does most often, but what about the mind?  What about our lives?  Just as a runner who only runs may lack flexibility, literally in terms of muscle tightness and figuratively in terms of his/her inability to perform well at other physical tasks and sports, a person who has settled in to a narrow and routine way of thinking or living may also experience limitations.  These limitations are not due to the person's true and natural limitations, but are rather a result of self limiting thoughts, habits, or lifestyle.  This analogy crossing my mind led to the question:  Where is the mental version of training specificity limiting my life?  What are the aspects of my life that feel like the Nordic Track wipeout, caused by a simple lack of "cross training" in my thinking and doing?

I'll be mulling that one over for weeks now, because my mind is sometimes obsessive like that.

Still no Slinky.  I know.

I always like to put a photo on my blog posts just to be entertaining, or capture attention.  I Google Imaged (is that a verb?) "flexibility" and after a few scrolls through the images (some of which were really disturbing -check it out), there it was:  the classic Slinky.  And I LOVE Slinkys (for all the reasons listed above), so I went with it intuitively.  Slinkys are great cross trainers, and usually - usually - when something bad happens to them they just resettle their rings and live to play another day. 

I am the master of the ridiculous analogy, I realize, but this is how I sometimes resolve my own metaphorical self-entangled rings and clanky trips down life's stairwell.  Here's to cross training for mind, body and spirit.