The Athlete Tool Kit: Hyper-Awareness

As a novice athlete, a big challenge can often be not having enough motor control and body awareness to understand what one’s body is doing in space. It’s in these early days that athletes are least able to “fly by feel” and need the external feedback and eyes of coach. With experience, athletes can begin to feel their own mistakes and self correct.

With a decade now of strength and conditioning under my belt, I’ve got pretty good body awareness. Some areas are still maturing like my body awareness while upside, for example, but in others areas like the power clean, I am hyperaware.

In that way, you could say that I could definitely use the help of some eyes on me during handstand push ups, but can usually feel more than a coach could ever see during my power clean efforts. Yesterday I felt this to be true, loud and clear. I was doing some power clean singles and made a few attempts at a PR. Since I was training alone, I decided to film my efforts with my phone. What I felt were gross errors, originating in the hip joint. For these failed reps, that lasted about a fraction of a second each, I took in so much information. I could have written volumes of what I felt go wrong. Yet, on the video, everything seemed much less dramatic. Upon slowing things down, I could surely see some errors, but there was a stark contrast between what I felt and what I saw.

Whether you recognize this or not, the most important lesson in this kind of strength and conditioning may in fact be an improved relationship with you and your body. Plus, any athlete can benefit from adding some hyperawareness to his/her tool kit.

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach