Numbers to Leave Numbers
My run this morning reminded me of a concept that I’ve thought about now-and-then over the past couple of years. The idea of numbers to leave numbers. Employing form, structure, and scaffolding with the eventual intention to leave it behind. Replace the deliberate with the intuitive; the conscious with the unconscious.
What prompted me to think about this? Well, I was supposed to be completing a threshold run. For my watch, that means around 173bpm ideally. Fairly high. During my training runs, my watch gives me a little beep when I’m outside the heart rate target zone. It’s an extremely useful feature and I like both the structure and live feedback it adds to my training. Heart rate also should be a more accurate measure of exertion than pace. Yet, this morning, I couldn’t help but feel that my watch was lying to me! As I increased my pace, I was still subject to beep after beep. I simply couldn’t get my heart rate high enough!
Was my watch correct? Possibly. Maybe I just felt like I was breathing harder than in reality because of the significantly colder weather compared to back home. The weather has definitely caused my heart rate to spike less while running. That being said—bless my wonderful Garmin watch that I wear nearly every second of every day—but it really isn’t all that accurate as a heart rate monitor. Most of the time, it’s guessing, at least compared to more precise devices. In that way, it might as well be on par with my intuition. Thus, I posed myself the question: are the numbers helpful, or should I leave them and just trust my gut?
As an idea, it isn’t groundbreaking, but it has stuck with me because I didn’t always understand it.
Following the teachings of a certain basketball coach over the last five years, this was something that I first heard through him with reference to shooting a basketball. The shooting system he developed was simple. Perhaps to a fault. Or, so it seemed for while. But for this coach, the rigid starting form was always something that was designed to be broken away from in time. Once the macro-level movement pattern was ingrained, the cocoon of that first, restricted understanding could be discarded. But a useful purpose was served.
The second encounter I had with this sentiment was while reading a brilliant book, The Art of Learning, by Josh Waitzkin. Overall, it is a really thoughtful read. One that yes, constantly causes you to marvel at how the way Josh thinks about everything is simply genius—he is both a US chess champion and world champion martial artist—but that also provides a compelling presentation of applicable ideas related to learning. Anyway, this book clicked into place the pieces I had grappled with whilst practicing basketball.
I struggled with that progression early on, finding it difficult to separate the regimented practice rhythm from the effortless flow I searched for in games. It seemed like a contradiction. Something theoretically sound, but not practically. Until it started to work.
Because of course, a sure thing about progress is the non-linear nature of it all. We plateau. We make drastic improvements. We regress. None of those patterns are permanent, though. Often, the jump from conscious effort to intuition happens silently. It takes operating in that sub-conscious zone for a while to take a step back and realise that you found it.
But it is a constant journey. A sister concept also beautifully illustrated by Josh Waitzkin is the process of making smaller circles. Graduating from the form you once knew is not the end of the road. Once a skill has been internalised, a learner can then make their focus, and the structure guiding their progress, more specific. There are new constraints—new numbers—to use as guide rails. The circle keeps getting smaller. It doesn’t disappear entirely though.
I might return to this concept in the future, but ultimately, I feel that constraints are important. Whether those constraints are templates, guidelines, or numbers, they hold a useful purpose. Data helps to inform our performance against these constraints. But understanding that the numbers are designed to take you to a place where you no longer need them is also important. You might outgrow those constraints, but it doesn’t mean that their isn’t a place to refine your learning further by adding new ones.
Numbers are temporary infrastructure. Necessary for building something, but meant to be removed once the structure can stand on its own. You need the training wheels until you develop the balance, then they become a hindrance. In many case, numbers were supposed to be a bridge, but they became the destination.
Employing structure is useful. Leaving structure is equally useful.
