Peeling Bananas
A long time ago, a good friend did a little experiment on me that changed the way I think. It also changed the way I view what others try and teach, and gave me permission to be more open minded and analytical. He handed me a banana and told me to peel it. I did. The very tip got a little squishy as usual, and I had to clean off a couple of the little “strings” to finish up. He handed me a second one and told me to peel it. I obliged. Nearly the same result, only this time no soft spot on the end, and a couple less “strings” to remove. He then handed me a banana that wasn’t quite ripe, and asked me to peel that one. I did so, only now i had to cut the stem with my fingernail a bit, and crushed the fruit a bit more than I like because of the extra effort needed to get the skin off. After this little exhibition, he then asked a question. “What if you have been doing this all wrong? You learned from others how to peel this, and if you watched everyone else, they would peel it the same way. Try peeling it from the other end. He then handed me another banana which wasn’t quite ripe and I did as he asked. Perfect. No strings, no mashed fruit. Effortless. His lesson: learn from a real expert to get the very best information. In this case, peel bananas like a chimp.
I look at a lot of things in the field of fitness the same way. We have “experts” with good intentions passing along information that they think is best because they learned that information from someone they respect or trust. Yet in many cases it isn’t the best information at all. It may work, you may get results, but is there a better way?
I spend hours every week reading books, blog posts, and watching videos from people I believe to be the “Chimps of Conditioning”. Because of this self education, and my own 17 years of experience, I decided to step up my game and offer a platform to post great content to learn from. This new revision is my place to share not only solid content to learn technique from, but my own space to talk about other things we can learn in life from the challenges of training, and competing. A lot of time, effort, and expense went into recreating this website. It is all worth it, because I only want the best for my readers. I hope you enjoy it!