Thursday, October 24, 2019

A Universal Truth

You can tell that this photo was taken at a range, and is talking about training for shooting, but it applies to everything.  (Picture from Gun Free Zone, 10/21)


It's a universal truth.  It works for anything from learning a musical instrument, to triathlons, to any athletic endeavor.  It works for learning math as well as shooting.

In sports they say, "train your weakness, race your strength."  In learning a piece of music and in martial arts, they say, "if you can't do it slowly, you'll do never do it fast" or "find the part of the song you play the worst and play it over and over again until you get it right."

No matter what you suck at, from calculus to clearing a holster and putting shots in a target's COM, practice what you suck at. 



5 comments:

  1. "if you can't do it slowly, you'll do never do it fast"

    That's true about many things.

    Or as I heard in a movie, "Slow Is Smooth, And Smooth Is Fast".

    Going to SCCA Driver's School really drilled that into me.

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  2. The word is that math is now racist because it's a weak subject for some inner city people. Calling it 'racist' is a code word for 'don't bother studying'.

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  3. The statement "practice makes perfect" is a bit misleading. Only PERFECT practice makes for perfection. If you are doing something fundamentally wrong then practicing that error repeatedly only reinforces it and makes it more ingrained. So before practicing something repeatedly make sure you are doing it properly.

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    1. Right - my favorite version is "practice makes permanent." It has been a while since I taught any sort of class, but I always emphasized that.

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  4. Sent this to my son who constantly claims he's got no math homework and did all his work in class, then wonders why he's failing... No practice.

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