OUT OF CONTROL BODY
I just came back from our church’s retreat, and I’m sure I’ll have some more blogging to do re: the theological insights I gleaned from the time I got to spend with my fellow congregants. But for now, I’d like to talk about my out of control body.
It’s been a long time since I’ve played team sports. I’ve stuck mostly to running, mountain biking, and weight training for the past few years. I couldn’t even tell you when was the last time I played soccer and/or basketball before today. But today I played both.
In sports, the body and the mind must work closely together. The mind my itself is too slow to process all of the information and decisions thrown its way in the course of a simple sports-related task, whether it be a soccer ball flying towards your head or a split-second opening in the defense for a bullet pass. If you were to use just your mind, by the time you’d analyzed the situation and determined what to do, the situation wouldn’t exist anymore.
That’s where the body comes in. Where the mind by itself is too slow, the body compensates. And over the course of playing a game over and over again, mind and body come together to react quickly and instinctively, so that the ball is properly headed or zipped to an open teammate under the basket.
Except my body. It seems my mind is just as sharp as when I last regularly played team sports. I can still visualize where a ball should be kicked or passed to hit an open teammate in stride. I can still keep track of everyone on my team and on the other team, and anticipate what people on both sides will do once I take my next action to kick the ball forward or pass-fake it to the left. I was pleasantly surprised that my mind wasn’t too terribly foggy from months and years of inaction in this particular set of skills and experiences.
I can’t say the same about my body. It isn’t just that I can’t kick as hard or jump as high. More sobering, when my mind has determined a course of action, my body doesn’t seem to cooperate as smoothly or quickly. I felt awkward at times, arms and legs flailing about as if disconnected from the proper movements I’d orchestrated in my head just a split-second ago. Other times, I mistrusted that same body, knowing in my mind what would be advantageous to do (trapping the ball and quickly redirecting it to a teammate on the opposite side, or using my dribble to get myself into the lane to shoot or dish) but feeling hesitant in my body’s ability to carry out that plan of attack.
So my body, sad to say, is caked in rust. I feel uncomfortably detached from it, for I am no longer able to fully control it in the heat of sports competition. Yet another indication that the age of 30 is in the rear view mirror.
I just came back from our church’s retreat, and I’m sure I’ll have some more blogging to do re: the theological insights I gleaned from the time I got to spend with my fellow congregants. But for now, I’d like to talk about my out of control body.
It’s been a long time since I’ve played team sports. I’ve stuck mostly to running, mountain biking, and weight training for the past few years. I couldn’t even tell you when was the last time I played soccer and/or basketball before today. But today I played both.
In sports, the body and the mind must work closely together. The mind my itself is too slow to process all of the information and decisions thrown its way in the course of a simple sports-related task, whether it be a soccer ball flying towards your head or a split-second opening in the defense for a bullet pass. If you were to use just your mind, by the time you’d analyzed the situation and determined what to do, the situation wouldn’t exist anymore.
That’s where the body comes in. Where the mind by itself is too slow, the body compensates. And over the course of playing a game over and over again, mind and body come together to react quickly and instinctively, so that the ball is properly headed or zipped to an open teammate under the basket.
Except my body. It seems my mind is just as sharp as when I last regularly played team sports. I can still visualize where a ball should be kicked or passed to hit an open teammate in stride. I can still keep track of everyone on my team and on the other team, and anticipate what people on both sides will do once I take my next action to kick the ball forward or pass-fake it to the left. I was pleasantly surprised that my mind wasn’t too terribly foggy from months and years of inaction in this particular set of skills and experiences.
I can’t say the same about my body. It isn’t just that I can’t kick as hard or jump as high. More sobering, when my mind has determined a course of action, my body doesn’t seem to cooperate as smoothly or quickly. I felt awkward at times, arms and legs flailing about as if disconnected from the proper movements I’d orchestrated in my head just a split-second ago. Other times, I mistrusted that same body, knowing in my mind what would be advantageous to do (trapping the ball and quickly redirecting it to a teammate on the opposite side, or using my dribble to get myself into the lane to shoot or dish) but feeling hesitant in my body’s ability to carry out that plan of attack.
So my body, sad to say, is caked in rust. I feel uncomfortably detached from it, for I am no longer able to fully control it in the heat of sports competition. Yet another indication that the age of 30 is in the rear view mirror.
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