In response to Renny’s comment, which linked a Ted Talk by skater and physicist Dr. Tae, my first thoughts jumped at Tae’s elaboration on flow in learning a trick. An idea occurred to me as he talked about that painful, but flowing sweet spot—that place in getting a trick where you can land it, but the motions are just difficult enough that it takes work, effort, even perseverance to accomplish the moves.

Lately, I’ve been stuck in patterns of a handful of tricks I like to think I’m perfecting. I want to believe I’m perfecting the maneuvers because of my repetition, my repetitious repetition, of the tricks. What’s likely is that I actually have been plateauing.

There’s a move I’ve been looking at, a bank blunt stall to fakie, that’s been wangling me out. The mechanics aside, I’m not letting myself push into the flow of learning the trick; I’m not open to the process of learning. After watching Tae’s talk, though, I’m excited to fail at that bank blunt stall to fakie over and over. I might even risk my ankles for that tail stall to fakie where I can’t quite see the spin.

Whatever the results, I’m thankful for Renny sharing Tae’s talk which has encouraged me to find that flow of (healthy) repetition of an unfamiliar trick and to do it with the open-mindedness required for learning.

Time to skate on!

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