The stimulus that molds your mind and body
The limitless creativity of the court uncages the imagination from the limitations of drills and trainers.
This allows your speed, power, and agility to develop naturally through the trial & error of mistakes and success with live defenders.
The concrete court creates elite players. There is no other way.
There is a great power hidden within the lines. Inside the seemingly emptiness of simplicity, there is endless complexity. This is how I view The Game. It propels you beyond your limits. It teaches you what needed to know not what you wanted to know. Embrace the unknown of creativity. Embrace the risk.
Read this passage from Robert Greene's Mastery:
We could express this power in the following way: most of the time we live in an interior world of dreams, desires, and obsessive thoughts. But in this period of exceptional creativity, we are impelled by the need to get something done that has a practical effect. We force ourselves to step outside our inner chamber of habitual thoughts and connect to the world, to other people, to reality. Instead of flitting here and there in a state of perpetual distraction, our minds focus and penetrate to the core of something real. At these moments, it is as if our minds-turned outward-are now flooded with light from the world around us, and suddenly exposed to new details and ideas, we become more inspired and creative.
Once the deadline has passed or the crisis is over, this feeling of power and heightened creativity generally fades away. We return to our distracted state and the sense of control is gone. If only we could manufacture this feeling, or somehow keep it alive longer... but it seems so mysterious and elusive.
The problem we face is that this form of power and intelligence is either ignored as a subject of study or is surrounded by all kinds of myths and misconceptions, all of which only add to the mystery. We imagine that creativity and brilliance just appear out of nowhere, the fruit of natural talent, or perhaps of a good mood, or an alignment of the stars. It would be an immense help to clear up the mystery-to name this feeling of power, to examine its roots, to define the kind of intelligence that leads to it, and to understand how it can be manufactured and maintained.
Let us call this sensation Mastery - the feeling that we have a greater command of reality other people, and ourselves. Although it might be something we experience for only a short while, for others-Masters of their field-it becomes their way of life, their way of seeing the world. (Such Masters include Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon Bonaparte, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, and Martha Graham, among many others.) And at the root of this power is a simple process that leads to mastery-one that is accessible to all of us.
Although we might enter these situations with excitement about what we can learn or do with our new skills, we quickly realize how much hard work there is ahead of us. The great danger is that we give in to feelings of boredom, impatience, fear, and confusion. We stop observing and learning. The process comes to a halt.
If, on the other hand, we manage these emotions and allow time to take its course, something remarkable begins to take shape. As we continue to observe and follow the lead of others, we gain clarity, learning the rules and seeing how things work and fit together. If we keep practicing, we gain fluency; basic skills are mastered, allowing us to take on newer and more exciting challenges. we begin to see connections that were invisible to us before. We slowly gain confidence in our ability to solve problems or overcome weaknesses through sheer persistence.
At a certain point, we move from student to practitioner. We try out our own ideas, gaining valuable feedback in the process. We use our expanding knowledge in ways that are increasingly creative. Instead of just learning how others do things, we bring our own style and individuality to play.
As years go by and we remain faithful to this process, yet another leap takes place-to mastery. The keyboard is no longer something outside of us; it is internalized and becomes part of our nervous system, our fingertips. In our career, we now have a feel for the group dynamic, the current state of business. We can apply this feel to social situations, seeing deeper into other people and anticipating their reactions. We can make decisions that are rapid and highly creative. Ideas come to us. We have learned the rules so well that we can now be the ones to break or rewrite them.
Robert Greene - Mastery (pg. 2-3)
For the Game to reward you, you must become molded by it. You won't change the game. It will change you. It will show you the way. For this to happen optimally you must have the Inner Furnace and your natural athleticism in place. This is why Naturals get better by just playing and others do not.
