Adaption

Quick post and a test of creating a post from my Google Nexus 7 WordPress app.

Was working the bench press last night with my friend and probably tried to push out one too many reps. Form went south and was arching my back a little too much, cheating to get the last ones up. I knew I was going to pay for it.

This morning I was sore but didn’t think anything of it. I’ve been sore before. So i went of to play some hardcore Olympic level table tennis with the Zen master.. A man twice my age and impossibly full of energy reserves mere mortals don’t have. He’s a terminator.. I’m positive of this.

He’s mentoring a young kid into ping pong, and today he and his father were there to watch the two of us have an epic battle.

2nd game in, my back had other ideas. I felt it, that split second where you know if you finished the motion, you’d be on the ground and need to be carried home. I stopped just short. I wasn’t down for the count but I knew I was fucked. I couldn’t stand tall, I couldn’t run from left to right, I couldn’t put any pressure on my back.

2 games in. Fuck. This would be a huge letdown for the father and son. I looked at Zen master and meekly grimaced, stood up slowly and said I had pulled something, but wasn’t going to use it as an excuse, to hit me with all he had. The kid came to see a war, wasn’t about to give him less.

The first few matches were a joke as I tried to figure a way to counter his shots and go for kill shots of my own. Without my prior range or mobility he was tearing me apart. But with each game I was forced to examine patterns, rely more on spin and accuracy, and most importantly, just get the ball to his side of the table and force him to make an error.

While he kept beating me, they weren’t resounding victories. I kept pace. I stated returning shots to the corners forcing him to bounce from end to end, thus keeping me in the center. I stopped using crazy spins on the serve and lobed them to just barely clear the net, forcing him to lob the returns high into the air giving me the advantage to make him start running left to right or just to smash it back down with a killer backhand which does not require back strength.

By the end I still only ended up winning about 4 games of 20… And lost our best of nine series ender 5 to 3. But they were all close games, half going into overtime where you need to win by 2 points.

Adapt. It’s what we do when we encounter change. The world is always changing, always evolving, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. It helps us overcome obstacles and be resilient. Ask a paraplegic or someone wearing a prosthetic limb. It’s what you do when faced with a choice of doing something you don’t want to do to proceed forward or do nothing and be left behind.

The kid wanted an Olympic war, and I couldn’t give it to him by doing what worked in the past, so I had to adapt quickly, learn, experiment, grow. And for it we gave him a great show that will encourage him to continue learning the game under Zen master and put a smile on both dad and sons face.

The alternative was doing nothing and driving home.

To anyone who tells you game is smoke and mirrors, what they’re telling you is to go home. Learn game. Adapt. The goalposts have moved and there’s nothing you can do to change that. Learn how to rid yourself of traits that get you disqualified from playing.

You have a choice. Adapt or quit.

Now if you excuse me.. I need to go hobble off to my bed like the hunchback of Notre Dame now and wait for the Advil 500’s to kick in. Nobody said adapting was painless. Nothing worthwhile ever is.

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Sent from my tablet. You see a spelling mistake, its the tablets fault.