The Practice Is The Purpose
What we do and who we are
“What are you training for?”
It’s a question I get on fairly regular basis when somebody pulls into the cinder pit that serves as my shooting range and sees me tossing sandbags around, hoisting kettlebells and breaking clays and ringing steel with a rifle. It’s a question I also got a lot when I was training regularly in the martial arts.
Sometimes there is an implicit WTF? in the question, as though the questioner expects me to don a Czech gas mask, crack open a case of MRE and start ranting about SHTF and the End Times. Mostly, though, there is just an assumption that there must be some event or competition that I’m working toward.
Nope. This is just… what I do.
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Turns out the this approach has a kind of definition in the world of performance coaching: It’s “mastery orientation” — as differentiated from an “outcome orientation.” I say differentiated rather than “opposed to” because these orientations are not actually in opposition — one can (and according to many coaches should) complement the other, and performance is at its best when they are blended. But they are different.
