Novices hold on tight, experts have a loose grip.
That’s because when we’re novices, we grasp for control. New motions are unfamiliar, our minds and bodies are not confident, so we clutch tightly, knuckles white, straining, in an effort to get it right.
Experts, on the other hand, holds their tools—a paintbrush, a pencil, a baton, a racquet, a guitar pick, their breath—loosely. With mastery comes relaxation, ease, and effort expended only where it is needed most.
If you’ve ever gone scuba diving, you know this. When you finish a dive, compare how much air you’ve used to that of the dive master. In my experience, the dive master uses half, or even one third, of the air I’ve used in a single dive.
Think about that: two to three times the oxygen, because it was new to me, because I was tense, because of unnecessary effort.
What’s interesting is that some people get stuck in the white-knuckled phase and some move past it.
I don’t know the skeleton key to get from there to here, but some of the ingredients are an intention to give up control, the comfort with being “not great” for a while, finding places not to grip—in your mind, your body, your breath—and breaking the skill down to smaller, slower pieces so you have time and space to get those pieces right.
