Gaming, athletics, and other activities

[yovargas]

Otherwise you are just going through the motions.

[Griffon64]

I wouldn't mind being able to just "go through the motions" while running.

Mental discipline is whole different animal. Of course running requires mental discipline. If it didn't, I sure would find running easier.

Speaking for myself: Running requires great mental discipline ( I said as much before ) but still feels "mindless" at the same time. Now, this could be a mother tongue / second language barrier thing, but I'm meaning "mindless" in the context of "requiring little attention or thought; especially : not intellectually challenging or stimulating", to borrow from Merriam-Webster. Sure, running is intellectually challenging because of the discipline part, but it isn't intellectually stimulating, at least not for me. Perhaps mindless is the wrong word to use for it, but since I don't like the lack of stimulation, I concentrated on that part of the definition.

So, for me, running requires mental discipline. More than I can offer, usually, which is part of why I don't really like it. But, for me, because I don't get the endorphin rush ( and you article established not all people do ) it isn't a stimulating activity.

Example:

I did two things for exercise this morning: I took a run around campus, and then I entered the rec center and used a rowing machine.

When I run, my body just ... does it. I am a recreational runner - well, not even really recreational. More ... obligated. ( After my most recent yearly physical. ) I don't have to think about the running itself, the motions of it. In that regard, I would describe it as a "mindless" activity. I don't have to pay attention to keep running in the physical sense, not the way that I would have to pay attention to, say, keep playing a tennis game. And again, I do have to apply mental discipline to keep running. That is because my brain is whining "I'm bored. Can we stop now? No? OK, what about after that tree? No? Okay, only to the side walk. No???? Come onnnnn ..." Listening to that gets boring after a while. I can't use that time to think.

So, I have to keep forcing myself to run, and "all" I get out of it is improved heart function and lung capacity, in the long run. Also time with the above "mindless" monologue in my head, which I can do without.

The rowing machine, though? Different. My brain *likes* that kind of exercise for some reason. It is the kind of thing where it would actually be "Oh! Oh! Let's go!" Asterisk: actual rowing on an actual body of water is slightly different because a part of me is still worried about all that water below me. A holdover from a childhood and early adulthood spent being completely unable to swim. I can swim a little bit now, so I'm not scared of water anymore, but a vestigial part of my brain still goes "What the heck are you DOING???" when I'm paddling on actual water. In the gym I can just get up when I'm tired. Trying to reach shore with a headwind and choppy water is a bit scarier. Still, I like rowing.

Anyway.

My point is, some forms of exercise requires much mental discipline from me, others do not. All of them gives me the fitness I need to more joyfully pursue physical activities I actually like but have limited time to do.

Therefore, I gravitate towards the forms I enjoy. Exercise by itself does not shower me with endorphins. I wish it would! I do like that relaxed, pleasantly tired feeling in my body, and the clarity in my mind, so I do get a little bit of endorphins, but nothing like a rush - and I only get that after exercise, not during. I guess you can say I like having exercised!

For getting into that wonderful mental "zone" where creativity flows and my mind is freed, I much prefer gardening or hiking or even just walking around the neighborhood, or failing that, something chore-like such as cleaning will work, too.

Am I a worse person for not expending that mental discipline on, for instance, running? For not honing my mental discipline that way? Well, maybe. But I do have different ways to hone it, and it does get tapped on a daily basis keeping my nose to other grindstones - for instance the one that keeps the lights on. I don't feel the need for a daily or weekly challenge beyond that and the exercise I already do.

This is just what works for me, though. More power and admiration to people who run, and run intensely. I respect the mental discipline that it requires. But if I were to expend great mental discipline on an athletic endeavor, I would much rather do this. Or this.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That is a thoughtful post, Griffy, for which I am very grateful.

[Faramond]

Here is a story, not meant to represent anyone's point of view -- not even my own.


When I first started to run I found it very difficult. I was striving in agony, pushing against my own resistance to force my limbs into motion. The dullness seemed unending. I found it mindless and mindless and mindless until I could not think except in feverish bursts of woe for my own miserable state.

One day the truth came to me, in the grim and sweaty aftermath of a particularly gruelling session, that to run is to be caught between gears that never stop, that to run is to willingly grind one's life and thoughts away, leaving only the dust beneath the impact of each terrible and hurried step. What a sin, to hurry needlessly! What a waste. I knew the truth, that running is a mockery of walking, a worship of determination for its own sake.

And so I stopped running.

And then one day, long after I thought I had left running for sport behind, I felt the urge to run again. I could not account for it. It seemed a demon thought, placed deep in my mind by a past life of sin. I tried to ignore the urge, but then it would flare up even stronger, and I knew I must finally heed it, and in so doing fully exorcise it.

As I began to run I felt mulish, half appalled at what I was doing, after vowing never to go back. Yet in an equal half I was amazed, that I should find myself here again, in the heart of repetition, lost in the mindless drone of hurry and pain and determination. The running was as bad as I had remembered. Maybe worse. But I was resolved to finish the thing, and so fully prove the urge foolish, and banish it forever.

And then it happened, the moment that changed everything.

The moment split open and revealed itself to me. The entirety of my run was within the moment. There was more. The moment was vast, containing days, years, entire lives -- from birth to death -- of women and men, and trees and elephants, turtles and empires. My own life too was all inside the moment.

And my run -- this modest endeavor -- seemed so small a thing within the moment, delicate and beautiful, a river of heartbeats and breaths and gliding steps of my own creation, the gifts of my body to myself. The run was a single choice, all contained within the moment, and in running I strove not against myself, but with everything. I breathe the sky, I run the earth, I open the moment around me. My thoughts are vast.

The moment spoke to me, and here is what it said: I am not the past, and I am not the future. I am the moment, and I will never leave you.

And now when I run, I remember these words, and I am glad. The moment is still with me.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

A very interesting story! Thanks for sharing it.

[anthriel]

The fact that it is not to your taste, or Frelga's taste, or anthriel's taste, or Nin's taste is irrelevant. I have not denigrated any activities important to anyone else. I wish the same courtesy were shown by others.

I hope that my weak attempt at humor (it was all true, although apparently not funny!) didn't feel denigrating to you, or disrespectful of the effort it takes athletes to achieve their goals. It was not meant to be either.

I thought I worked pretty hard at the running thing, but I never did achieve much with it. Perhaps I lacked that mental focus that I needed to be successful. It's as likely as any other explanation.

At the end of the day, all I can say is that I did give it a go. I finally had to accept that I would never really be successful at it. The writer of Faramond's story found something in running that was forever going to allude me. Running just didn't sing to me.



Now horseback riding... that does sing to me. And although I never will be particularly "successful" with that, either, I have made significant progress in my quest to be a better rider. It requires an incredible amount of focus, and quite a bit of strength, and strategy and knowledge and a fine-tuned command of one's body parts that I am still trying to achieve. (Can YOU move your left heel out one inch while sliding your right knee forward and tilting your weight to your left hipbone while keeping your hands light and "playful" on the reins and your back straight while your hips are loose and fluid? All in the time it takes for your horse to take one step, then rearranging all kinds of body parts with his next step? I never knew I OWNED so many body parts until I started precision riding!)

And yet I hear all the time that horseback riding is a mindless activity. I just heard today someone say "Well, it can't be a sport, because sports require you to use YOUR muscles". I don't care if people think it's a sport or not, but boy HOWDY it is ever a challenge to your muscles. And your brain.

[axordil]

Anyone who says the rider is, well, just along for the ride...has never read Dick Francis, for one thing.

[anthriel]

Anyone who says the rider is, well, just along for the ride...has never read Dick Francis, for one thing.

Amen to that. Although steeple jocks are just CRAZY.

[WampusCat]

Good posts, Griff, Faramond and Anthy.

I think a better comparison than dishwashing might be meditation.

Like running, meditation requires mental discipline and dedication. Like running, it has shown benefits to mind, body and spirit in multiple studies. And like running, it is commonly perceived as a pointless waste of time by those who don't do it. And there are those practitioners who, like the writer of Faramond's story, find in it a transcendent experience.

But I agree with those who say that whether one finds value in either pursuit is more a matter of individual preference/propensity than it is a matter of understanding.

For me, meditation is the clear choice over running, dishwashing, horseback riding, or just about anything else I can think of. I find it so rewarding to slip into its depths that it would be natural to assume that everyone would experience it in the same way.

But I know some very good, rational, spiritually deep people who would rather be attacked by a drill-wielding rogue dentist than sit in silence for any amount of time. They wonder how I can stand such a mindless activity.

That's the point, though. At its best, it is mindless, because I am so aware and alert and in the present moment that my mind simply lives, rather than offering its usual jabbering commentary.

Some of my friends experience the same sort of magnificent mindlessness while running. It's not the mindlessness of dull blankness, but the mindlessness of universal focus.

When I try to run, it's just painful pounding and gasping for breath. When some people try to meditate, it's just racing thoughts and nervous twitching.

In both cases, we may understand the benefit of a particular pursuit but be unable or unwilling to get past our innate discomfort to reach the level where it is, indeed, mindless. And that's where the best part is.

[JewelSong]

But I agree with those who say that whether one finds value in either pursuit is more a matter of individual preference/propensity than it is a matter of understanding.

Yes, exactly. I find it extremely aggravating when I am told that the reason I don't like something is because I don't "understand" it. I am usually willing to re-visit something or re-examine something and maybe my view will be changed.

But sometimes…sometimes, I just plain don't like to do it. Even if I do understand it. And that has nothing to do with "denigrating" others who DO like it.

[River]

That's the point, though. At its best, it is mindless, because I am so aware and alert and in the present moment that my mind simply lives, rather than offering its usual jabbering commentary.

And that's why I call cycling (for me) a moving meditation. I can't always reach that state but it's definitely worth the chase.

One more week until my new derailleur arrives...

[JewelSong]

For me, it's swimming. I love to hike, but it's not meditative...I have to think too hard about where I'm stepping. But swimming laps...THAT is where I find that state of perfect "mindlessness" where my body is on auto-pilot and my mind is free to wander wherever it might go.

[nerdanel]

(So this started out as a two sentence attempt to speak up for V's perspective and say that I would write more later. And then I ended up writing more, so I'm going ahead and posting it without rereading, at 2 AM. Which I will assuredly regret later. When it comes to messageboard posting, I DEFINITELY don't understand how to do it. Still. And it's been well more than a decade. )

I must be the only one who "understands" (no pun intended) what V was/is getting at and agrees with him, albeit with a huge asterisk. More later.

I will say that my thoughts will somewhat explore the emotions that Jewel's characterization of swimming laps as linked to "mindlessness" brought to mind. Because of course (competitive) swimming, even at a subelite level, is so divorced from mindlessness as to be comical - as to suggest that anyone who would use the word "mindless" to describe it indeed does not "understand" it. BUT of course, Jewel is not referring to competitive swimming - to the art of pushing one's body as far and fast and as technically correctly as it will go. She is referring to something utterly different - an activity of swimming back and forth in a circle, in a lane, staring at a black line in the bottom of the pool, that has nothing to do in any way with the tremendously mindful, endorphin-raising, technical challenge of competitive swimming. Someone who merely swims back and forth, staring at the bottom of the pool, may indeed be engaging in a mindless and comparatively unskilled endeavor in which their mind can wander freely - but in this case, if they maintain that swimming in general is mindless based on their experience (and, to be clear, Jewel has not done so), I would feel very comfortable saying that they do not "understand" what swimming is, or has the potential to be when taken to a higher level than they have personally done - because there is so much more to the art of (competitive) swimming that is likely to be wholly outside their personal experience. I would further say that a lap swimmer asserting that swimming is a mindless activity who is offended by this post, who claims it is improper to be told that there is more about swimming that they do not understand based on their claim of mindlessness, is literally meta-not understanding: they essentially do not even understand what they do not understand.

By way of analogy: imagine if I insisted to Anthy that horseback riding is a simple matter: it is a matter of sitting on the horse, zoning out, and letting the horse do the work. How many of you would credit this view? Or if I insisted that piano playing was simple: all that is required is to push keys with fingers and the correct notes come out. I again suspect that many of you would correctly identify this as the elementary views of an inexperienced beginner in the field, and if I insisted on the correctness of this view, would tell me that there is much about piano playing that I don't understand from my amateur dabblings in practice rooms with Suzuki practice books. Athletic endeavors deserve no less respect. And I am speaking as someone who does not understand the first thing about running - and does not pretend to just because I casually run 5-8K distances several times a week as part of a fairly uneducated cross-training program. That sort of dabbling does not mean that I have more than the most elementary understanding of what the sport of running is, and I wouldn't take the least bit of offense at being told that I don't understand many things about it. I'd be very surprised to find that I understand much about it when I only treat it as a form of casual (and usually substitute) exercise. So I'm not sure why my fellow casual runners (or "runners," as I prefer to think of myself) are so outraged at being told that they/we don't understand the ways that it is far from a mindless activity for those who are more serious about it than we are.

[yovargas]

Sorry to requote myself but really:

There's a big difference between "running" and "intensive, long-distance, competitive running". I bet you could make world-class competitive dish-washing into a mentally intense activity if one wanted to but that doesn't change that by and large, to most people, dish-washing is a mindless activity.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yes, exactly. I find it extremely aggravating when I am told that the reason I don't like something is because I don't "understand" it.

Except that no one has said that, and I have already explained that no one has said that, and already expressed frustration that you keep insisting that that is what being said. And your response is to repeat the same misinterpretation. At this point, I can only assume that you are willfully doing so.

To repeat. I have never said anything about whether or not anyone should or should not like anything, or why. All I have said is that if you believe that running is a mindless activity you do not understand it, because it is a discipline and like any discipline it requires mental effort.

With that, I am done with this discussion.

[JewelSong]

I think that it is possible that we are doing the old "apples and oranges" thing here. Or that maybe we are using different definitions of the word "mindless."

For ME, the whole state of "mindlessness" that I can achieve by swimming is the very reason I like to do it. I don't have think "well, now, arch your right arm up just so, and kick, kick, kick...turn your head and breathe. Arch your left arm now..." I do it well enough and automatically enough so that I can just DO it without consciously thinking about it. (So I can use it for exercise and meditation at the same time.). The actual swimming (for me) is not the discipline. I am not competing with anyone or trying to swim faster than anyone. The discipline (for me) is getting my fat ass in the water and actually swimming on a regular basis. I don't run for various physical reasons, but IF I did, I would want to attain the "mindlessness" as I do with swimming.

My brother is a pianist. He practices the Hanon exercises every day. They develop deteririty and muscle memory. He has done it so often that he can carry on a conversation or read a book at the same time. That is the entire point of those exercise...to have the movement and the sequences became so second-nature that you don't have to think about them anymore.

So, as Yov said above, there is a difference in being a "competitive" runner or swimmer or whatever and doing the activity for "fun" (for lack of a better word.)

And Voronwë, I seem to have ticked you off once again which was not my intent. However, I HAVE been told on various occasions in my almost 60 years that if only I "understood" X or Y, then I would "like" it. I even gave an example or two, with my son trying to get me to "understand" rap. I was not referring you YOU telling me anything (and in this particular thread, I was not even one of the people who said that they "understood" running or had ever done any running at all.). I am sorry that I did not make myself clear. It certainly was not done "willfully."

PS: I'm thinking of changing my title to "Inadvertently ticking off Voronwë since 2009..."

[yovargas]

(........this little argument has been a pretty stupid one........)


If we're gonna go with the high-end competitive scenes, I'd like to propose that gaming doesn't get the credit it deserves. An example, a very popular game called Starcraft. It is a competitive strategy game where players create armies to try and defeat each other. For one thing, at the very high end, there are tournaments popular enough that the very best can actually make a damn good living by winning tournament prizes (which can go into the 6 figures for the biggest tourneys).

But more relevant to this topic, there is a performance metric in the game called Actions Per Minute (APM) which is pretty much what it sounds like - it keeps track of how many commands you're issuing per minute. It is said to begin to be competitive on a tournament - your APM needs to be at least 150, with some of the very best getting up to 200. Consider: this is a strategy game, which means that every one of those actions needs to be a smart decision, which means that a peak player can be thinking through and then executing 3 decisions per second. And you have to sustain that level of intense focus and execution for matches that can last anywhere from a few minutes up to an hour. I doubt there is any athletic activity anywhere that requires this level of intense, sustained, intellectual focus.

Here's a short video showing what 150+ APM looks like. It's unreal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbpCLqryN-Q

[anthriel]

By way of analogy: imagine if I insisted to Anthy that horseback riding is a simple matter: it is a matter of sitting on the horse, zoning out, and letting the horse do the work.

I would readily agree with you, actually. For most people... and, on some days, for me... it is a mindless activity. Passenger mode is definitely an option. In fact, it's all most people experience while riding.

However, mindlessness while riding can be the RESULT of hard work. Did you see the pictures from the day I rode Kolby all over the park and our extended neighborhood, and handed out tangelos? No? One of my more odd notions, and that's saying a lot. However, I will admit I wasn't thinking of where my left heel was at all that day. I was thinking about cars and traffic and stray dogs and giving away tangelos.

Did all my training, all of the rote disciplined hours, help me that day? Absolutely. I have a sense of balance on horseback (and a solid relationship with a 1000 lb animal) that I totally take for granted. I earned it, though, hour by laborious hour.

I dropped the reins completely many times that day, and steered with my balance and legs, because I needed my hands for other things. My horse acted like I DID have reins on him, but I did not. I had a couple of comments about that, actually. How are you getting him to back up when you don't have your hands on the reins?

The answer would be: I don't know. Or more accurately... I'm not conscious of the mechanics of how I am doing that. Not anymore.

But it took hours and hours and days and days of practice and work to get to the point I could ride him that way. I can reach down and pull that horse's bridle off, now, and get him to leg yield on the diagonal and do spins and back up and canter off from a dead halt. Mindless? Far from it. It was the most focused effort I've given to anything in many years.

But NOW it's mindless. And I think that's what ax and Prim were saying upstream; lots of work in a task can LEAD to mindlessness in that task, and that is, oddly, sometimes the goal.

How many of you would credit this view?

Most of the people I talk to feel that riding is mindless. Again, I think it certainly can be. Mindlessness while riding is either because you are just in total passenger mode (Hey! I know how to ride! We rented horses 5 years ago at Bryce canyon! It was easy!), or because you've spent many, many hours getting to the point, EARNING the moment where it CAN be mindless.

Both are fun. But they are not the same.