Your Body and Your Brain Need Options

There is rarely only one way to do something.

Think about getting out of a chair.

Sometimes the chair is high.

Sometimes it's low.

Sometimes it's soft enough to swallow you whole.

Sometimes you're holding a cup of coffee.

Or a sleeping child.

Or the dog has chosen exactly that moment to stand where your foot needs to go.

Life changes the problem.

One Perfect Answer Isn't Enough

We like correct answers.

There is comfort in knowing:

And when we're learning something new, a clear path can be enormously useful.

But life doesn't stay inside controlled conditions.

• The suitcase is heavier than expected.
• The hiking trail is uneven.
• The grocery bag tears.
• Someone bumps into you.
• The step is higher than you thought.

Suddenly, the movement you practiced isn't quite the movement life is asking for.

Your brain and body have to solve a slightly different problem.

Familiarity Can Become a Favorite

In Practice Doesn't Make Perfect. It Makes Familiar. , we explored how repetition creates familiarity.

And familiarity is useful.

Your brain loves a solution that has worked before.

Why reinvent getting out of a chair every Tuesday?

But familiar can quietly become favorite.

And favorite can become:

The problem isn't having a favorite solution.

The problem is having only one.

Capability Lives in the Options

Imagine you know one way to get onto and off the floor.

Then one day that particular strategy isn't available.

Maybe the space is different.

Maybe you're holding something.

Maybe one knee is unhappy about today's arrangements.

If you have only one solution, the problem suddenly becomes much larger.

But what if your brain and body know several?

• You can turn.
• Shift.
• Use a hand.
• Change your base.
• Move through another position.
• Ask for support.

The objective isn't to prove that you can do it one particular way.

The objective is to solve the problem.

That's capability.

Not perfect movement.

Your Brain Is Part of the Movement

We often talk about movement as though the body does it and the brain watches.

It doesn't.

Your brain is continually receiving information.

• Where am I?
• Where is the floor?
• How heavy is this?
• Did that work?
• What changed?
• What should happen next?

And every slightly different experience gives that conversation something new to work with.

• A different surface.
• A different load.
• A different direction.
• A different speed.
• A different solution.

Your body experiences the difference.

Your brain learns from it.

And your available choices can grow.

This Changes What Variety Means

Variety isn't valuable simply because doing the same thing gets boring.

Variety gives the brain and body different problems to solve.

Sometimes the change is tiny.

• A different spring.
• A different foot position.
• Eyes looking somewhere else.
• One hand instead of two.
• A little more load.
• A little less stability.

The purpose isn't to make an exercise more impressive.

It's to ask:

That's where movement becomes exploration.

A Teacher Doesn't Need to Give You Every Answer

This changes teaching too.

If the goal were one perfect movement, a teacher's job would be to keep correcting you until you reproduced it.

But if capability requires options, sometimes the better teacher does something else.

• They create the conditions.
• They ask the question.
• They watch what happens.
• They allow you enough room to solve part of it yourself.

Not because instruction doesn't matter.

Because discovery matters too.

Sometimes the most valuable moment in a session isn't:

That little recognition belongs to you.

And it travels with you when the teacher isn't there.

More Options Make Life Larger

In What Does It Mean to Be Capable? , we explored capability as what makes the life we choose possible.

Options give that capability room to work.

• Another way to reach.
• Another way to balance.
• Another way to carry.
• Another way to get up.
• Another way to respond when the expected solution isn't available.

And this connects to something we explored in The Body You Build Is the Life You Build.

We aren't building bodies simply to become better at movement.

We're building the freedom to enjoy the life we value.

The more useful options your brain and body have available...

the less life has to go exactly according to plan.

And let's face it.

Life has never been particularly interested in the plan.

Perhaps capability isn't knowing the right answer.