Flaunt your weaknesses?

Posted on March 3, 2008 
Filed Under Fitness, Learning

I’m a Flash developer. I’ve been doing the work for several years and I’m not nearly as good as I should be. “Good enough” doesn’t cut it, and “better than most” is hard to define and/or defend. When I say I’m not as good as I should be, I really mean not as good as I could be. And when you’re talking about what you do for a living, that’s just embarrassing.

Arnold’s legs — afterI remember reading once about Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was fresh off the boat, but already a pretty impressive bodybuilder. He hadn’t won even his first Mr. Olympia. He soon became aware that his calf muscles weren’t developing as well as the rest of his body.

If you were a young bodybuilder with a lagging bodypart, you’d probably want to hide it, don’t you think? This is just one of those things that made Arnold the huge success he has been for the past thirty years. He was concerned and actually ashamed of his calf muscles and so he cut off his workout pants at the knees—so that everyone could see his weakness and so that he would always be conscious of the problem.

He ensured that he would be hyperaware of his most difficult bodypart. As a result he knew he would have to focus on fixing it. Compared to other muscles, calves are notoriously hard to build up but Arnold made absolutely certain that he would have to work them more than anything else.

He ultimately won the Mr. Olympia—the most prestigious bodybuilding title—seven times and was known both for his well-balanced physique and for his excellent calf development.

Now how do I go about cutting off my Flash workout pants, and do I have the guts to do it?

Comments

2 Responses to “Flaunt your weaknesses?”

  1. Esther on March 30th, 2008 6:01 am

    Hi Clive,

    I really felt identified with this post and made me feel better knowing another flash developer feels like me.
    I’m also very much into Fitness so I can relate to that too.
    I started with flash with interactive advertising so I think we have lots in common, the only thing is that I stayed freelance.
    I found you reading in the Papaervision mailing list.
    Keep up being so sincere in your blog. I’ll keep reading.
    Ah, by the way, just started on twitter. Will be fun to follow you there as well. :-)

  2. Clive on March 30th, 2008 7:03 pm

    Great to hear from you, Esther. Now that I’m getting actual comments, I’ll have to push harder on the blog front.

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