Tracking the shape of a play

It’s a gift to read thoughtful takes on that language, concept and practices of being in complexity I never cease to be inspired by folks who write on this stuff. As someone who has to teach and explain this to all kinds of different people in all kinds of contexts, that inspiration matters.

Here’s Jen Briselli writing on her experience playing hockey:

Like much of our day to day lives, hockey is both complicated and complex. The complicated parts can be trained. The complex parts must be sensed.

Much of this has been made clearer for me because I came to the game late. Though I watched hockey as a fan, I didn’t grow up playing. I started skating in my late 20s, which means I don’t have the same muscle memory as people who’ve been on skates since toddlerhood. My stickhandling won’t turn heads, and my shots don’t challenge most goalies. But I do possess a fluency for the dynamics of the game and I know how to respond to whatever scenario I find myself in. I can track the shape of a play, notice when the energy shifts, sense when to step up and when to hang back.

Even when I’m one of the slower, smaller skaters surrounded by faster, larger men, my anticipatory positioning keeps the puck out of dangerous places. Despite my unremarkable skating, passing, and shooting skills, when I turn off my goal-oriented pre-meditative brain and rely instead on a visceral connection to what’s happening around me, I can often hold my own with players that are objectively more skilled. (It doesn’t hurt that we’re talking recreational beer league hockey here, but the principles hold true across any type of dynamic human environment.)

That echoes my experience of really learning how to play soccer in my early 40s, never in competitive full-sided games, but rather in small-sided rec leagues or friendly tournaments, where I get to practice all of those embodied skills.