January, 2012 -

L.A. Dad: Archery For The Whole Family

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Jan 192012

A treat for us Dads in the Los Angeles area. About a year after I moved to Southern California, I discovered a club in the city I lived in, Pasadena, for archery. It was the Pasadena Roving Archers and I attended their practices for a few weeks before another hobby I was pursuing (my kung fu training) had a schedule conflict and I gave it up. Now that I live in LA proper (and work in the Valley), and I have a little boy, I am looking to take archery up again. Probably start myself, but then when Nathan is old enough, bring him out and play Robin Hood with him together.

I’ve discovered a club out in Culver City at the Rancho Park archery range. Relatively close to where I live, so I’ll try them out and post a review. I also found a club in the Valley close to where I work. It’s the Woodley Park Archers and they are at Woodley Park off the 101. They’re actually close enough to work that I could probably shoot off a few shots after office hours before going home. I’ll try them out and post a review in the future as well.

So, you’re thinking, why archery?

I do martial arts, have been for almost twenty years, and I’ve learned to handle a lot of ancient weapons. But I will admit that bow and arrow is the one weapon type that I never became proficient in so I’m interested from that perspective in rounding out my repertoire.

But there is another reason. One of the reasons that kyudo, the Japanese art of archery, is considered a gentleman’s martial art, is that it takes a great deal of discipline, control, and steadiness to get good at it. Archery is one of the few martial arts where you can’t “muscle you way” and all the energy and ferocity in the world will do you no good. In fact, being calm and steady, being zen in the face of a hurricane, that kind of demeanor is what makes a good archer. And this kind of attribute is something that I want to impart on Nathan. I think it’s a good attribute to impart on any child.

In any event, I’ll put up a follow-up post as soon as I try out the Rancho Park and Woodley Park clubs. I’ll also try out Pasadena again – since it’s been more than 7 years since I was there. Stay tuned.

Not So Productive

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Jan 182012

So I had originally planned on going to my Krav Maga class (I have a voucher I have to use up) but ended up staying at work late. So I came up, with every intention of eating a light dinner, then working out – either running, or calisthenics, or some of my kung fu exercises, or at least play Kinect Sports. And then afterwards spending the rest of the evening writing another few posts, set them up to publish at a future date, and then go to sleep early.

But no. I have ended doing the exact opposite of what I had planned.

I came home, then had dinner, then had some cheetos and watched NCIS, then finished off the said bag of cheetos while watching Law and Order SVU, then had another bag of Pops chips watching Hawaii Five-O, and here I am, almost midnight, still not sleeping, not having worked out, and no writing the post that I had planned on writing (a series of reviews of baby monitors).

And I can’t even blame the baby, since Nathan’s been awesome and sleeping since 6pm. Man, my at home routine has become complete mush since Nate as born, but I can no longer use baby duties as an excuse for not working out and not being productive. This is one of my New Year Resolutions – bust my ass more, hustle more.

OK, tomorrow’s another day.

To Be A Good Dad, Get In Shape

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Jan 182012

OK, I’m probably gonna sound like I’m a broken record, but here’s yet another reason getting in shape, nay, being an active Dad is not only the best thing you can do for yourself, but also for your kids.

I’m going to unabashedly steal this from this great site, sweatscience.com.

Need I say more?

Deliberate Practice, Part 1: Intelligence Is Overrated

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Jan 182012

Talent, Excellence, Success – it’s all things we want to help nurture in our children. A while back I read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (OK, I listened to it as an audiobook, but it still counts). In it, he talks about how some people become excellent at something, superstars and experts by doing what’s called deliberate practice. This isn’t just rote practice, but a very specific set of activities where:

you start with an analysis of your strengths and weaknesses and a plan working on your weaknesses
you meticulously and step-by-step do whatever it is you want to work on, but always just outside your comfort zone so you’re not cruising through, but not quite freaking out either
work on those deficiencies or goals in small and measurable ways
get feedback (from a coach, a teacher, a mentor, an audience, somebody) on how well you are doing so that you can course correct
and do it again, day after day.

It’s how everyone from Tiger Woods to Bobby Fischer to Mozart to Einstein got good at what do do and did.

I’ve spoken of the blog by Cal Newport called Studyhacks before in a previous post. He too talked about deliberate practice – in a way that’s probably a lot more eloquent than I could. Recently he put up a post where he talks about a Reddit thread that he discovered that he thinks excellently captures the spirit of what this is all about. I agree. It’s from an MIT alumn to a poster (a high school student) who seems to be mildly freaking out about whether he’ll be smart enough to succeed at MIT. It’s really worth checking out to hear, what I think is an inspiration (in a kick-in-the-pants sort of way) speech on how whether you succeed at something is a choice, and it’s a choice that you make yourself, and nobody else.

A lot of the time, we think that talent and intelligence is inborn, that you either have it or you don’t. But a lot of modern research is showing that this is not the case, or at least there’s very compelling evidence that this not the whole story. Things like deliberate practice is a method that we would do well to absorb into our lives, not just for ourselves, but so that we can teach its precepts to our kids, so that when they are old enough to pursue whatever it is they want to pursue, they not offer them encouragement and support, but actual concrete techniques and methods that they can use to become great.

Baby Barbells

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Jan 092012

So in surfing the web once again late into the night, I find this. Baby Barbells is a series of exercises that guys can do – essentially weight lifting routines where you use your baby as the active weight. Kinda makes sense – the baby is only going to be growing bigger (and thus heavier) so you have weight progression there, and you have also some quality time you get to spend with the baby disguised as “daddy play time”. And by daddy play time, I mean that dads play with kids differently than moms – on the average we do more physically rambunctious stuff with them more like wrestling with the kids or swing them around or lifting them into the air repeatedly. So it only makes sense that you’d capitalize on this to work out. And as I pointed out in a previous post about what I consider the single best advice for new dads, being in shape is probably the best thing you can do for yourself to help you be a better dad. So kudos to Dr.Levitt for actually bringing this to our attention.

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