Be water my friend.

Be water my friend.

That’s what my high jump coach told me today. If you look back at my videos from the competition two days ago, you would see that my movements are a little robotic and not ‘flowing’. This results in the disruption of energy I’m generating and putting into the system (the body and ground contact) which results in a poor jump.

A bit about my high jump coach Fuzz, he’s actually the Great Britain’s high jump national coach (in charge of getting GB’s high jump team ready for the London Olympics, see link for news article) and such an amazing person. I just discovered that he used to be an actor (appeared in several TV productions and a few movies) and was the coach of Germaine Mason, GB high jumper who won silver at Beijing 2008.

So how did I end up getting coached by him? Well I first met him coaching the elite squad here last year and had a short word with him asking if there were any high jump coaches around for someone that’s starting out like me. In short there wasn’t, so I just got on with it and tried to get some practice by myself or with Max if he’s around (he would try his best to guide me, but I wasn’t progressing much and he was struggling with the event as well due to his knee surgery). So one day while I was alone at the track, I brought my video camera and tripod and just tried to ‘figure it out’ following instructions I’ve gotten from a track and field coaching manual and trying my best to learn how to high jump.

Fuzz then came along with an elite athlete, who was going to use the high jump bed for a session, so I started to pack up my stuff and was about to leave, but he told me to stay. He laid down the J-shape run up with cones and asked me to run it. He gave me some feedback after and told me to do that drill for 5000 times as I was about to head back to Singapore for the summer months.

So I did (tried to at least). I would wake up early to go to VJC during summer before I went to work and before school started for the JC students so that I can use their High Jump bed and did the drills that Fuzz taught me. Don’t think I made it to 5000 times, but I tried my best to.

When this school year started, I was pleased to find out that Fuzz had agreed to coach the university squad as well, so both Max and I joined the big group of high jumpers who turned up on hearing that he was the university coach. Somehow that then lead to now, with Fuzz having a session each week with just Max and myself, coaching us two specifically for that session.

And the best part is, he reckons that both Max and I are amazing athletes, but we just don’t know it yet. On a scale of 0 to 10, Fuzz thinks that I’ve only just reached to 2 from 0 so far, so there’s still a lot more coming.

As I mentioned in an early post about chasing dreams ‘No one’s going to help you if you don’t help yourself, so go on, start trying.’ And I guess this is my best example of it.

You really don’t know who’s going to be the one helping you along your way, but trust me, when people see that you are sincere, genuine, committed and willing to do a little lot of hard work, these people will magically appear and guide you along your path.

Thank you very much for your patience and coaching. (Picture from UKA website)

500 more days to go.

Let’s make it happen.