“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” -Bruce Lee
As a personal trainer I love this quote. I feel it applies to everything in life, especially fitness and training.
What this quote is about is mastery. It is always wisest to master one thing before we try to move on to a new skill.
This is true in everything we do from martial arts, to normal everyday tasks, and even in fitness.
In fitness something that is well known is that people try to move forward to fast. Basically we want to add a big load to our squat before we even know what to squat.
If I cannot squat properly without a load or with a light load, you have no right to add a heavy weight to the movement.
The reason why we do not want to do this is because we are adding injury to dysfunction.
Something that happens a lot is we like to blame a movement for an injury. When the truth is, poor movement is what will lead you to an injury.
Adding a heavy load to a movement that we did not know what to perform in the first place, is what got you hurt.
Slow down, lower the weight, and master the movements.
It is much better to practice the movement 10,000 times and add a load later, than it is to practice it once and get hurt.