Blog Archives
RUNNING IN A FASTER TIMEFRAME.
When Maxi Fleet, a marathon runner, meets Jack Cram, a physicist researching flow, their careers blossom and they become partners. Their story is told in a novel Time Is Gold by Martin Knox. Maxi trains using flow, or ‘in the zone’ and her performance improves to the elite level. Her goal is to run faster than any woman has run before.
Jack has an idea that if she trains to run in ‘extreme flow’ she can dilate her time, being able to run further in the same time, according to Einstein’s Special Relativity theory. Her training is planned at meetings of her team of friends, in a think tank, with Jack as her philosophical coach. Her coaching needs develop from accepting her father’s authoritarianism to Jack’s role as her technical adviser. He is too much in love to be able to tell her what to do. The philosophies and scientific theories of her running are carefully described and explained in non-scientific language. Her progress is fresh and inspiring.
Will Maxi achieve her goal and break the World record?
On Amazon. Reviews see martinknox.com
STUDENT LEARNING SELF-GUIDED
The pole vault symbolises a skilled task requiring experience, as encountered in their daily work by performers, employees, athletes, students and artists. Coaching can bring Improvement. Self-coaching is a revolution that replaces trusting in others’ advice, with empirical analysis.
Megan is a pole vaulter directed by her lived experience, with feedback from her performances, following Heidegger’s method of phenomenological analysis. Educators know that there can be a wide gulf between the mind of a coach or tutor and his or her student. The student’s observation, intuition and self-analysis is most important.
Turkeys Not Bees is a story about a performer who relies on self-coaching and excels. Her input is complemented by her boyfriend Chance’s biomechanical digital modelling, creating a type of virtual reality for her to explore. Her solitary achievement is a microcosm of turkey-like human endurance, contrasting with bee-like colonisation by territorial aggression.
The book has philosophy, science, psychology, Debord’s spectacle and a romance, in an exciting story, including non-violent disobedience, protesting of overreach by a nanny state and Covid restrictions.
Book available on Amazon. Reviews see martinknox.com
PERFORMING BETTER IN OWNED TIME
Living in my time, not wearing a watch and doing things when I feel like it, seems to run against the self-control and personal interdependence that Norbert Elias, 1897-1990, called the civilizing process. He identified a dramatic reduction in homicides in England. The trend became the theme of Pinker’s tome ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature.’ He explained that youth rebellion worldwide is a counterculture against social time, when timeliness has become a personal battle, from A Clockwork Orange to the hippy movement.
In 2022 we have achieved historically low homicide rates worldwide, without the stress of obeying ‘Slessor’s little fidget wheels’ which would impose clock time. We can choose to have our cake of time freedom and eat it too, by allowing ourselves to flow timelessly, by optimal achievement, according to Mihaly’s theory of that psychological condition.
My novels ‘Time is Gold’ and ‘Turkeys Not Bees’ tell stories about high achievers who have let flow take over their time. Reviews: martinknox.com
TWO COACHING PHILOSOPHIES
Time Is Gold has a story of an endurance runner, Maxi who becomes a champion with psychology, biomechanics, neuroscience, zen and physics advice from her coaching team. Their dualist philosophies equip her to expand the limits of her endurance. Her mind and her body improve by traditional didactic coaching.
In Turkeys Not Bees, Megan becomes a world champion pole vaulter, by exploring her technique with phenomenology and self-coaching. With the help of her physicist boyfriend, she develops a kinaesthetic numerical model that she uses to improve, focussing on her lived experience without a coach.
These stories by Martin Knox apply academic theories to top athletes’ training and performances in elite competition, in romantic settings. Both women learn to train and compete in flow. Maxi relies on advice from experts whereas Megan analyses her performance herself.
Both are available on Amazon. Reviews: martinknox.com
