Blog Archives
IS TURKEY COMPETITION INDIVIDUAL?
Chance graduated from university as an engineer with too much ambition to wait for his company to promote him. He took risks, until he realised that to progress into management the higher ups had to trust and appreciate his work. As they learned to depend on him, his role expanded. Then he had the misfortune to begin a relationship with Georgina and married her.
She was an administration manager with ambitions of her own and opposed everything he wanted. Frustrated, he changed career path to a PhD at the university, in psychology, where he had more freedom. She moved out and they divorced.
He met Megan a fellow PhD student at the university. She was an elite pole vaulter and he wanted her to use a technique he was studying, phenomenology, to hone her skills. She coached herself using a digital vaulting model they developed. She adopted Heidegger’s phenomenological technique to focus on improvement. Chance helped her to articulate her vaulting experience and identify potential she could exploit. Under his tutelage, she performed in flow at the zenith of her ability, where time dilation was possible.
The novel tells the story of Megan who strives as a schoolgirl in local competitions and then after several years becomes an elite athlete touring international championships with her boyfriend Chance. Their individuality is tested when organisers seek to monetize pole vaulting by restricting her training techniques to result in closer competition and more earnings from this and similar events.
Would she succeed? Her training methods were opposed by rivals and also by less able athletes who couldn’t compete with her. Would the nanny state overreach into trying to limit her performances? Would their training methods be acceptable to the athletics authority at the Olympic Games? How would their work be affected by an outbreak of pandemic flu at the Olympics?
Megan’s training could be restricted by an outbreak of pandemic flu at the Olympics. They resist, because they are individualists and take part in a non-violent protest march through the city centre, which wins acceptance of individualism. It is a win for their campaign of individualism, like Australian scrub turkeys who live solitary lives, over bees who live in highly socialised groups.
There is strong pressure on Megan and Chance to conform and compromise their performances but competition is everything to them. Megan has reached a record height by arduous training without social goals.
Turkeys Not Bees is available on Amazon at https://tinyurl.com/hwn74md2
Extracts and reviews are on the blog martinknox.com
WHO WILL WIN IN PARIS OLYMPICS?
The 2024 Summer Olympics will be held in Paris from 26 July to 11 August. It is too late to commence training now, but existing training programmes can possibly be stepped up and include new techniques, or training can be commenced for 2028 and 2032, or other events.
Time Is Gold is a fiction novel (2020) https://tinyurl.com/4zzkvzcs by Martin Knox, chronicling the career of marathon runner Maxi Fleet.
She learns to run ‘In flow’, a psychological technique by Mihaly, that helps her qualify and compete.
Her training and performance are managed by Jack Cram, a PhD student boyfriend, who coordinates technical advice of experienced runners, scientific experts and a Zen archer. He extends Einstein’s Special Relativity theory for neuroscience, enabling her to perform faster in dilated time. Will she break the World record?
Turkeys Not Bees (2022) https://tinyurl.com/hwn74md2 also by Martin Knox, is the fiction story of Megan McLean, a pole vaulter in training for the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane. She is helped by her boyfriend, Chance Finething, who helps her to use Heidegger’s phenomenology to self-coach and train ‘in flow’. Their new technique is opposed by authorities, who try to hold them back with the herd, when their approach to individual performance sets the bar too high for them. Megan wants competition like turkeys, as individuals, unlike bees whose work and reproduction are controlled by their colony. Will Megan be able to succeed?
The stories relate philosophy and science to training and performance for endurance and field events. The stories narrate the ambitions, fears, discussions and performances of the athletes leading up to the Olympics. The story focusses on the beliefs of elite athletes and how adopting new beliefs depends on accurate scientific advice.
Martin Knox is an engineer and science teacher who writes about individuals who explore novel ideas.
His blog with reviews and posts is at martinknox.com
Books are available on Amazon from the links above.
PERFORMING FASTER IN TIME
In my novel Time Is Gold, Maxi is an elite marathon runner who controls her performance time to improve. She learns to use the technique ‘flow’ helped by her partner Jack, a physics PhD, who researches time dilation in ‘extreme flow’, according to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity. Her intense training raises her neural transmission speed near to the speed limit, causing her time to dilate, by analogy with travel in space.
Her willpower and physical ability are strengthened by practice and she gets more running done in longer seconds. Maxi’s training is epistemological, based on self-coaching. Her preparation for races is advised by her entourage of experts in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and Zen. Maxi’s winning performances on the international marathon competition circuit cause jealousy and she is falsely accused of taking performance enhancing substances.
Many performers in time stop improving when they reach glass ceilings set by others’ time agendas. If their performance time is referred instead to times they have experienced in practice, they can feel their way to improvement.
The book is on Amazon and chronicles Maxi’s running career and results in competition.
See reviews at martinknox.com
DO PERFORMERS CREATE OR OBEY?
Megan is a champion pole vaulter who self-coaches using phenomenology to identify potential for improving her performances. She is held back by event organisers who want close finishes to sell tickets and media advertising. Athletes are constrained by regulations and industry hype to provide crowd-pleasing performances and camera shots with the appearance of fair competition. The sporting juggernaut rolls through a season with athletics, soccer, gymnastics, cricket, tennis, swimming, golf, cycling, rugby and horse racing. Only horse racing has handicapping to obtain closer finishes but other sports prevent innovations by athletes who are paid to entertain.
When an Australian national sporting body tries to prevent Megan using an effective new training technique, developed by her partner Chance, based on his PhD research, they are opposed by levellers who want all ability levels to be able to succeed in competitions. Megan is an individualist who is prevented from doing her best by collectivists who subscribe to a nanny state that is running amok. The ethos of affirmative action is spreading to education, employment and arts.
The restrictions on Megan become intolerable during an outbreak of Covid. Faced with mandatory vaccinations, they lead a campaign of non-violent civil disobedience. If they succeed, future society can be individual, like brush turkeys, who live independent lives. But if they fail, collective living could assign them to slave-like worker roles, like honey bees. Which human destiny do people want? What action can you take to mend society? Turkeys Not Bees is novel fiction by Martin Knox. Available on Amazon. Reviews at martinknox.com
