Learning to love adversity: 4 similarities between trail running and playing golf to teach you how to find meaning through sports
Playing sports you love matters
“When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things.” Joe Namath
Adults have a strange view of fun these days. If it’s not around consumption and relaxation it’s not considered fun. But when we were kids the most fun we had was running around and playing sports and games with our friends. Now if we play sports it’s either too serious or not serious enough to evoke the same kind of excitement and fun we felt as youngsters.
There are the realities of ageing and taking on more responsibilities as adults.
But that’s no excuse to give up using your body as a means of expression and fun.
What’s needed is a proper balance between these realities of adulthood and the necessity of finding joy through active motion. The secret ingredient you need is love. When you discover a love of motion you’ll find that balance.
It’s what happened to me when I discovered the sports that I now love to play as an adult: trail running and golf.
Why trail running and golf?
Adults need sports that can test them physically, provide consistent challenges, but don’t come with the same injury risks that competitive team and individual sports tilted towards the youth afford.
Trail running and golf both satisfy this condition, I can play them hard and see myself improving for a long time. I can compete without bringing myself into serious risk of injury. I can play for fun and I can play for results.
But there’s another important element that relates to love of motion that binds these sports together.
They may seem at odds at first glance, but digging deeper reveals strong connections between the two practices.
Both require endurance and stamina. Both require a necessity of forgetting bad moments and pressing forward. Both rely on at times explosive movements but pacing is key to both pursuits.
This is why I love playing both of them, they teach me profound lessons that I can help me perform in each sport.
Here are the 4 lessons I learn from each sport that helps me in the other.
1.Mind over matter
In both trail running and golf you have to get beyond the body and live inside the mind.
When you push forward on a trail run when your body is sore, lungs gasping for air, you realise that pain isn’t what holds you back, it’s your willingness to endure it that defines the run. Same thing happens in golf. When you have a run of bad shots it’s easy to fall into a downward spiral, but mental fortitude to press on and refind your stroke keeps you moving forward.
Both sports force you into the mind teaching you resiliency and determination in the face of adversity.
2.Forget instant adversity
In both trail running and golf you have to forget mistakes quickly or else you’re doomed.
When you fall in trail running or make a mistake with your fuelling the negative energy can overtake you. When you hit a poor shot in golf you instantly regret it and feel intense frustration that will negatively affect your mental state for the next shot. In both sprots you have time to ruminate over the mistake and let them run wild in your head.
Forgetting the bad and moving forward fast is a massive advantage these sports teach you.
3.Accept nature’s challenge
Both sports occur in the natural environment manicured for fun, trails are cut and courses designed for play.
In trail running you’re at the mercy of the weather, the trail conditions, and the elevation changes. In golf there are natural hazards all over the course, undulations on the fairways and greens, and the weather (wind, rain, sun, etc…) that all conspire against your ball. In both sports if you fight against nature you lose.
The best you can do is accept the difficulties and endeavor forward in good spirits.
4.Smile at the pain
If you want a mind strong enough to play each sport you must learn to laugh at misfortune and smile at pain.
In trail running you’re one misstep away from a nasty fall or one strong breeze away from a rain storm. In golf you can hit a perfect shot that hits the wrong side of a hill and bounces into a hazard. In both sports you must be able to not only move past adversity but realize that the adversity is what MAKES the game possible.
In golf luck is baked into the game so you do yourself no good by getting frustrated and trail running by it’s nature forces unnecessary challenges that road running and treadmills don’t offer.
Learning to love the adversity is required to excel in both sports.
Takeaways
The takeaway for me is simple, the sports I love to play rest upon challenging nature and loving the adversity that comes with it.
What should you takeaway from this exploration into the sports I love to play and the similarities between them? That you need to become creative, imaginative, exploratory, and deeply passionate about playing sports and what they mean to you. When you open you heart to movement a new world of meaning opens up and you’ll be able to take powerful lessons from that sport and apply them in your everyday life.
When I needed to stand up for free speech on university campuses or defend my right to bodily choice over the pandemic I relied on these sports and the resiliency and power they gave me.
But I wouldn’t be able to transfer those lessons if I didn’t play them from my heart because I’d miss out on the deeper significance of what moving my body does for my mind and spirit.
When you realize the sports you play hold deep significance to the way you live your life, you’ll play them with a significance that resonates deeply beyond the physical.