A wise man once said that the four basics of Laser sailing are
- Boat-handling skills
- Racing skills
- Physical fitness
- Mental attitude
The wise man said that if you can get the four basics right you will be a good Laser sailor.
You will win races.
By coincidence, a not very wise man writes a blog where he writes a lot of utter nonsense about Boat handling, Tactics, Physical Fitness and Mental Fitness. The blogger uses slightly different words but he means the same things.
I guess the same four basics would hold true for racing many other kinds of sailboats too.
And I guess you could make a similar list for other sports.
But can you really work on all four at once?
If you wanted to to focus on only one of the four this year, which one would it be?
Is there one that you have to get right before all the others?
Is there one that will give you the biggest bang for the buck?
Is there anything major missing from that list?
Should there be a hyphen in "boat-handling" or not?
Will Tillerman ever stop writing these posts with lists of annoying questions?
4 comments:
I think you are right about them applying to any competitive activity. Replace boat-handling (with or without the -) with technique and racing skills with tactics.
You probably have the order right as well. Without proper technique, you can't even bother with tactics. And without those two the last two don't matter. Then we add physical fitnees which allows us to perform the first two. The the mental part to keep it all going all the time regardless of outside influences.
Wow, it's easy!
But of course we are all blessed with varying amounts of each and practice only gets you so far...
If you get the first two shifts right the other four become less important. (-;
IMHO, replace 1 with boat speed and then the others will follow. Upwind boat speed means clean air, and is how the rich get richer.
Doug /Pam - 1 could easily be called boat speed. It includes straight line boat speed as well as boat handling at the starts, tacks, gybes and mark roundings. But that's all about getting around the course as fast as possible.
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