In Martial Arts there are two ways to meet an attack.

One method is to lean on your heels, waiting for the attack to come in. In this posture, all the weight is on heels. Ill-prepared to meet an attack, you usually lose because of your lax posture.

Or…

You get on your toes. You lean forward, knees bent, flexible and ready to meet what comes in. In this posture, you’re proactive and probably win.

These same postures apply to our lives. When things get out of control and we’re overwhelmed with things to do, people to see, or deadlines to meet, we can adopt one of these postures. We either meet the attack head on, ready for whatever may come in, or we relax and let it hit us straight on.

The Ironman Triathalon doesn’t take just anyone. You not only have to know how to swim, bike, and run, but you have to be really good at all three to win.

The mindset of the successful Ironman competitor is simple. If you’re naturally talented at all three skills, you’ve got it made. You’re lucky and rare.

If you’re great at running and biking, but need to improve swimming, you have a hard road ahead. You don’t wince about the extra effort spent swimming because you realize it’s part of the race. If you don’t swim well, you don’t win, no matter how great you bike or run.

These competitors tell themselves “I’m going to get good at it” in order to accomplish their goal. Putting in the extra effort and concentrating on swimming, they often decrease their overall time in the race. They know the power of focused attention in the direction of a challenge; the extra time spent swimming is time well spent at the end of the race.

If you’re not good at all 3,why not win at something else?

In tennis, No-man’s land is not where you want to be. The space between the baseline and volley line, it’s where you’ll likely hit the least shots.

The problem with no-man’s land is that you reach too far to hit long balls and too far to hit short balls. The middle is not an advantageous position as you flail and stretch for balls that soar past you or one’s that are just shy of your grasp. You feel breathless and mixed-up.

The name itself sounds lonely and desperate, like a desert where you go to die.

When I played tennis I didn’t understand this concept. I thought the middle was the nicest, most effective place to be. Shouldn’t it make it easier to hit both long and short balls from the center? A natural hitter, I thought that positioning myself in the prime real estate nobody else wanted was an advantage.

At my coach’s behest, I consciously tried to avoid no-man’s land, but it felt like the smart place to be to prepare for whatever came in.

Pretty quickly, my tennis started to suck. I flailed around and ran speedily back to reach long balls and back as fast as I could to reach short ones. I was a chicken with my head cut off and the courts filled with little kids waiting to kick my ass. I saw that my techniques weren’t working and that perhaps heeding the advice that seemed counterintuitive to me would improve my game. I avoided no-man’s land at all costs.

I soon realized that I loved no-man’s land not because it mentally prepared to hit better, but because it didn’t force me to make a decision. The middle was safe place to be, and I didn’t have to choose my positioning based on what came in. I just hit whatever came in.

Tennis is a split-second sport. Michael Chang is intense and his feet move fast. He anticipates and makes a decision even before his opponent serves up a ball. He wins. My indecision in no-man’s land weakened everything about my game. I saw that I was scared of making a wrong decision and failing, and knew that the middle didn’t give me nearly as much anxiety as hitting from the baseline or the volley line. It was there where I could miss a shot if I chose wrong.

Being pro-active improved my game, but I also realized that failing was inevitable at times. Sometimes I chose wrong and missed shots. But at least I chose. Staying in no-man’s land was a constant failure, and the alternative of making a decision but chancing a wrong move felt much better to me.

Sometimes the things that seem most natural or smart or intuitive for us are just rationalizations because we’re scared of the alternatives. I saw this clearly with my tennis game and realized I needed to anticipate, prepare, and make the decisions that are the hardest to make-Chang-style.