Tag: kneeboarding

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You Change; Your Strategy Should, Too

I’ve written about kneeboarding before; it was one of my favorite things to do during my last summer in college and the summer after that.

There were a few of us that loved kneeboarding and wakeboarding. We’d get together and see what kind of tricks we could start doing. While it was fun to do solo, it kind of lost its thrill after a while. We got the idea to put two kneeboarders out there at a time. Then we tried two kneeboarders and a wakeboarder. We were able to do a lot more stuff that way; jump over each other’s ropes, switch ropes, hang off the same rope, it gave us more options.

At the end of one summer we were able to get four of us going at the same time. It was two kneeboarders, a wakeboarder, and a guy on a round piece of plywood. The attempt didn’t last very long, but it was fun to be able to say we did it.

We had a lot of fun on the river during those summers, but time marched on and we all went our separate ways.

Fast forward 16 years, and I had the opportunity to try kneeboarding at the same place.

Obviously a lot had changed, and I was a little nervous about it. Now I had a wife and three kids, along with less pliable joints, but I didn’t want to pass up the chance to give it a try. It ended up being a lot of fun, at least for a while.

As we got going, I did some stuff to help the muscle memory come back. After getting comfortable, I did a few basic tricks. Getting settled, I started jumping the wake a little bit. It all started coming back.

There were two main differences between kneeboarding as a young guy and kneeboarding as an “old man.” The first was that my workout routine had changed significantly since I had last gone kneeboarding. In my early 20s I lifted smaller weights at higher repetitions to help me have more endurance throughout the day in a physically demanding job. Years later I had switched to heavier weights at lower reps, so my arms had the power to handle more weight for short lengths of time. The second major difference is that, obviously, 16 years of wear and tear makes the joints less able to absorb impacts. These days my joints do a lot more grinding and popping than back when I did a lot of kneeboarding.

This time around I started out by doing the tricks of my old routine, because that was the mindset I was in. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the types of “tools I had in my toolbox” had changed. As it dawned on me that I had more power available to play with, I started getting more aggressive in the way I cut back and forth, how I followed the boat’s turns, and how I approached jumping the wake.

The cartilage degradation became apparent as I became bolder. Stronger arms helped me launch higher into the air upon hitting the wake, but it also set up my knees for higher impacts when I came back down. I didn’t realize it until it was too late. I cut the water hard, hit the wake hard, and pulled hard, and I think I got higher than I had ever jumped before, but I also landed harder than I ever had before. The kneeboard and I bounced off the water, and I immediately lost interest in continuing the run. The board caught an edge and I flipped over, into the water. I limped the rest of that vacation. (I would totally go kneeboarding again though.)

Unquestionably, it was fun up until that point. The lesson I learned that day was to be realistic about the tools you’ve got, and don’t just assume the tools that used to be there will always be available to you. Sixteen years separated my last two kneeboarding runs, and I instinctively began my latest round by assuming I had the same capabilities I had on the one before.

I’m afraid we might do this as Christians, too, sometimes. We all change as the years go by. The reality might be that we’re no longer willing to take the risks we used to take, but we believe we haven’t changed. Once willing to give of our time, talent, and treasure, we might double up on one of them and skip one of the others, even though God’s Kingdom may benefit the most from the thing you’ve backed away from.

Maybe the opposite is true; you may be in a better position right now than you’ve ever been before to give more of all three. Perhaps something that used to be a major struggle for you in your Christian walk is no longer a problem or a temptation for you, and you can now use your experience to help others with the same issue that was once so challenging for you.

If you’re a Christian, ministry might not be your profession, but you’re in the business of ministry somehow. Time waits for nobody, though. You gain and lose abilities. The tools in your toolbox change over time. Your strengths and weaknesses may switch places, and the goal is to adapt and pivot so that you back away from the areas where you’re losing ground and you’re always using your best skills to glorify God. Vigor and energy are here for a short time and can be crucial to getting something started, but a powerful prayer life often escapes young men and women. With life experience comes wisdom that augments the youthful enthusiasm that’s either on its way out or is long gone.  

Learn from the past, but don’t live there. You’re always moving forward. Any given moment in your life is only a snapshot on a timeline. Your life’s experiences have helped lead you to where you are today, and the things you do today will shape your tomorrow. You are on your way to becoming the person you’re going to be. The question is…are you pivoting to your new strengths as your old ones fade?

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Don’t Let Go of Your Single Opportunity

There was a lake not too far away from the college I attended. Some of the college’s classes either took place on the lake or took field trips here. I did some canoeing on the lake for one of the Outdoor Leadership Training courses. The college offered waterskiing during the first half of the fall semester, too.

I don’t remember what course it was; it must have been some kind of Biology or Ecology class that brought us to the Lake one September day. Our class was going to use the same speedboat that the college used for waterskiing to go out into the lake and take water samples at various depths.

There were too many students in the class to bring out in the boat all at once, so we split into two or three groups that took turns heading out to the middle of the lake. The driver, a student named Laura, spent a few minutes driving out to deeper water, a few minutes taking samples, a few minutes joyriding, and a few minutes heading back to the dock to switch out students.

I was in the last group of students to head out on the lake. In order to make room for more students, the professor stayed behind on the dock while the rest of us rode off to the middle of the lake. As we sped along, I looked around the boat. It was very similar to the one I had driven for a few summers and had enjoyed going kneeboarding behind. As providence would have it, on the floor of the boat sat a lifejacket, a kneeboard, and a ski rope.

We started collecting our samples or doing whatever experiments we were supposed to do. I wanted to say something about wanting to give kneeboarding a try, but thought it would be too crazy. As we wrapped up our tasks on the lake, I couldn’t help myself any longer. I forget how I did it, but I asked Laura if she’d be open to letting me jump in the lake to go kneeboarding. To my great surprise, she said “sure.”

I didn’t ask any other questions. I lost the shirt/shoes/socks, emptied my pockets, donned the life jacket, grabbed the board and rope, and jumped into the water. It was cold, but I didn’t care. We got lined up, Laura hit it, and we were off to the races. The water was a lot choppier from the wind than I was used to, but I was kneeboarding in a science class.

We were far enough away from the dock, or maybe around a bend in the lake so that the professor and my classmates on land couldn’t see us. We didn’t want to goof off too long and get in trouble, so after a bit of tooling around, Laura stopped the boat and I climbed back in. We stowed everything and headed back to shore. Come to think of it, I don’t think anyone on shore even knew what we’d done.

There will be key moments in your life where you only have a single opportunity to seize the chance to do something you want to do. There’ll be times when it simply will not happen unless you step out and make it happen. If you hem and haw, you’ll be stuck watching as the opportunity passes you by.

You might have to abandon the norms you’re accustomed to. I didn’t even have swim trunks, but when Laura said she was open to my request, I was in the water with no questions asked, wearing whatever clothes I already had on.

Many times in this blog I’ve written that God will place opportunities in your path to do something great. I’ll use this post to clarify: He will place the opportunity for you to do something great just off your path. God loves the timid, but He also has a special place in His heart for the bold.

If there’s something big, bold, and brash that you feel called to do on Christ’s behalf…don’t sit on it. God might bring an opportunity near your orbit, but you’re going to have to pursue that chance…you’ll need to run after it and chase it down. If you feel called to make it happen, live with abandon. You might even have to jump into the cold water with your regular clothes on.

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Need a Boost?

I used to love going kneeboarding. You kneel on a board and get pulled behind a boat, skimming across the top of the water. It’s not as popular as waterskiing or wakeboarding, but I had a lot of fun doing it.

When I was new to it, it was really cool just to get going and go back and forth across the wake. Then you start doing little tricks, like 360s or riding backwards. Then you start hitting the wake a little harder to get some air. Then you start hitting it really hard to see how far you can jump.

After hitting the wake hard and getting a decent amount of air, somehow I got it into my head that I wanted to pull off a barrel roll. Now that I’m older and wiser, I know that we just didn’t have the right setup to make this trick work, but back then I didn’t know it was impossible. I was willing to try it as many times as I could. Each time I wanted to get just a little closer to making it happen, but there was always a point in the rotation past which I couldn’t go.

I tried dozens of times, but always ended up falling into the water without the board rotating around nearly enough. I even bought a video camera (when such things existed) and had someone in the boat film what was going on so I could try to learn from my mistakes. I have film somewhere of me rolling between 180 and 270 degrees over and over again. I’d land on my head or I’d land on my side, the kneeboard would go flying up into the air, and it never once worked out for me.

What none of us knew at the time is that I couldn’t pull off the roll without mounting the rope at a higher point on the boat. The boat’s pylon – the point where the rope I hung onto was connected to the boat – was fine for waterskiing and even basic kneeboarding, but it simply was not going to allow me to achieve what I wanted to do. The professionals that successfully do these tricks use boats with elevated mounts. That way when the kneeboarders hit the wake and make it into the air, the boat is not only pulling them forward, but slightly upward as well. It’s not a lot, but it helps provide just a little bit of extra hang time that makes a huge difference in the person’s overall ability to perform tricks.

People are like that too. Each person is unique in their own story, but there’s usually a ceiling of some kind that everyone hits. It could be trying to find contentment, get past guilt, grant forgiveness, or even trying to establish a ministry. Whatever it is, people need to be connected to something higher than just the basic level. You hit your limit a lot sooner when you’re doing it on your own, and you need that extra boost that only comes from God.

Work diligently and don’t be afraid to put yourself out there, but remember to ask God for help and to guide your steps in any effort that glorifies Him. When you work hard to complete the assignment God’s given you, He provides that little boost that makes all the difference. He may not provide it exactly when you want it or exactly how you anticipate it, but He gives it to you. It’s the thing that makes a huge difference in your overall ability to perform His work.

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