When was the last time you reached for the handle of your coffee cup and grasped thin air instead? It’s probably never happened, because by the time you were old enough to drink coffee, you’d acquired the skill of cup handle grasping.
On Science for Sport we’re told that “motor skills are tasks that require voluntary control over movements of the joints and body segments to achieve a goal. Some prominent examples include riding a bicycle, walking, reaching for your coffee cup, jumping, running, and weightlifting.”
They didn’t include balancing, I dare say because it’s not that prominent an example. When I’m out and about, I rarely see people imitating flamingos, or if they are, they only go as far as the crimson dress of Manfred Mann’s seminal flamingo comparison of 1966. And even they didn’t have her tucking one leg up towards her bum.
On our block all of the guys call her flamingo
Cause her hair glows like the sun
And her eyes can light the skies
When she walks she moves so fine like a flamingo
Crimson dress that clings so tight
She's out of reach and out of sight.
And the work pays off! At first it seemed impossible - I wobbled all over the place, the leg muscles just couldn’t hack it. But then they understood that I wasn’t going to let them off - I was serious about this. And they buckled down to it. Slowly, I improved. I don’t lose control any more. If I start listing to port or starboard, all it takes is a little adjustment before it gets too serious, and hey presto, I’m upright again.
The crucial part of skill acquisition is automaticity, when you’re no longer consciously thinking, ‘Uh-oh, I’m losing it - hang on, which muscle do I need to send a command to?’ You’re still sending the command, but without it interfering with whatever else you’re attending to. I started out like a baby learning to walk. It’s still far from perfect, but I’m happy to report that I’m well into the toddler stage, and have high hopes of one day avoiding bumping into furniture altogether.
I’m confident now that if I fail a sonnet performance, it will be a memory problem, not because I’ve lost my balance (at least until sonnet 100, when I start doing them blindfold - that’s a different ball game). Perhaps if I really stick at it, I’ll get a bit closer to the perfect flamingo stance. Though I’d better not push it too far. My wife is very tolerant of my balancing obsession but if she sees me doing it in a crimson dress that clings so tight, she might get worried.