A Game of Adjustments

In baseball, one cliché that players and broadcasters deploy on a regular basis is, “It’s a game of adjustments.” The phrase can apply to a player adjusting to a new team or environment, a batter tweaking his swing, pitchers adapting to fewer juiced batters, and more.

The phrase “game of adjustments” came to mind in my practice session today as I worked on (what else?) bowing.

A few weeks ago, Ms. L. was trying to get me to push my bow hand further from my body on down-bows to keep my bow straight. (I know—shouldn’t I be able to bow straight by now?) I kept thinking I was doing it, but I wasn’t. “Exaggerate it!” she told me, and I pushed my right hand out at what felt like a truly ridiculous angle. “That’s it!” she exclaimed.

At my last lesson, she was prompting me on my up-bows. “Point the bow away,” she said, and gestured for me to pull my right hand in. (My baseball fan self enjoyed a private giggle over the notion that, just as in baseball, you follow “down and away” with “up and in.”) Again, I had to exaggerate it to get it right.

In practicing a scale tonight, I was focusing on keeping my bow straight by bowing at these ridiculous-feeling angles. But my bow was skating all over the place. When I looked in the mirror, I found that the angles were, indeed, ridiculous. I looked away and tried it again, not even paying attention to how the angles felt, but just thinking about down and away, up and in. I checked the mirror, and there it was: nice, straight bowing.

So sometimes I have to exaggerate, with conscious physical effort, in order to adjust something. Other times, I just have to give myself a little mental prompt, without conscious physical effort, in order to adjust something. In this case it seemed like a progression as I internalized the change. But sometimes it really is one or the other. Hmmm.