IT HAPPENED AGAIN last week.

I was at Body Specs for my usual Thursday torture session strength workout, working on the half foam. This is basically a foam roller cut in half lengthwise, and you stand on the flat part while the round part is under you. I use it both for ankle strengthening (through flexing them) and balance work.

I’m pretty comfortable on it, so when my trainer assigned me squats while standing on it, I figured no big deal. But my legs were fatigued from the previous day’s run, and thus unsteady. I could only manage a few reps before I slipped off the foam, and sometimes not even one successful squat after remounting. During the second set, after one too many slips, I gave the board a kick. More out of theatrics than anger, but I was frustrated.

My trainer saw it and laughed, and so did I. Silly to get upset over not doing a technique perfectly. Training is supposed to be challenging; it’s how we improve. No challenge? No improvement.

Which, naturally, leads back to Aikido. (My regular readers already knew where this was going.)

The “struggling is learning” lesson was one of the first I learned, even before I invested in a dogi (uniform). Aikido techniques performed by experts appear fluid, graceful, and even easy to those watching. But of course everyone starts as a novice, where even the most basic of movements take practice to get down. Struggling was expected, Sensei told us. It means there is something to learn. Appreciate it. It’s when struggling spills over into frustration that learning stops, and it’s time to reset and appreciate the journey again.

I accepted this wisdom and applied it successfully for years, as I worked my way through progressively more advanced movements and techniques. Until a class where we practiced forward rolls in a straight line. We were instructed to place our jo (staff) and bokken (wooden sword) in front of us shoulder-width apart, then roll between them. “If your line is not straight,” Sensei said, “your buki will tell you.”

Well, my buki spoke to me loud and clear, because my body was determined to fade right on a roll. I adjusted my stance, my feet, my shoulders. Nothing worked, and after six or seven times rolling over my sword, it really began to hurt. Finally I picked up my buki and theatrically (yep, I’m consistent there) moved them to like ten feet apart. Sensei walked over immediately, and we agreed that yes, learning had yielded to frustration. He gave me some tips and I tried again with the same result – it was just one of those days – but I had reset mentally, and perhaps that was the most important part.

This lesson, like many in Aikido, has carried over into the rest of my life, for which I will be forever grateful. By no means am I perfect at applying it, for I still have my moments of frustration. But I think I have improved over the years, and being aware of the problem is at least halfway to solving it.

My bike ride on Sunday is just the latest example. It was a gorgeous day here in Michigan, and after spending the morning on chores, I was eager to get out there and ride. But I had obligations later too, so I only had an hour window when what I really wanted was three hours or even more. So for the first half of the ride I griped to myself about how short it was, and on Father’s Day, for Pete’s sake, so I had better enjoy the hell out of this ride, dammit.

You can guess how well that attitude worked. Fortunately, around the halfway point I came to my senses and completely enjoyed the rest of the ride. Perhaps next time I can constrain my frustration to fifteen minutes. Small steps, that’s how we get there. That, and ice cream afterward.