If after every practice you placed a put a piece of paper down on the floor and started stacking them — in just over a year, you’d have an entire ream of paper stacked up. Practice everyday for 28 years and you’d have over 10,000 pieces of paper stacked up pretty high.

Now, on the days you didn’t practice (who cares the reason), you took away a piece of paper, the stack would fluctuate — but the question is how much?

This lovely metaphor was given to me by Diane Kehoe – this was her take on “one days practice is one days benefit.” It’s good — but one days work is only that, and it can be torn apart quite easily. If you add to it regularly and you start to build something strong.

Think about the last 90 days of your practice, the last year… could you tear it apart with ease or is it strong and solid?

I am a list maker and chart creator. I like ticking off boxes and filling out forms, and for lack of a better term, I do keep a training diary. I have never actually laid the paper down like Diane suggests, but I imagine a corner in the training room with a tall stack of paper that almost touches the ceiling. In the other corner of the training room I see another stack of paper, this is the pile of paper I took away from the first pile on the days I didn’t practice. In my imagination — this pile is tiny; but it’s there.