Smooth and hard in sports...

There are two ways to achieve high results in sports and in my view they are found in the quest of smoothness or harshness; sometimes by using one strategy over the other, and by opting for a blend of these two opposite values.

Yet, from my past experiences, I am most of the time leaning more and more towards the smooth approach. This approach is very Taoist in nature; do as little as you can to achieve greatness. Try too hard, you falter. This I believe is true for training and when a good technique is present, it serves an athlete very well during competition or more simply during the practice of most sports.

Brute force can displace huge masses but always remains dangerous and is especially hard to control. In fact there's very little adjustments available when over-reaching. The opposite is true with smoothness. The downside of the latter is that it requires faith, patience and a healthy dose of confidence.

Young people tend to choose the impulsive, sheer force and understandably, older folks prefer the softer approach...