Clean Run - May 2017 - 62

What's
Old
Is New
By Kathy Keats

Have you heard about the amazing new handling system? It's incredible and will solve
all your problems. It uses blind crosses, the same-side arm for serpentines and threadles,
and you run flat out.
Oh wait, that was a seminar from the 1990's with a successful British handler.
How about that move where you ask
your dog to wrap and then do a blind?
Unbelievable the way it tightens the
dogs up.
Hmmm, no, I remember people doing
that in the 1990's and early 2000's.
How can that be? Everything goes in
cycles. Fashion fads like skinny jeans to
ripped jeans to ﬂares. Long, ﬂowing hair
and up-dos to short cute cuts. Once you
have been around the block a few times,
when a fad reappears you don't herald it
as The Next Great Thing.
Sport philosophies cycle in the same
way. For example, in team sports complicated, regimented systems are in
vogue one minute, and then free-ﬂowing
concept-driven strategies are the ﬂavor
of the month.
Cycles also happen in agility. We've
switched the "correct" arm to cue a turn
umpteen times, decided standing straight
was the right way to handle a turn, then
crouching was better, then standing.
Blind crosses were great, then they were
evil and front crosses were the Holy
Grail, now blind crosses are back as the
preferred cross, and so on.
What's my point?
What's old is new... again.
62

Handling and training styles go in and
out of fashion. Nothing is new in handling. Each time it comes around it
might be reﬁned more, broken down a
little better, explained with more clarity, executed faster, and have a different
name. But none of it is revolutionary.
Cycles are normal. But jumping on every fad can also kill your success.
Fads trigger the devastating condition of
FOMO.
What is FOMO? It's the acronym for "Fear
Of Missing Out." And it's pervasive in today's culture, not just in agility but everything we do, and it will hold you back.
I think the human race has a search-forthe-magic-bullet gene. Golfers constantly buy the latest and greatest driver, marketers look for the newest online "hack,"
agility handlers search for the latest and
greatest handling system.
Nobody wants to miss out. Nobody
wants to seem like they aren't up on the
latest and greatest techniques. Everybody wants an edge. So each time The
Next Great Thing comes along, the baby
gets thrown out with the bathwater and
you start at ground zero with "new" fundamentals, re-learning a new system of
handling, and feeling overwhelmed.

Once a style becomes successful and
everyone is doing it, the edge you once
gained from it is gone. So then everyone
rushes off to the next newest thing, like
Pee Wee hockey teams chasing a puck
around the rink en masse. Everyone
covets the latest champion's ﬂavor of the
month method, hoping to gain an advantage. And the cycle starts over, like being trapped in the agility version of the
movie Groundhog Day.
Not all change is for the better. Looking for the "magic bullet" in the hunt for
perfection can actually make you worse.
It happens in professional sport all the
time. Instead of a basketball dynasty reﬁning their strengths to a razor's edge,
they recruit the newest star player and
upset the chemistry. Top golfers throw
their competitive swings out the window so they can completely rebuild their
technique, sometimes never regaining
the same level of competence, and sabotage their entire careers as a result. They
all want a new system to ﬁx their ﬂaws,
to give them the extra edge. We all do.
The problem is nothing is truly new, and
a perfect system doesn't exist. Some systems might suit you better or the style
of game you play, but all systems have
ﬂaws you must compensate for. Based
on your own skill set, you'll ﬁnd some
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - May 2017