How to keep up your chops during the Holidays. - Dec 19

Christmas can be a really wild time where all routine and “regularly” scheduled activity go out the door. Everything from our sleep, how we eat and other disciplines can take the back seat often leaving us with an overwhelming and sometimes looming feeling of needing to get back on the ol’ band wagon pronto come the new year.

I know that speaking for myself, finding time amidst the family visits, time around the table and taking part in extra curricular things to practice drumming is a very challenging endeavour.

I am a person who thrives on routine in a few key areas of life and Christmas is a time where I struggle to keep that up, so this post is for all the peeps who find themselves in similar waters and are looking for ways to have an awesome, relaxing and memorable Christmas all the while maintaining there craft. And yes! This post is applicable to any discipline.

Maintain

This word has saved me so much internal grief over the past year. It’s the word I use when I know my “normal” will be disrupted and it has helped me set a realistic goal for these times. Be it on vacation, on tour or the Holidays, I lean toward the mentality that I may not advance in a ton of areas drum wise, but I certainly have no reason to backslide or become rusty. Maintaining my chops by even just doing pad work 15/30mins a day is perfectly reasonable and allows me to get right back to the good stuff, which is hopefully relaxing, enjoying family time and all the rest.

Drown Out The Noise

Our western culture tells us through so many channels that on some level we need to be consistently advancing or we are missing out. This notion that we need to be crushing it everyday is actually quite dangerous and unfortunately the people I’m seeing adopt this is young people. My students come in for lessons and all I hear is a laundry list of never ending homework, social events, not to mention all the unsaid stuff like family tensions, relational anxiety, self doubt and doing it all on 6 hours of sleep…ugh.

This isn’t cool and Im thankful to see more and more people recognizing this. But how does this relate to a good Holiday season and keeping up the chops? Drown out those ridiculous voices that say you need to be doing more and if you don’t you should feel guilty. Instead, adopt the mindset that less can be more and when you do sit down to practice, allow it to be a quality over quantity time.

Avoid Laziness, Embrace Rest.

When taking in the holidays, it’s important to rest! Rest will look different for all of us. I know for me, rest looks like hitting the pool for some laps where I can put in ear plugs and have some peace and quiet all the while still moving my body. For you it may be different and thats ok. But I encourage you strongly to learn the difference between resting and straight up being lazy. For me, the difference could look like this scenario..

Scene One….ACTION! “I feel like “resting” today…its been a really draining few weeks leading up to Christmas, probably because I have not been resting, or eating properly or getting enough exercise..I’ve really just been riding on fumes until this moment. Since I’m here, I’m gonna go ahead and eat everything in sight, sit my butt in front of the tv and watch some specials…otherwise i’ll stare at my phone and have little to no energy for my loved ones let alone practicing drums! Yea, sounds like a good choice.” END SCENE!

Scene Two…ACTION! “Man oh man! it’s been a wild few weeks leading up to Christmas. I am actually feeling pretty good. I don’t want to boast or brag, but I’ve been really on top of my sleeping habits, making pretty healthy choices around food, keeping up with daily exercise and giving my best at my job and practice time on the drums. Im stoked for the break! It’ll give me time to rest from the business of everyday life, be with good people and give my body and mind a chance to recover. I bet you I can even sneak in a few practice sessions in there to…its gonna be liiiiiit.” END SCENE

OK….I think I’ve made my point ;)

I want everyone reading this to be encouraged to take small steps to success. Developing consistency day in day out is crazy tough let alone during the holidays and Im right there with you!

I sincerely wish everyone a very Merry Christmas maintaining, drowning out the noise and resting…lots of resting!