People often ask me, how do you do all the practice and not burn out?
Well I’ll tell you: 2 pairs of shoes.
Yeah I’m just shitting you, but there are 2 pairs of shoes I use each day,
and it’s one of the best accidents I’ve ever made!
Last summer, for whatever reason, I really wanted a white shoe.
Sometimes you just want a white shoe, and there’s nothing your consumer brain can do to stop it.
So I ordered two sizes, with plans to return one. However, lazy hits when lazy hits,
and I forgot to return the size that didn’t fit goodly enough (it was a lil snug, you know).
Well, one day I just decided, let’s try that not good enough shoe as our drumming shoe,
and what a marvelous choice that was! It was marvelous because I was wearing some
dang hiking shoe as my drumming shoes up until that point, and I had no idea how much sensitivity
I was losing on the kick and hi-hat pedal because of that. With my white tennies, it was wearing nothing
on my feet compared to those clonky hikers, and holy shit, it felt good!
Anyways, as happens with impulse purchases, I didn’t care for the white shoe I was wearing outside.
Didn’t want to wear them outside any longer. At the same time, I was getting some tired legs from the
recently designated indoor/house shoe, but it was just too small to fit in my regular insoles. SO I cranked
my big boy brain up to 11, washed the white shoe I was wearing outside, since it was a half size larger put
in the insole support, and wore that for all things practice EXCEPT drumming. AND WOW. It really helped!
So yeah, now you know! This was a behind the scenes look at my Road to Musician, shoes edition!
Lesson learned: I don’t think I’m a white shoe guy.
Lesson 2 learned: Don’t wear clonky hiking shoes when drumming.
Lesson 3: Get insole support.
Lesson 4: Also stretch each day before practice, that probably also helped a lot.
Lesson 5: I also got a standing/wobble stool kinda thing so I can sit at times, that probably also helped a lot.
Lesson 6: Try not to change several variables at once, makes it hard to pinpoint causation.
Enjoy the shoe picture!
