Maintaining Your Condition

Before Christmas I ran three times per week, average about 25kms per week. Then I got ill and it affected my fitness, and with three weeks off, running was very hard. Then my circumstances changed and I couldn’t run often and slowly I wasn’t running much at all. Now that I have returned to the gym, running 3km is as hard as it was to run 9km. My problem? I am out of condition.

Many actors that I know also allow themselves to go out of condition. Generally our training takes place at the beginning of our careers and if we are lucky to work a lot, we stay in shape by working constantly. We teach ourselves lessons along the way and maintain our ‘shape’.

But for actors that are not constantly in work, the danger of getting out of condition is damaging in the long term. By the time your next audition comes up, you are already painfully out of shape, and as you rush to bring yourself up to speed, you know you are not at your best.

My experience of a common kind of failure in those that wish to be actors is that the moment they start ‘running’, the moment they start getting feedback, they no longer feel they need coaching. After all, if you can drive the car, you no longer need lessons. The problem is that as soon as they do not have anyone to push them to reach outside of their grasp, they start to get sloppy, and eventually bad habits, and bad practice become rife. Am I saying that because I am a coach and I need to keep actors sucking at the tit to make money? Certainly not. In sport, no athlete ever considers themselves beyond coaching. No premiere athlete ever complains that the coach wants to keep them training even though they are successful. So why actors?

Simple. It’s the culture. It’s the way that things are done.

But over and over again, I see actors who were making real, concrete progress determine for themselves that time away from hothouse would make them better. In the history of sport, or art, or economics, disengaging yourself from the hothouse, the place that makes you stretch, has never made them better. Time off is an excuse.

Perhaps you don’t like the coach, their method, the price etc. That all makes sense. But do not stop being coached. When you stop having someone else demand of you, you start letting yourself off the hook. And then you go back to your hammy face acting, your repetitive physical mannerisms, the tension that you cannot even see.

Coaching isn’t nice, because the person is always trying to stretch you, always pushing you. But you are always growing. If you feel that you aren’t growing, speak to your coach.

And if you trust them with your time and money, then trust their advice. They are invested in you. Your success is important to them too. They want you to succeed. That’s worth more than any per hour fee you can pay them.

Maintain your condition, because trying to get back into shape hurts more than achieving that shape in the first place.

COACH