tag:dreamwidth.org,2016-12-28:2648203 hudebnik hudebnik 2021-01-22T15:10:08Z tag:dreamwidth.org,2016-12-28:2648203:828177 2021-01-22T15:09:34Z 2021-01-22T15:10:08Z public 3 Some time in the 1990's my mother and stepfather acquired a ping-pong table, set it up in their basement, and got moderately serious about table-tennis. Not competing with other people, but watching instructional videos and trying to put the advice in them into practice. One such series of videos kept repeating the mantra "<strong>Move, don't reach</strong>" -- that is, it's better to move your whole body in order to be in an optimal arm position for the ball than to put yourself off-balance by reaching for it. And it's not just good advice in table-tennis: it frequently feels like it'll save time to reach for something, but it's usually safer to maintain your balance.<br /><br />A related piece of advice, which shouldn't take a reasonably-intelligent person this many decades to learn: <strong>don't pick up things that are under or behind other things</strong>. Sure, it feels like it'll save time, but &lt;python&gt;fings break, dunnay?&lt;/python&gt;<br /><br />In today's lesson, we see the result of reaching off-balance <em>while</em> picking up something that was behind another thing, when both of the things in question were glass jars. One of them still is....<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=hudebnik&ditemid=828177" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments