Kyle Korver moves the rock

RV6 · Dec 16, 2014

Long read. Cliff's notes: Korver took part in a 4hr+ run/walk underwater, carrying a rock, to test/push his limits.

http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/mental-conditioning/The-One-Day-a-Year-Fitness-Plan-Misogi.html

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Pass the rock,” says Kyle Korver.

The six-foot-seven Atlanta Hawks guard is arguably the best shooter in the NBA, so this should be funny, given the circumstances. See, we’re not on a basketball court. We’re not even on land. On a sunny California afternoon in June, in a pristine harbor along the coast of Santa Cruz Island, 30 miles south of Santa Barbara by boat, we’ve been taking turns lumbering along the shallow seafloor for the past three hours lugging an 85.2-pound stone that Korver procured from a nearby beach. It feels a little lighter in the ocean, thanks to the relative density of water, but it’s still a heavy-ass rock.

Korver is treading water above me. I drop the boulder below his feet and surface. Struggling for air, I try to ignore the spasms in my hamstrings and the giggling of girls on a nearby boat. It looks nice over there, with the beer and the snacks and the lounging.

Smiling sincerely, with huge white teeth—a 33-year-old, brown-haired, Midwestern, XXL Cousteau—Korver freedives a few feet into the churning murk to retrieve and then run underwater with our rock. Through my goggles, I can just barely see him leaning forward like a running back, pushing off the soft, downward-sloping sand with his size 14 neoprene booties. It’s a slow-motion sprint-with-stone that would look silly on land. But he’s Walter Payton in a wetsuit down here, seven feet below.

Our suits protect us from the chilly water, but they won’t deter the great whites, which are common here, trolling for wayward flesh. Korver dreamed about these sharks recently; they’ve been in the news. The thought of an exploratory bite isn’t entirely unwelcome to me, however. It would result in a return to the boat: No more treading water wearing 15-pound weight belts. No more stinging eyes, stuttered excuses, and chafed-raw fingers.

Alas, the sharks aren’t hungry. Thirty or forty seconds after passing the rock to Korver, it will be my turn to take the rust-colored sedimentary stone—somewhere between five million and thirty million years old, probably never molested by humans until today—for yet another march along the 200-meter stretch of the Coches Prietos anchorage that, for our purposes, constitutes a lap in this Sisyphean relay.
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This is the second time in two years that these four guys have gathered to push themselves to their limits in what has become an annual rite of enlightened punishment. This year, Elliott thought schlepping rocks undersea would do the trick. So it is that we’ve been shuttling two stones—the other would weigh 68.5 pounds on Korver’s digital scale once we got it back home—in rotating teams of two and three. I’m the swingman, which means I don’t carry it quite as often. But I’m suffering all the same. Korver pushed to make the relay a 5K. “It sounds better than two miles, right?” he said before we started. This guy set an all-time NBA record last season for consecutive games with a made three-pointer, and he believes he did so because of the ritual we’re experiencing right now. Ritual being a euphemism, of course, for something far, far worse.
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The idea, as the friend interpreted it: take on challenges that radically expand your sense of what’s possible.

Marcus Elliott. Photo: Chris Baldwin
For 15 years, Elliott thought about what his friend called misogi. “We’ve evolved with a desire to challenge ourselves,” he says. “It was necessary to get the tribe over the pass in winter, to hunt the mammoth. Now we live in the center of the table. We’re afraid to fail. **** that! How can you reach the edge of your potential without risking failure?”

Elliott gradually honed his own version of misogi, which would require completing only once or twice a year. “If it’s hard enough,” he believes, “the lesson will last.”

“This is about testing your abilities in a foreign environment,” he says. “The more blind, the more bold and adventurous the effort.” There’s no entry fee. No spectators. “It’s not a ride at Disneyland or a Tough Mudder,” he says. “It’s a personal quest designed by you. And it’s really ****ing hard. You have a 50 percent chance of success, at best.” Regardless of the outcome—the thinking goes—you’ll realize your potential.
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On his first misogi:

“It was an awesome moment,” says Korver. “At some point you have to accept that there is no backing out and you’re gonna set yourself on repeat until you cross the finish line. Excuses have to be dropped. Your mind has to focus. And you have to train that mindset. Everything falls into place by doing the smallest thing perfectly. That lesson from the misogi carried over to my shooting.” He made a three-pointer in his 127th straight game the next season—breaking Dana Barros’s all-time NBA record—and decided that he’d keep on doing misogis as long as his wife and Ferry would allow it.
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For me, the first hour is an eye-stinging, lung-burning, pride-killing exercise in futility. The second hour, too. And much of the third. I get tangled up with the story’s underwater photographer at one point and nearly come to blows. Elliott accidentally rakes me across the face with the rock. Shortly thereafter I hit his shin. There are few words exchanged beyond: “Here... You got this… Good job.” Except I’m not doing a good job. I can’t seem to take a big enough breath. I’m often gripped with panic when I touch bottom and try to move. I can’t get traction.  My gloves feel too large, so I rip them off. My goggles fog and I curse them. I bemoan my employment, my employer, my god.
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Easy · Dec 16, 2014

I thought this was about Korver passing the ball.

Jontro · Dec 17, 2014

He definitely traveled on that one.

RV6 · Jan 17, 2015

It's safe to say some of that discipline transferred over....he's been insane. 7/9 from three tonight.

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