Athletes – and Actors – Are Made in the Off-Season

From faculty member Alison Turner:

During the Olympics, I was watching a segment about the US women’s hockey team. They were following the team through their workouts and training and the NBC correspondent was going through the workout with them just to get an idea of what it is like. Needless to say, she was in a sweaty, broken heap on the floor by the time they were done. Afterwards, she was interviewing the team coach and she was saying how it’s amazing how much these girls go through, just in their training and preparation. The coach said, “Well, athletes are made in the off-season.”

How could these hockey players possibly be ready for the game and have the stamina to get them through all three periods if they weren’t amazingly conditioned and prepared before they step on the ice? To think that improvement happens on game day is a little ass backwards. Practice and conditioning make the skating and puck-handling and team formations second nature so that when it’s game time, they can be in the moment and be completely aware of what is happening right then and there, rather than trying to remember what position they are supposed to be in or trying really hard to skate backwards. There are so many other things that factor in to winning or losing a game, the skills required to play hockey should not be one of them.

For those of us masochistic fools who have chosen to be actors in Los Angeles, this is our off-season. Pilot season is over, the dust has settled, and people are starting to become recognizable human beings again. Especially Lesly. But what baffles me is how many actors simply stop studying in the summer. It’s the off-season! Now is the time to become the buff, well-conditioned acting machines that we need to be come pilot season next year. Spend this time while your schedule isn’t a stroke-inducing nightmare to rehearse every day and hold so many scripts in your hands that the secrets of the text pop out at you as if in bold. As Lesly always says “Your acting cannot be the problem in your acting career.”

What better time to hone your skills than in the off-season?