Many roads lead to Rome. Ours is simply one way, not the way:

None of us are doing it "correctly" by some universal standard; we’re doing it correctly for the body they're in.

A technique that looks beautiful on a shorter human with a low center of gravity and an explosive game can become nearly unusable for someone 6'4" with long levers and different leverage points.

The technique isn't wrong. It's just describing one road, taken by one traveler.

Age changes the map too. A 20-year-old can out-athlete bad positions, scramble out of trouble through raw explosiveness and recovery speed, and treat injuries as background noise. Start at 40, and that same approach becomes a losing bet against your own body, with the smart move being a shift toward efficiency, timing, and control rather than trying to win a race you're no longer built to win the same way. That's not a lesser path. It's a different one, shaped by different terrain.

This is why the process rewards curiosity over obedience. The person who keeps asking "why does this work" instead of just memorizing "this is how it's done" starts to see technique less as scripture and more as raw material. They question rules that turn out to be habits, not laws. They steal a grip from one style, a rhythm from another, a defensive instinct from a coach who trains nothing like them, and over time, without quite realizing when it happened, they end up with a game that's actually theirs. Not just a copy of their instructor, or a checklist of moves borrowed wholesale from someone with a different body, age, and strengths.

The people who plateau early are often the ones who tried hardest to force themselves into someone else's blueprint, chasing a style that looked good on someone else instead of building the one that actually fits who they are.