The advice for navigating ice is to walk flat-footed with your center of gravity over your front leg, arms slightly out for balance, shuffling like a penguin.

In practice, this looks pretty dumb.

But striding normally, slipping, falling, and breaking a bone is not a better plan — even if it avoids an embarrassing penguin-walk.

Training your hardest and posting the slowest time. Workshopping new stand-up material. Learning to ride a bicycle. Hip mobility exercises.

Looking dumb — if we even call it that — is often a label applied to activities that are actually beneficial in the long run. Sometimes, short-term awkwardness is exactly what leads to long-term improvement.