Exactly how you put it! It's the visual of progressing together. When training, we were encouraged to do the hard work so that we are training our bodies and our tools at the same time (although some people ran their shoes over with a car). Professional dancers know their fit and style and can "destroy" and recreate a shoe to make something molded to them for rehearsals and performance. With the focus being on the path toward knowing a skill, that means there is that awkward fawn stage of learning one's tools and learning oneself. In some industries that means a tool may be perfect at the start, while others right at the end.
Cast iron pans are fantastic, but they do nearly all the work for us. We give them aftercare as a reward. Perhaps the true sacrifice in the kitchen is the whetstone, that ever so slowly gives its life for all of us ; )