Goals for the 2012 season.

Well its a new season and it is time to set some new goals.  I am always nervous my first day in the gates.  This is partially due to the fact that my first real year in adult racing was a bit of a disaster.  I was put into a league that was too advanced for my level of skills.  The race courses were set up for a lot of really advanced racers, people that were even once pro.  That is ok, but I really didn't have the foundation for that.  After a couple of years of really struggling, I decided to take a step back and focus more on the training and development of skills.  That was great, except that I unfortunately lost a lot of good coaches, and I am a bit on my own now, forced to look for new ways to gain PD.  Part of the reason I started writing these ski racing blogs.  So what are my goals for this season?  Very simple.  I want to learn how to manage speed and the technical elements involved in speed management.  For a lot of us masters we manage our speed mostly on instinct.  But I want to learn to understand the technical aspects of speed management, as well as become a master of it myself.  I think if I can do this it will improve my confidence.  Yesterday we had great training conditions for this.  The course that was set for us was icy and full of ruts.  You couldn't take it at top speed.  In fact, you could even ski it with good timing.  It required a strategy where you had to balance on your edges, scrubbing just enough speed to control timing, but not too much.  And then wait for an opportunity to switch edges and set up for the next turn.  A very challenging exercise in speed management.  I might actually have to get out and free ski on my FIS skis, which isn't what I did a lot of last year, especially on steep terrain.  I think I need more experience on the skill of speed management.

"PPARVIC" Using the stages of learning.

One of my coaches once used this acronym to describe the stages of learning new skills.  The acronym stands for the following stages in order:

P (preceiving):  Watching and understanding
P (patterning):  Copying and replicating it.
A (adapting):  being able to perform in different situations.
R (refining):  Working on perfecting the newly acquired skill.
V (varying):  making small adjustments as needed, depending on the situation.
I (Innovating):  Creating something different with the newly acquired skill.
C (Composing):  taking the newly acquired skill and integrating with your repertoire of skills to create something fluid on a large scale.

Whenever you are focusing on your skill development, I think it is important to keep in mind where you are in this hierarchy of learning with your racing skills.  For example if you are new to using inclination in the beginning of your turn to set up an edge angle, you might be in the first stage of "perceiving" or "patterning."  However if you are not new to the skill of inclination, you might be further along in this hierarchy.  Maybe in the Varying or Innovating stage.  Where you are in the hierarchy depends on how you will train this skill from a technical and tactical perspective.  It is also important for your coach to understand where you are on the hierarchy with respect to each of your skills.  Sometimes what may appear as a "gross technical error" to your coach might actually be an "innovation" of one of your skills.  Here is an example of what I mean using my own skills as example.  With the skill of inclination, I am in the "innovating" stage.  I have three different ways of creating inclination at the beginning of the turn.  Sometimes I generate inclination using only impulse, by angulating abruptly at the end of phase three which throws my center of mass down the fall line, leaving my feet behind.  Other times, I simultaneously roll the ankles and knees inside the arc in and push hard off the outside ski which moves the body laterally towards the inside of the arc, in phase 1.  And sometimes I combine these two methods.  For example I initiate inclination using an ankle knee rolls and a slight push, but it is also facilitated using the impulse generated from phase 3 of the previous turn.  Which method I use to create inclination depends on a number of factors: snow conditions, course set, terrain, visibility, wind speed and direction, how crowded the hill is, and how my muscles feel on that particular day.  Sometimes my inclination is "aggressive" and I end up with too much weight on the inside ski.  This is usually considered to be a technical error, however in some cases it can be useful, especially if the conditions are very icy.  This is an innovation of the skill of "inclination," not necessarily a technical error.  On the other end of the scale, I am in a different stage for the skill of angulation.  With angulation I am somewhere between the adapting stage and the refining stage.  I understand what angulation is and I know what it looks like.  I also know how to create it and what it feels like when I use it properly.  Where I start struggling with this skill is in using it all situations, and also being able to perform it "on command."  I also don't always know what affects my ability to perform it.  Although I learned more about it today by talking to some ski instructors on the chairlift.  They provided me with some clarity which helped me in understanding why sometimes I struggle a little with performing it in different situations.  I think I might be able to move fully into the "refining" stage in the near future.  PPARVIC is a great concept.  I think is really useful for a racer to keep this acroynm in the fore front of their mind when focusing on skill development.

Having a really bad day.

Well today was a really bad day.  I actually even considered giving up the sport entirely.  Today what I love about the sport, I felt was gone.  I don't know if anyone else has ever gotten to the point where they felt this way.  But it is really difficult, in my mind I kept trying to go over how it all went wrong.  Part of it was seeing myself on video, and not really having a positive experience with that.  Another part was that someone I respect told me I should get new skis, even though I just bought them and I love skiing on them.  Part of it was that it was so busy today I had trouble skiing because I ski really fast and it makes me nervous when there are so many people on the hill.  And another part was that I just don't seem to explain myself properly to other people, and I was in a couple of situations where I had to try and just couldn't.  I know part of it is self-esteem based, it takes so little for something to knock down my confidence.  Right now I am feeling that there is no point in me participating in certain aspects of the sport to the extent that I am right now.  Things that contribute to lowering my self-esteem as an athlete should probably be removed from my repertoire, and things that build my self-esteem should be added or maintained.  Maybe I need to look at a different strategy and look at what is working and what isn't.  Maybe I have outgrown my current strategies for participating in this sport.  That is possible.  I know I love running gates, that could be something I could continue to do.  I love coaching myself.  That seems to be working.  I also like my fellow master's racers, and I enjoy spending time with them in the winter.  Maybe there is hope.  Maybe when you have a really bad day, all you need to do is look at your current goals, and strategies for meeting those goals, and recognize that all it might take is a change.  It is possible that it is time for that, and this really bad day was just a cue for change. 

The coaching relationship

The idea for this post came recently from the fact that one of my coaches became so frusterated that they wanted to quit.  Part of the reason was because a couple of their athletes dropped out of their program because the program wasn't meeting their expectations.  They said they didn't want the coach to take it personally, but they did make their negative feedback personal.  And of course the coach did take it personally.  It is interesting for me to view the situation from another perspective, me also being one of his athletes, as well as a coach and masters racer.  I think it is too bad that those people dropped out and put the fault on the program for not meeting their needs.  First of all, dropping out is pointless.  Why did they join the program in the first place?  If it was to learn something about racing or to improve their skills, then dropping out gets them further from their goals, not closer to them.  Besides, the way the learning-teaching process works, you can't expect real learning to occur after only two classes.  You have to have a relationship with your coach before authentic learning can occur.  And developing a relationship with your coach takes time.  Why is it necessary to have a relationship with your coach first?  There are many reasons.  One main reason is because the learning-teaching process is dynamic.  In other words it goes both ways.  In order for you to understand how to improve your own skills, you have to understand how your coach has improved theirs.  How do you do that?  Through mutual feedback.  As a coach sometimes it is very difficult to explain to your athlete what you are thinking.  It is also difficult for the coach to understand something from the athlete's perspective.  It is also difficult for an athlete to understand what their coach is thinking and to see things from their coaches perspective as well.  These type of exchanges take a lot of energy, time and patience.  This process can only be facilitated if you have a positive relationship with your coach.   When developing a relationship with your coach, it is important to understand that your coach has needs too.  It is unfortunate that these athletes put the responsibility of learning entirely on the coach and the program after only two sessions.  They did not have the chance of finding out that in order to learn you have to have a relationship with your coach and be an "active" participant in the learning process. Sadly these people didn't invest anything and therefore they didn't get anything out of it.

Working with your coach

This post is a continuation from the 2010 December post, "the role of the coach."  In the December post I talked about how important it is for the athlete to use their coach as a tool in their learning process, but I didn't comment on how one goes about doing this.  This post will focus on an example of how to use the coach as a tool.  It is very challenging for anyone to detect and correct any skier who has very well developed technical skills.  For example if you watch the skiers in the video below, each one has a slightly different technical recipe.  It is very difficult to specifically identify what each one is doing differently, much less how to make their skiing better.  Another issue when making a change in a skier's technique is how the coach is defining "better."  One could define "better" in a number of different ways.  "better could mean faster, more efficient, more controlled, more synchronous or just "look better."  The video below shows technical skiers from the international ski team.  These skiers represent the best "free" technical skiers of 2010.  This will give you an idea of how difficult it is to spot the technical differences between really advanced skiers.

In the above video you may be able to describe what the difference from a "what it looks like" perspective, but what is more challenging is tell what each skier is doing differently with their body to create the difference.  What wpuld also challenging to do is to give them a correction, something they have to do different with their body to make a desired change.  Even the desired change itself may also not necessarily make the skier's skiing "better," because one has to also define what is meant by "better."  For this reason it is a challenge for any coach to "help" their athlete develop their skills.  Now let's look at this issue from the perspective of the athlete.  After watching you ski, your coach may want to give you feedback.  Different coaches have different approaches to how the feedback is delivered.  The most common approach is to identify something you are "doing wrong'" and give you something to do to correct it.  The first thing you have to do as the athlete is to separate this feedback into two parts.  The first part being what you are "doing wrong."  Having a coach is like having your own person video camera taping you as you ski.  So when they describe what you are "doing wrong,"  ask them to describe what it looks like you are doing.  This will give you more insight into what you are doing from a technical perspective.  The next thing I would do is write the description down somewhere for future reference.  I suggest that you keep some kind of a logbook.  After that I would work with the second part of the feedback.  When the coach gives you the feedback, I would ask the coach how the correction will change your skiing technically.  It is important that you understand what the correction will do to change your technique.  I would also ask the coach how the change will make you ski differently from a "better" perspective.  It is also important that you understand the direction your coach wants you go in with respect to your technical and tactical skiing.  For example your coach might be initiating a change that might make you ski faster, however an increase in speed might might make it more difficult for you to maintain control and stay on line in a course.  This example highlights the issues around making a skier's skiing "better." Let's now look at example of how you might use this approach with your coach. First we will view the video below as an example.

I chose the above video because the skier in this video has very advanced taechnical and tactical skills, and therefore it is very challenging to do a detection and correction on this skier.  If i were this skiers coach, my goal would most likely be to give this skier feedback to make them skier faster.  I choose this focus because this skier already skiis with good control and rhythm, and speed management skills don't seem to be a weakness for this skier.  It is important to note though that free skiing is different than skiing in a course.  It is necessary for the coach to also assess this skier in course as well, to get an ideal picture of this skier's strengths and weaknesses.  Ok let's  look at what could be done to get this skier to ski faster.  From a coach's perspective you might be able to identify that the skier takes a tactical approach of controling speed as opposed to generating speed with each turn.  It "looks like" the skier is generating speed in the beginning of the turn and then putting on the breaks at the end of the turn.  The overall effect being that the skier ends up maintaining a consistant speed as they descend down the hill.  This speed is probably the speed they feel comfortable traveling at, with respect to their ability to stay with the gravitational forces as they descend down the ski slope.  The problem with this skier's approach is that in racing it is ideal to be able to generate speed at the beginning of the turn, and accelerate out of each turn if at all possible.  This will result in the skier increasing their speed as they descend the ski slope until maximum skiing speed is reached.  It is important to note that the skier does need to know how to put on the breaks at the end of a turn, like this skier demonstrates, however in ski racing the skier spends more time accelerating than decelerating.  What the coach will probably want to tell this skier is to get them to ski faster is to use more edging and less pivoting when making their direction changes.  To do this, they would probably tell them to "try making their turns without pivoting the feet."  They might even show them how to edge the skiis through more inclination and angulation.  You can probably start to see where the problems are going to start to occur for this skier given this feedback.  One of the problems being that if the skier is used to managing their speed through pivoting, removing the pivoting might cause some issues with speed management, not necessarily making this skier's skiing "better."  I won't go into detail how I would change this skier's skiing from a technical and tactical perspective, because this skier isn't necessarily a racer and therefore does not change their skiing.  I just wanted to use this example to help describe how to use your coach as a tool.  This feedback is valuable to the athlete, however it would be important in this case for the athlete to know what the coach is thinking in as much detail as possible.  This is so that the athlete is able to understand what direction the coach wants them to go in from a technical and tactical perspective. 

Relying on ski technology...

I would like to take credit for the idea behind this post, but unfortunately I can't.  I was talking to one of my coaches last week after session, and we were discussing my skis.  I ski on an old FIS GS ski.  I think it is a man's ski actually.  It is a 186cm, 21m atomic GS ski with a full plate on it.  It is a bit of a step up from my other skiis that were a 182cm, 23m ski without a full plate.  At the beginning of the season I was looking for a ski comparable to my older ski but I can't afford new skis.  I bought them off a guy for $200 and he is of course a bit larger and stronger than myself.  I wanted a 21m radius ski but not necessarily a full FIS ski, with the plate.  When buying used you take what you can get, and these skis were in great shape, so I bought them.  It wasn't really hard to adjust to skiing on them, however I do note that they are a bit beefier than my older skiis, probably due to the plate and the extra 4cm.  I was telling my coach last weekend that I switched to skiing on a FIS a few years ago for the simple reason that I found two reasons why I liked it better.  First the mysterious switch resulted in faster times, and second the skis were more stable at high speeds.  No, unfortunately the FIS didn't make me ski better, in fact it was just the opposite.  I found the FIS skis challenging to ski on, especially at speeds less than 80% of maximum, which is usually how I ski.  I was telling my coach that people always seem surprised that I choose to ski on them.  The truth is that I like them because they only work when everything is working right.  And this is especially true at speeds less than 80% of maximum.  I find that the FIS skis are such a picky ski, that unless the "recipe is correct," meaning my stance, my timing, my pressure control, my edging and pivoting are all working correctly in unison, there is no sweet spot and no impulse to work with.  To a recreational skier this would be bad because what is fun about skiing would be gone.  Finding the sweet spot and generating the impulse is what is fun about skiing, and on a non-FIS ski, these things happen even when.things aren't working perfectly.  This is what my coach calls:  "relying on ski technology."  As a racer the last thing you want to do is rely on ski technology.  The closer you become to perfect ski technique the faster speeds you will be able to generate and maintain as you ski through a course.  As a masters racer, your ski technique will probably never become perfect, however if you choose to ski on a FIS ski, you have a better chance at achieving mastery.  Why?  Because a FIS will not work properly without good technique where as a non-FIS ski will.  You will probably have more bad days with an FIS ski, however your good days with be really good because you know your technique is better.  So if you haven't already, give an FIS ski a try, it might take an adjustment, but it is guaranteed to improve your technique.

Skiing the corridor

The rule in GS is that you have to break the imaginary line between the two gates of the same colour with both skis, when passing through the gates.  When racing GS, focus on passing through the two gates of the same colour in the corridor.  Running a direct line may not always be the best approach if you do not have the tactical skills to manage your speed.  If you focus on skiing through the gates, instead of around the turning gate, you may actually be faster, even though your line may not be as direct.  Sacrificing speed for line, unfortunately doesn't always get the best result.  It is easier to see the problems associated with this approach in a master's race verses a world cup race.  In a world cup race, every skier skis a direct line reasonably effectively.  Where as in a master's race, a direct line doesn't work out well for everybody.  The photo below shows a view of a GS corridor.  Next time you are in a race, try thinking of passing through the corridor as opposed to around the turning gate.  If you have better results, it may be more helpful to think of it that way.