It\u2019s late September which means two things. You are in the middle of the fall training block in which you are engaged in an intensive physical conditioning program or are starting to get on snow in Europe for early-season skiing, or both. The next few months before race season will be physically and mentally challenging as you build a solid foundation as you prepare for your first races.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re reading this article, I\u2019m guessing you\u2019re pretty serious about your ski racing. I\u2019m also assuming that, despite being serious about your racing, you do it because it\u2019s big-time fun. Improving, the competition, hanging with your friends, travel, achieving your goals, and, yes, getting the results you want, all make ski racing a fun and exciting sport.<\/p>\n
At the same time, no matter how much you love ski racing and no matter how much fun it is in general, you have to admit that there are many specific aspects of our sport that are definitely not fun, especially in fall training. I\u2019m thinking of those cold early morning runs, those mountain bike rides in the rain, those multiple sets of power cleans, and those incredibly intense intervals in the gym.<\/p>\n
As I noted in my last post, the fall matters<\/a> because the physical conditioning you do and the fitness gains you make are essential for success in the coming winter. And let\u2019s be realistic, fall training is hard. It is almost always physically tiring, sometimes repetitive and boring, and more often than not really painful. In other words, some time this fall, you are likely to arrive at a point in physical training when it is no longer fun.<\/p>\n I call this point \u201cthe Grind.\u201d The Grind is what often separates ski racers who achieve their goals from those who don\u2019t. The typical reaction to the Grind is to either ease up or give up because it\u2019s just too darned hard. But truly motivated racers realize that the Grind is also the point at which it really counts. They reach the Grind and, instead of easing up, they keep on going and, in fact, push harder because they know that maintaining their effort, intensity, and focus during the last reps, sets, or miles might make the difference between success and disappointment this winter.<\/p>\n Many sport psychologists will say that you have to love the Grind because if you don\u2019t love it, you won\u2019t want to do it. But I say that love isn\u2019t in the cards for almost all racers because there\u2019s not much to love when you are exhausted, hurting, or bored out of your mind. So, you don\u2019t have to love the Grind to push through it. How you respond to the Grind actually lies along a continuum. As I just mentioned, loving the Grind is rare. At the other end of the continuum is \u201cI hate the Grind.\u201d If you feel this way, you are likely going to lose your motivation and give up, so hate isn\u2019t an option either.<\/p>\n I suggest that you neither love nor hate the Grind, just accept it as part of the deal in striving toward your ski racing goals. The Grind may not be very enjoyable, but what feels even worse is failing to achieve your goals because you didn’t work hard enough. And what really feels good is seeing your hard work pay off with success this coming winter. In other words, as I wrote in another previous article, you can pay now or pay later<\/a>.<\/p>\n So, next time you\u2019re doing dryland and it is REALLY NOT FUN, recognize the Grind, remind yourself how important it is, and push on through it. This winter, when you\u2019ve had some great races, you can then thank yourself for hanging tough when it really mattered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s late September which means two things. You are in the middle of the fall training block in which you are engaged in an intensive physical conditioning program or are starting to get on snow in Europe for early-season skiing, or both. The next few months before race season will be physically and mentally challenging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1516],"tags":[234,230,583,396,60,153,1317],"class_list":["post-16309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ski-racing","tag-mikaela-shiffrin","tag-motivation","tag-olympics","tag-physical-conditioning","tag-psychology-2","tag-ski-racing-2","tag-the-grind"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}