{"id":4540,"date":"2012-12-18T11:52:32","date_gmt":"2012-12-18T19:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drjimtaylor.com\/2.0\/?p=4540"},"modified":"2012-12-18T11:52:32","modified_gmt":"2012-12-18T19:52:32","slug":"ski-racing-is-a-leap-of-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/ski-racing-is-a-leap-of-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"Ski Racing is a Leap of Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I discussed in my last post<\/a>, regret is one of the worst emotion you can experience after a race day, season, career or life. I also described how much of the work I\u2019m doing these days with ski racers is as focused on developing the right attitude toward racing as it is on learning mental skills to help you in your training and racing.<\/p>\n

Another key attitude for skiing your fastest involves your willingness to take risks by skiing all out and leaving it all out on the hill on race day. Taking risks on the course can sound pretty obvious in theory, but, in practice, it\u2019s not so easy. Ski racing is a sport that requires you to take risks to ski your fastest. As I noted in my last post, whether taking a straighter line through a flush or attacking a challenging part of the course, the only way you\u2019ll go as fast as you can, is to take those risks. But there\u2019s a catch. The very nature of risks is that they are uncertain, so one possible result of taking those risks is failure and no one wants to make a big mistake that results in a slow time or DNF.<\/p>\n

But take those risks you must if you want to achieve your ski racing goals. So what does it take for you to put yourself on line? You must certainly be physically, technically, tactically, and mentally ready to take those risks. If you\u2019re well prepared, the chances of those risks paying off go up.<\/p>\n

Ultimately though, to take those risks, you must take a\u00a0leap of faith<\/em>. A great philosopher once said, \u201cYou do or you do not. There is no try.\u201d No, it wasn\u2019t Aristotle or Socrates who spoke those simple, yet profound words; the great thinker was\u2026 Yoda, the Jedi Master of\u00a0Star Wars<\/em>\u00a0fame (actually, George Lucas, but you get the idea). You must be willing to say, \u201cI don\u2019t know if things will work out, but, by gosh, I\u2019m going to take my shot because it\u2019s the only way I\u2019ll ski my fastest. If I crash and burn, well, I can live with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

I often use an analogy from the film\u00a0Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade<\/em>, in which Indiana Jones is in search of the Holy Grail (An appropriate metaphor here, wouldn\u2019t you say?). He is following a map that leads him along a treacherous path toward the Holy Grail. Near the end of his journey, Jones comes to a seemingly bottomless chasm across from which is the doorway to the Holy Grail. There is no apparent bridge across the abyss, yet the map shows a picture of a man stepping into the void and speaks of taking a leap of faith that will enable Jones to traverse the gap. Mustering his courage, Jones takes that leap of faith and finds that there is an invisible bridge that he can walk across to seize the Holy Grail. Against the direst of consequences if he was wrong (plummeting to his death!), Jones had the faith to choose the path that led him to the Holy Grail. Similarly, you must also have the strength of your conviction to take that initial leap of faith to discover your Holy Grail, namely, skiing your fastest and fulfilling your goals (especially realizing that your worst-case scenario is nothing like that faced by Indiana Jones, though that was just a film, of course).<\/p>\n

The leap of faith begins with the realization that just trying to finish simply doesn\u2019t work in ski racing. As I wrote about in my last post, you don\u2019t want to cross the finish line, look at the clock, and kick yourself for playing it safe (remember regret!). The leap of faith continues with, well, faith, that you can ski fast. The leap of faith involves having a basic belief in yourself and a fundamental trust that, if you go for it, good things will happen. Recognize also that some misgivings are a normal part of ski racing\u2014you can never be 100 percent sure that things will work out the way you want in ski racing\u2014if you didn\u2019t have doubts, it wouldn\u2019t require a leap of faith.<\/p>\n

In a way, a leap of faith is a skill that you can develop with practice. At first, you\u2019ll be reluctant to take the necessary risks because you won\u2019t want to fail. So, the best place to practice taking leaps of faith is in training where the consequences of failure are small. The more you take those leaps of faith in training, the more success you will have and the more confident and comfortable you\u2019ll become in taking those risks. You can also use mental imagery to see and feel what it\u2019s like to take that leap of faith and go all out in races.<\/p>\n

All of these efforts will then initiate an positive upward spiral in which your leaps of faith are easier to make and result in fast skiing and good finishes. This newly acquired skill will then create into a growing confidence that you can and will ski aggressively, take those risks, ski fast, and get the results you want in the future. Which means no regrets, more fun, and skiing your very best. And isn\u2019t that what ski racing is all about?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I discussed in my last post, regret is one of the worst emotion you can experience after a race day, season, career or life. I also described how much of the work I\u2019m doing these days with ski racers is as focused on developing the right attitude toward racing as it is on learning […]<\/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":[58,202,203,205,206,153,207,208],"class_list":["post-4540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ski-racing","tag-competition","tag-holy-grail","tag-indiana-jones","tag-leap-of-faith","tag-racers","tag-ski-racing-2","tag-training","tag-yoda"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4540","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=4540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}