QUICK TIPS FOR

THE MENTAL EDGE

Published in Ski Racing (1984-2004)

COMMIT YOURSELF TO YOUR RACING

When you are on course, there is no room for being tentative. If you let up or back off going in the middle of a run, you are going to be in trouble. At best, you will be slow. At worst, you will fall and could injure yourself. One of the most important things you must do when they get into the starting gate is to be totally committed to going as fast and hard as you can.

In order to ski your best, you have to be committed to ski the very best you can. Unfortunately, as you develop as a racer. you will often come upon courses, terrain, or conditions that you think are over your head. You may be uncertain about skiing it. This uncertainty creates doubts and anxiety. If you try to ski these when you are uncertain, you are going to ski tentatively and bale out at the first sign of trouble.

So before you make a run, whether in training or a race, make sure that you are focused on skiing to the best of your ability. Make sure you are totally committed to doing it all the way. If you are not totally committed, step, get refocused and committed, then GO FOR IT! By being committed, you will race better and faster, make fewer mistakes, improve faster, and have a whole lot more fun.

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

A major source of stress for ski racers, and people in general, is the unexpected things that come up in life. The natural reaction to unexpected events is to back off, become tentative and anxious, and lose concentration. The unexpected usually hurts performance.

During the course of a race weekend, all kinds of things can wrong for a ski racer. On the way to races, airlines can lose skis and bags can be stolen. At the races, skis can get broken, goggles can become fogged, and buckles can break. If racers are not prepared, they are going to react negatively and this will hurt their races.

The best way to deal with this problem is to Expect the Unexpected. This can be accomplished easily. Take a sheet of paper and on the left side of the page, make a list of all the things that can go wrong at a race. Then, on the right side, list solutions to these events. For example, if skis are stolen, racers should find someone beforehand who has an extra pair of skis that are similar to their own and who is willing to lend them. Or, if racers have fogged goggles, they can carry some napkins or have an extra pair in a bag at the start. Using this strategy, racers can reduce their stress by making the unexpected no longer unexpected.

SKIWORD PROGRESSION

Becoming a better skier and racer is, at the same time, satisfying and frustrating. It is wonderful to learn to ski more challenging courses, terrain, and conditions. However, improving is a slow and difficult process. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to learning is focusing on the skills as you train.

Typically, you will be thinking about the new skill as you begin your freeski or training run, but quickly forget it as more important things come up like controlling your speed, not falling, and staying in the course. So instead of focusing on and practicing the new skill, you go back to your old style.

A strategy for maintaining the focus on the new skill is called the SKIword progression. A SKIword is a word that, when repeated, will remind you of the new technique that you are working on. SKIwords such as “balance”, “hands”, and “forward ” can be used. Once you have decided on a SKIword, you can begin the progression. First, when you are free skiing, say the SKIword repeatedly out loud as you ski down. By saying it out loud, you are constantly reminding yourself to practice the skill. Second, once you are able to do the skill in this way, you can then say the SKIword to yourself. Third, repeat steps one and two in training courses. Finally, you will know you have learned the new skill when you are able to do it without saying the SKIword at all. By using the SKIword progression, you will learn improve more quickly, thus enabling you to ski better and faster.

TYPES OF NEGATIVE THINKING

Though negative thinking is something that should be avoiding as much as possible, it is a normal response to a poor performance. In fact, some negative thinking is healthy because it means that you care about how you are skiing. However, too much or the wrong kind of negative thinking can be very harmful.

There are two types of negative thinking. The first kind, “give up” negative thinking, is associated with feelings of depression and helplessness. You say things like, “there is nothing I can do to ski better” or “no matter how hard I try, I just can’t do it”. “Give up” negative thinking also causes you to dwell on past performances, focusing on mistakes made and bad results in recent races. This type of thinking hurts self-confidence, concentration, and motivation. Quite simply, there is never a place for “give up” negative thinking the mind of a ski racer.

The second kind is called “fire up” negative thinking. “Fire up” negative thinking produces feelings of anger, energy and being psyched up. You say things such as, “I hate going slow and I’m going to go faster the next race” or “I am so mad that I am going to work twice as hard in training this week”. The focus of “fire up” negative thinking is on doing better in the future. This type of negative thinking increases motivation, intensity, and concentration. As a result, “fire up” negative thinking can be useful. However, it should not last more than a few days because negative thinking and emotions require alot of energy that could be better used for training and races.

WALK THE WALK FOR MORE CONFIDENCE

Self-confidence is the most important mental ingredient for success in ski racing. One technique that most people are not aware of for building and maintaining self-confidence involves how you carry yourself. How you walk and move can influence how you think and feel. In other words, you have to learn how to “Walk the Walk”.

If your body is down, your thoughts and feelings will be down. If your body is up, your thoughts and feelings will be up. Examples of not walking the walk include head and eyes down, shoulders slouched, feet dragging, and no energy in your step. Walking the walk involves holding your head high, chin up, eyes forward and focused, shoulders back, arms swinging, and bounce in your step. It is very difficult to be walking the walk and saying things like “I stink”, “I’m awful”, and “I can’t do this”. Similarly, it hard to be not walking the walk and saying, “I am a great ski racer”, “I am confident in my ability”, and “I know how to handle pressure”. This is because, in both cases, what you are saying to yourself is inconsistent with how you are carrying yourself. You can practice walking the walk by being aware of how you carry yourself and focusing on making positive physical changes when you walk. By walking the walk, you will find that you naturally feel more positive and energetic.

TRUST YOUR ABILITY ON RACE DAY

A disagreement I have gotten into with coaches involves whether it is good for racers to think about technique right before and during a race. They argue that if they don’t think about technique they won’t ski well. But it is my belief that if you focus on technique you will do that technique well, but you will also be slow because you are not thinking about just going fast.

There is a time and a place for technique. That time is during training. It is here that you question and analyze your skiing and focus on a particular part of your skiing in order to develop it. By doing this, the new technique becomes, with practice, second nature and it will then help you to ski faster in races.

But when race day arrives, you shouldn’t question, doubt, analyze, or get technical. If you do not have a technique down by the time you get to the starting gate, you will not be able to use it effectively in the race. Whatever ability you bring to the start, believe in it, and go as fast as you can with what you have. Simply put, TRUST YOURSELF to ski the very best you can on that day.

DETERMINING YOUR PRIME INTENSITY

Perhaps the single most important thing you need to do before a ski race is reach and maintain your optimal intensity. Intensity refers to amount of adrenaline, oxygen, and blood flow your body has. Too much intensity and your muscles are tight, you can’t breath, and your body is shaking from fear. Too little intensity and you feel tired, unmotivated, and weak. In either case, you do not ski your best.

Before you reach your optimal intensity, you have to know what it is. To do this recall several occasions when you skied your very best and very poorly. Remember how your body felt, for example, when you skied well, you may have felt energized, your heart was pounding, and you had a good sweat going before your run. When you skied poorly, you might have been shaking, had difficulty breathing, and your muscles were tense. Next, remember your thoughts and feelings. In good races, you may have been very positive and felt happy and excited. In bad races, you may have been thinking negatively and been a little afraid. Also, note the event, the level of competition, and the race site. When you had a good result, it might have been in your favorite event, say GS, at a lower level of competition, and on a fairly flat race hill. When you had a poor result, it may have been in a slalom on a steep, icy hill. The chances are there are some common factors associated with when you skied well and others when you skied poorly.

Once you establish those common factors related to good and bad skiing on race day, you can actively work to avoid the factors connected with poor skiing and reproduce the factors associated with good skiing. By identifying your optimal intensity, you have taken a first important step to controlling your race day rather than the race day controlling you.

THE SKI RACER’S LITANY

Too often, athletes don’t do any form of mental training until they have a problem, for example, they get into a slump, become nervous, or lose confidence in themselves. This is the wrong approach though. I believe in prevention that is similar to physical preparation. You don’t wait to get hurt to lift weights, stretch, and run. Instead, you exercise in order to improve competitive performance and prevent injury. The same approach should be taken with mental preparation.

A valuable strategy you can use to “exercise” your self-confidence “muscle” is called the Ski Racer’s Litany. A litany is a group of positive self-statements you say to yourself to teach yourself positive thinking and strengthen your self-confidence. One I use goes like this:

I LOVE TO SKI RACE.

I AM A GREAT SKI RACER.

I ALWAYS THINK AND TALK POSITIVELY.

I EXPECT TO FEEL PRESSURE AND THAT’S OKAY

BECAUSE I KNOW HOW TO HANDLE IT.

I AM CONFIDENT, RELAXED, AND FOCUSED WHEN I RACE.

I ALWAYS PUT MY FULLEST EFFORT INTO TRAINING.

By saying the Ski Racer’s Litany regularly, you train your mind to think positively, so that when you do have some difficulties, you will stay positive and maintain your self-confidence. It is important that you not only say the Litany regularly, but you say it like you mean it. Even if you don’t believe it at first, if you tell yourself something enough times you will start believing it. I recommend that you say the Ski Racer’s Litany when you get up in the morning, before you go to sleep, and prior to training and races. So by reciting the Litany often, your mental muscles will be as strong as your physical muscles.

PRE-RACE ROUTINES

Routines are one of the best ways for racers to prepare themselves for competition. Pre-race routines are valuable for several reasons. They ensure completion of every important aspect of pre-race preparation. Routines increase the familiarity of race situations and decrease the likelihood of unexpected things occurring. They build consistency of thought, feeling, and action. Routines increase feelings of control and self-confidence, and reduce anxiety. Regardless of the importance of a race, by using a well-practiced routine, you will condition your mind and body into feeling that this is just another race.

A pre-race routine should be composed of everything you need to do to be totally prepared for competition. This includes packing for the race, meals, early morning physical warm-up, course inspection, skiing warm-up, equipment, start area physical warm-up, and finally, mental preparation.

There is no one ideal pre-race routine to follow. Rather, routines are personal so you should develop one that suits your particular needs. To do this, make a list of what you need to do before a race. Then create the routine by deciding when is the best time to complete each part of the routine. Finally, follow this routine before every race. Within a few months it will become second-nature and it will ensure that you are totally prepared to ski your very best.

START AREA PREPARATION

The most critical period before your race run is the time you spend in the start area. What you do there will often dictate the success of your run. There are three things that must be done to ensure that you ski your best. First, you must prepare your equipment: bindings, edges, bases, boots, clothing. The last thing you want to worry about before your run is your equipment, so you want to get it ready first.

Second, you must get physically ready. This involves stretching, doing warm-up exercises, and making turns. The best measure of whether your body is ready to ski its best is if you have worked up a sweat. A sweat indicates that your muscles are warm and loose, and you have plenty of oxygen and blood flowing through your body.

Finally, you must get mentally prepared. This phase involves putting on your “race face”, that is, narrowing your focus onto the race, using mental imagery to rehearse key parts of the course, thinking positively, and actively moving toward your prime intensity. This start area routine will lead to a level of preparation in which, as you enter the starting gate, you are totally prepared to ski your best and you only have one thing on your mind: skiing as FAST as you can!

RACE-CONFIDENCE CHALLENGE

Race-confidence in your ability is critical to your success as a ski racer. How well you perform will often dictate your race-confidence. This means that when you are skiing well, you will have high race-confidence. Unfortunately, it also means that when you are skiing poorly, you may lose your race-confidence. This relates to what I call the race-confidence challenge which is often the difference between racers who are successful and those who struggle.

It is easy to stay confident and when you are skiing well. Your training is going well and you are getting good results. There is nothing to worry about. But an inevitable part of ski racing is that you will have ups and downs during the race season; there will be periods when you are skiing poorly. What separates the best from the rest is what happens when you are not skiing well. This is the time that you must meet the race-confidence challenge.

Most racers, when they ski poorly, will lose race-confidence and get caught in a vicious cycle, in which both race-confidence and performance deteriorate (see Upward Spiral/Vicious Cycle). Once you are caught in a vicious cycle, it is harder and takes longer to get out of it.

The best racers may go through a period of poor skiing, but will maintain their race-confidence. This means that they won’t get caught in the vicious cycle. Instead, by keeping their race-confidence up, their skiing will stay down for a shorter period and it will be easier for them to return to a high level of skiing.

All racers will have slumps during the season. The skill is not getting caught in the vicious cycle and being dragged down evern further. The skill is keeping your race-confidence and turning it into an upward spiral in which race-confidence and performance push each other to higher levels. So, to ski your best all season, meet the race-confidence challenge.

RELAXATION TECHNIQUES TO REDUCE OVER-INTENSITY

One of the most common obstacles to a great skiing performance is over-intensity or anxiety in the start area before a race. Over-intensity manifests itself in extreme muscle tension, stomach butterflies, difficulty breathing, a loss of coordination, and an over-narrowing of concentration. For you to ski your best, you must learn to control your over-intensity. There are three simple techniques you may use to relax before a race run.

First, the most basic way to relax is simply to breathe. I have seen many racers at the start taking short, choppy breaths that do not give them enough oxygen. Taking long, slow, deep breaths will relax your muscles and give your muscles the oxygen they need to work well.

Second, muscle tension is the most common symptom of over-intensity and it is difficult to just relax the muscles when you are nervous. So I recommend using a technique called progressive relaxation which involves doing the opposite, that is, tightening your muscles even tighter than they are. In the start area, if you feel tense, tighten that body part for five seconds, then release it for five seconds (do this twice). Also, take a deep breath when you relax the muscles. You can also do progressive relaxation systematically. Before your start, lie down and follow this procedure for four muscle groups: legs and buttocks, chest and back, arms and shoulders, and face and neck.

Third, a surprisingly powerful way to relax is to smile. I don’t mean be happy or have a good time. Simply raise the sides of your mouth into a smile and hold it for 60 seconds. This works in two ways. As we grow we learn that smiling means we are happy. Also, when we smile, it releases brain chemicals which cause us to relax. It is hard to feel nervous when you are smiling.

MUSIC TO ACHIEVE PRIME INTENSITY

An important responsibility that you have when you arrive at the start area is to reach what I call prime intensity, which is your ideal level of physical readiness where you have just the right amount of blood flow, oxygen, and adrenaline to ski your best. Many racers use music to help reach their prime intensity.

We all know that music has a profound physical and emotional effect on us. Music can make us happy, sad, and inspired. Music can also excite or relax us. As 1993 world silver medalist Julie Parisien has said, “It’s a tool for my intensity and concentration. I can tell if I am really “there” if I pick up a certain sound. I use different music for different events because they have two disparate feelings.”

So you can use music to regulate your intensity. Before a race, if you find that you are too relaxed and need to increase your intensity, you should listen to high energy music that gets you fired up. If you are too nervous before a race and need to lower your intensity, you should listen to mellow music that calms you down.

It is very important that you make sure the music you are listening to is appropriate for your current intensity level. I have known racers who liked high energy music, but tended to be too nervous before races. By listening to high energy music, even thought they liked it, they would become even more intense, which hurt their race performances. So be sure your music helps you reach your prime intensity. A warning: do not listen to music when you are free skiing. I have known several racers who were hit by a snowcat or another skier because they didn’t hear them.

FOUR-STAGE LEARNING PROCESS

Acquiring new skills is perhaps the single most important goal for young ski racers. Unfortunately, learning can be a long and frustrating process. To make the learning process easier, it is helpful to understand how most people learn new skills. There are four stages in the learning process.

The first stage, intellectual understanding, involves understanding what you are doing incorrectly and the correct execution of the skill. If you do not understand the right and wrong execution, learning will simply be trial-and-error. To ensure this understanding, ask your coach to describe and demonstrate the correct and incorrect execution, and watch videos of yourself and other racers so that you can see the difference.

The second stage consists of muscle awareness in which you know what position your body is in and what your body is doing. Without this awareness, you will not be able to control your body and learn new skills. To improve this awareness, you can watch videos of yourself to get a good image of how you ski and, while skiing, focus on body position.

The third stage, initial learning, is the first indication of skill development. In this stage, in order to execute the skill correctly, you must focus totally on your body and the skill. Any distractions will cause you to forget the skill and you can only do the skill on easy terrain and snow conditions.

The fourth stage involves generalization in which you progressively are able to use the skill in increasingly more difficult conditions. For example, if you are working on countering your upper body, you first can only do it free skiing on smooth, flat terrain. Then you can counter on steeper, rougher terrain with uneven snow. This process progresses until you can do it in a race under difficult conditions.

There are several benefits to understanding the learning process. You will have more realistic expectations about learning. You will be less frustrated during learning. You will develop a patient attitude. Finally, you will view learning as a positive experience, thus motivating you to want to improve more.

PRE-RACE CONCENTRATION STYLES

My work with thousands of ski racers, from the junior level to the U.S. Ski Team, has indicated two distinct concentration styles before a race. Concentration style is important because it affects your ability to stay focused before a race and determines what you need to do in the start area to ensure prime concentration which I define as your ideal focus that enables you to ski your best.

The first type of pre-race concentration style is called overloaded externally (OE). Racers who are OE are hypersensitive to things going on around them. They become overly focused on start area activity including coaches, other racers, tech reps, and starters. They are unable to block out these start area distractors and can not focus on their pre-race preparation.

If you are OE, you need to block out external distractions. Before a race, go off by yourself away from the start area distractions, for example, into the woods or to the other side of the trail. Focus on your pre-race routines. Listen to music: if you are listening to music, you will be less aware of external distractions. Also, control your eyes: focus them down and away from distractions.

The second type of pre-race concentration style is called overloaded internally (OI). Racers who are OI are overly focused on internal distractions such as unnecessary thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. These internal distractions cause them to forget the course and interferes with their pre-race preparation.

If you are OI, you need to block out internal distractions, that is, stop yourself from thinking about unnecessary things. Stay in the start area around other people. This external activity will keep you from getting too internally focused. Do your pre-race routine around other racers and coaches. Also, listening to music will keep you from thinking too much.

By following these steps in the start area you will control your pre-race concentration style rather than it controlling you. This will enable you to develop prime concentration to ski your best.

CONTROL OR NOT TO CONTROL

The life of a ski racer is very stressful. There are many things that you can worry about and which can make you depressed, angry, frustrated, and distracted, all of which will hurt your skiing. Unfortunately, many racers, and people in general, worry about the wrong things. The big problem is that racers get stressed out about things over which they have absolutely no control. In a ski racer’s life, there are some things they should think about and others they shouldn’t. Things that you should pay attention to are those things over which you do have control. These things include your physical condition, effort, attitude, thoughts, emotions, behavior, equipment, preparation, and performance. All of these are within your control, so by thinking about them, you can improve. Things that should not affect racers include competitors’ attitudes, thoughts, emotions, behavior, and performances, coaches, officials, parents, start number, weather, terrain, and snow conditions.

Next time you find that you are under stress, ask yourself one question: “Is the thing that I am worried about under my control?” If it is not, let it go and focus on things you can control. If it is within your control, instead of worrying about, do something about it!

COMMIT THE CRIME, DO THE TIME

The most useful technique I ever developed to stop negative talk and encourage positive talk is what I call, “Commit the Crime, Do the Time”. It is best used by a team or within a training group and involves making racers aware of their negative talk and making it undesirable to say negative things.

It works like this: Your training group decides it is against the law for both racers and coaches to say anything negative while on the hill. The group then decides on a suitable “punishment” for offenders. The “punishment” should either make the offender a better racer or a better person. For example, at the U.S. Ski Team Development Camps I worked at, one group chose 50 hop turns as their punishment (this would make the offender a better racer). Another group decided that the offenders had to stand up in the middle of the Mt. Hood base lodge and announce to all present that “My name is so and so, I am with the U.S. Ski Team Development Camp. I said something negative, but I will be more positive in the future” (this would make the offender a better person). This strategy will make you aware of your negative talk because your teammates will catch you committing the crime and make you do the time. Before you know it, you have not only reduced your negative talk during training, but you actually begin to say more positive things.

PREPARATION, WINNING ROLE MODELS, AND SUCCESS

There is a misconception that, to build confidence, you have to succeed first. But that is unrealistic because few people can just go out and ski well in a race. Before you can build your confidence by skiing well in races, there are two ways you must build your confidence. First, preparation builds confidence. In order to ski well, you have to be well-prepared. Racers who know they have done everything possible to prepare themselves to succeed are going to be confident that they will ski their best. If you are in good physical condition, technically skilled, have your equipment well-prepared, and are mentally ready, you will truly know that you will ski your best.

Second, you can build your confidence by choosing winning role models. Skiing champions like Marc Girardelli and Julie Parisien exhibit common qualities, habits, and behaviors. It is these shared characteristics that contribute to their success. If you want to be successful, you can acquire some of these qualities and behaviors by watching and emulating champions. Areas that you can emulate include their attitude, work ethic, training, pre-race routines, and intensity. Don’t just copy them, rather take these characteristics and incorporate them into your own style.

When you are well-prepared and have acquired some of the characteristics of winning ski racers, you will also be more confident. You are now in a better position to most directly improve your confidence through successful skiing experiences. If you have skied well in the past, then you will develop the confidence that you will ski well in the future. It is important that in all of your ski racing, whether in training or racing, that you succeed more than 50% of the time. So, through preparation, choosing winning role models, and success in training and races, you will be as confident as possible and, as a result, you will ski your best.

100% SOLUTION FOR TRAINING

One of the biggest problems I see in young racers is a lack of consistent focus and intensity from free skiing to gate training to race day. Too often, racers will free ski at 60% focus and intensity, gate train at 80%, and expect to race at 100%. This is unrealistic because if you haven’t done it in free skiing and training, you will not be able to do it in a race. As U.S. Ski Team member Erik Schlopy has said, “I think training’s just like racing. I want to go out there and pretend it’s a race every day. That way, when I get to the race, it’s no big deal.”

A basic rule to follow is that whatever you need to do on race day, you must do in free skiing and training. For you to be able to race well at 100% focus and intensity, you must become accustomed to it, and this is accomplished in free skiing and training. You should put 100% focus and intensity into every run you take. This will enable you to be mentally and physically used to what it feels like to ski at that level. A way to do this is with what I call the 100% solution which involves always skiing with purpose. The 100% solution means that in every aspect of your training, you have a specific

purpose and goal in mind. Every time you go out to ski, you should know exactly what you want to accomplish. If you are not using the 100% solution, you are not only not improving, but you are making it harder to improve because you are practicing (and becoming more skilled at) the wrong things. Make sure that whatever you are working on, whether technique, conditioning, mental skiing, going fast, or just having fun, that you are doing with purpose and 100% focus and intensity.

MENTAL EDGE CODE OF COMMITMENT

Total Commitment

Being the best ski racer you can be is simple, but not easy. It is simple because all that is required is that you do everything possible to be your best. It is not easy because to do everything takes total commitment. Total Commitment means discipline, hard work, patience, and responsibility. If you do not have Total Commitment, at the end of your ski racing participation, you may have to ask the saddest question there is, “I wonder what could have been?”

Why the Code of Commitment?

Too often when coaches ask racers their opinion on some part of training or racing, the typical response is, “I don’t know,” “I don’t care,” or “It doesn’t matter.” Too often, when coaches ask racers the cause of a problem, the common response is, “Don’t blame me” or “It’s not my fault.” But if you don’t know, don’t care, and it doesn’t matter, then you are not committed to your ski racing. You must know, you must care, and it must matter if you want to be your best.

It it is not your responsibility, then whose is it? When you are in the starting gate, there is no one there to help you. On the result sheet, there is no excuse session where you can say, “I would have won, but my coach missed the wax.” Whether you win or lose, the responsibility is yours.

What is the Code of Commitment?

The Code of Commitment is a series of statements that clearly demonstrate your commitment to being your best. The Code illustrates your willingness to take full responsibility for all aspects of your training and competitive performances.

Code of Commitment

I DO KNOW.

I DO CARE.

IT DOES MATTER.

IT IS MY RESPONSIBILITY.

THREE TYPES OF CONFIDENCE FOR SKI RACING

Confidence is the most important psychological factor that impacts ski racing performance. There are, in fact, three distinct types of confidence that you must develop for confidence to help your ski racing. Each type of confidence contributes to your ability to ski your best.

Athletic confidence involves your belief in two areas related to your athleticism. First, your belief in your overall ability as an athlete. How confident are you in yourself as an athlete? Do you believe that you are a good athlete who can learn and master any sport you try? Do you consider yourself coordinated, agile, and quick? Second, athletic confidence refers to your belief in your level of physical conditioning. How confident are that you are in the best shape possible?

Technical confidence refers to your belief in your ability to related to technical development. How confident are you in your ability to learn new skills? Are you a fast learner, do you pick up technical feedback from your coaches easily? Also, how confident are you currently in your technical skiing ability? Are you skiing well enough to accomplish your immediate goals?

Race confidence involves your belief in several aspects of your ability to perform your best in competition. First, do you believe that you can perform well in races? Second, how confident are you that you can respond well to race pressure? Third, do you believe that your mental abilities will help rather than hurt your race performances?

If you lack confidence in any of these three areas, you will not be able to perform up to your ability. If you don’t have full confidence, do not lose hope. In fact, even the best racers in the world have lost confidence during their careers. Many racers believe that confidence is inborn; you either have it or you don’t. But confidence is a skill, much like physical and technical skills, that can be learned. Just like technical skills, confidence can be acquired with awareness, control, of how you think, and practice at thinking more positively.

USE MAG-LITE FOCUS IN YOUR RACING

An important goal in your race training is to develop focus control. Focus control involves several steps. First, you must understand how you focus best and how your focus impacts your race preparations and your competitive performance. Second, you have to recognize the internal and external cues that help and hurt your focus and your performance. Finally, you must learn to focus on cues that help your racing and block out distracting cues.

The Mag-Lite is a special flashlight that helps illustrate how you can develop focus control. The Mag-Lite beam can be adjusted to illuminate a wide area or focused to brighten a narrow area. Your focus can be thought of as a Mag-Lite beam you project that illuminates what you want to focus on.

Wide beam. There are times when your Mag-Lite focus must be wide to take in a lot of information such as inspecting the course and focusing on line, terrain, and snow conditions.

Moderate beam. Other times your Mag-Lite focus must have a moderate beam to take in some external information, e.g., watching other racers before your run, or some external and internal information, e.g., getting feedback from your coach and reviewing race tactics.

Narrow beam. As the race approaches, your Mag-Lite focus must become narrow. In the start area, this narrow beam would help you focus on using race imagery how how you want to run the course. When you enter the starting gate, your narrow beam would shift externally to enable you to focus in the course during your race run.

ACHIEVING PRIME PERFORMANCE

Prime performance means skiing your best consistently, with minimal peaks and valleys. Prime performance means skiing your best under pressure when it really counts. Prime performance comes from the development of three key areas related to ski racing performance. First, you must develop yourself physically. This includes being at the highest level of physical conditioning, having a balanced diet, being well-rested, drug-free, and not having any injuries or illness. Second, being technically and tactically sound. Your skills must be well-learned and your tactics need to be ingrained so that everything is automatic. Finally, you must have the Mental Edge. This includes being motivated, confidence, at prime intensity, and totally focused on skiing your best..

How do you know when you have attained Prime Performance? There are several common characteristics associated with it. There is the sense of effortless focus. You are totally absorbed in the race. You are focused on the process rather than the outcome. There are no distractions and your focus is narrow, but intense.

Your skiing is automatic. There is no thoughts and no mental interference. Your body does what you have trained it to do. Your skiing is effortless. It is comfortable, easy, and natural.

Your senses are sharp. You have heightened sensory perception. Time seems to slow down. You have boundless energy. Your endurance is lasting and your experience no fatigue. Finally, your have what I call Prime Integration. In which everything, mental physical, and technical is working together. Every aspect of your racing performance is in synch.

Every aspect of the Mental Edge is directed toward you achieving the Prime Performance. By using the information and techniques described in Quick Tips for the Mental Edge, you move closer to attaining Prime Performance.

KEEP THE MENTAL EDGE PERSPECTIVE IN YOUR RACING

Ski racing is important to you. You put a lot of time and effort into your racing. When you don’t the results you would like, it can really hurt. During these times, you need to remember the big picture of why you race. Ski racing gives you so much more than results, points, and rankings: fun, travel, friends, health, a lifetime sport, confidence, motivation, discipline, and much more. When your results are not as good as you want, remind yourself of all the great things you get from racing. Use those benefits to motivate yourself to work harder and get more from ski racing.

Ups and Downs of Ski Racing

In the history of ski racing, very racers have had perfect or near perfect race seasons: Klammer, Tomba, Street. Even the best racers in the world have ups and downs. If they do, then you would expect other racers, like yourself, to have ups and downs as well. Down periods are caused by a wide variety of things including fatigue, injury, illness, or just plain bad luck. It is not whether you have ups and downs during the season, because you will, but how big they are and, most importantly, how you respond to them.

In a down period, it is easy to get depressed and frustrated. You are disappointed and feel out of control to change it. You just want to give up. But none of these feelings will help you accomplish your most important goal: getting out of the down period.

The best racers know how to get back to an up period quickly. They keep the down period in perspective; it is not the end of the world. These racers recognize that down periods are natural and expected. They stay positive and confident even though they are not skiing well. They also take a short break from skiing if necessary.

Most importantly, these racers keep working hard and never give up. They are also very active in looking for the cause of and solution for the down period. Finally, they learn from the decline so they can prevent it from happening again.

Ski Racing is About Love

It is easy to lose sight of why you ski race. there are the results, trophies, and attention. When that happens, you often do not have as much fun or ski as well. Ski racing is really about love: love of skiing, love of others, and love of yourself. If you lose the love, it is time to find something else to do. If you remember that skiing is about love, then you will always ski your best and have fun. So in your ski racing, always… KEEP THE LOVE!!!

BECOME A MENTAL EDGE COMPETITOR

Being the best ski racer you can takes more than being in great physical condition and being technically skilled. There are many racers who have those qualities, but do not ski their best. Skiing to the best of your ability requires that you have all the normal things you would expect including excellent physical conditioning, sound technique, well-prepared equipment, and solid mental skills. But that is not enough. To truly ski your best, you need to become a Mental Edge Competitor.

There is a big difference between being able to ski well in training, in races, and in pressure situations. To ski your best when it really counts, you must evolve from being a racer to a performer to a Mental Edge Competitor. Racers are technically strong, ski well in training and time trials, but typically do not perform up to their ability in races. They also ski poorly when under pressure.

Performers generally ski adequately in training and time trials, and ski well in most races. However, they do not know how to harness the competitive pressure in big races. They do not know how to step to the fore when the race is on the line. They are usually not able to ski their best when the pressure is on.

Mental Edge Competitors don’t always ski well in training or time trials, and ski well in most races. But it is in the big races that they separate themselves from the pack. They respond positively to race pressure and are able to raise their skiing when it really counts. they also thrive on the pressure of big races.

To become a Mental Edge Competitor, you must follow several key steps. First, you must be in the best possible physical condition. No one should be in better shape than you. Second, you should be so technically sharp from over-learning your skiing skills until they are automatic. Third, you should be mentally ready, with high motivation, confidence, focus, and the right amount of intensity for every race. Fourth, you should train for adversity so that you learn how to respond positively to adverse race conditions. Fifth, you should be totally prepared for every race: physically, mentally, technically, tactically, and equipment. Sixth, you should seek out pressure situations and love the intensity of big races. Finally, you should view pressure situations as an opportunity to stretch your limits and show yourself what you are made of. By following these guidelines, you will become a Mental Edge Competitor and perform to the best of your ability consistently!

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “I love ski racing and that’s important. If you don’t, either you have to figure out a way to do it or you might as well hang it up. You’re not going to be a contender if you’re not enjoying yourself” (Casey Puckett, USST member).

MENTAL EDGE FOR WINNING AND LOSING

Too often, our society defines winning and losing very narrowly. Society defines winning as coming in first. The gold medalist is the winner and the silver and bronze medalists are losers. It defines losing as anything that is not first place. This means that in any ski race, there can only be one winner and there are many losers. But I have known first place finishers who were not happy with their performances and 25th place finishers who had the race of their life. You can come in first and still not win and you can finish far behind and still not be a loser.

A better way to define winning is performing to the best of your ability. Winning means doing everything possible to ski your best. Winning means giving your best effort all of the time. Losing can be defined as not doing everything you can to ski your best. Losing means not having given your best effort.

Myths and Reality of Winning and Losing

There are many myths about winning and losing that need to be cleared up. Myth #1: The only way to win to have always have won. Myth #2: Winners rarely lose. Myth #3: Losers always lose.

Reality #1: Winners lose more at first than losers. Losers lose a few times then quit. Winners lose at first, learn from the losses, then begin to win because of what they learned and because they kept working hard and believed in themselves.

Reality #2: Learning to lose and learning from losing is an important part of learning how to win. Reality #3: There are problems with winning too much too soon. Winning can breeds complacency because, if you win a lot, you have little motivation to improve. Winning doesn’t identify areas in need of improvement. Winning doesn’t teach you how to constructively handle the inevitable setbacks you will face in competition.

Reality #4: There are important benefits to losing. Losing provides information about your progress and what you need to work on. Losing shows you what not to do, which narrows down the possibilities of what you need to do to ski well. Losing shows you how to respond positively to adversity.

Reality #5: A necessary part of learning to ski your fastest is to find your performance limits. The only way to do this is to go over the edge of your limits, which will cause you to fail. Once you have gone over your performance limits, you know where they are an can take a small step back and perform up to those limits, thus skiing your best.

So though you should never be happy with losing, you should keep it in perspective, learn from these experiences, and use them to ski your best and become a winner.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “You can win and still not succeed, still not achieve what you should. And you can lose without really failing at all” (Bobby Knight).

NEGATIVE THINKING IS YOUR ENEMY

Perhaps the biggest barrier to success in ski racing is negative thinking. If you enter a race expecting to fall or ski poorly, you probably will. Of all the Mental Edge skills that you must change to ski your best, negative thinking is the most important.

The way you think is a skill that develops over time and with practice. Unfortunately, many racers develop the skill of thinking negatively rather than positively. This skill becomes ingrained with consistent use of negative thinking. When you are in challenging situations, since negative thinking is the well-learned skill, your automatic reaction is to think negatively.

Just like a bad technical habit, negative thinking is difficult to change. But negative thinking can be changed in the same way that you change technical problems. First, you need to become aware of your negative thinking. Off the hill, during training, and at races, be aware of how you talk to yourself and note when you say something negative. Also, ask coaches, friends, and family members to point out times when you are negative.

Second, work on controlling your negative thoughts and statements. When you think or say something negative, replace it with a more positive thought or statement. Find positive and realistic things that can take the place of the negative thoughts. A difficulty with beginning this process is that you probably won’t believe the positive things you are thinking or saying. That’s okay. The more you say positive things, the more comfortable you will become saying them, and the more you will start believing them. Finally, you need to keep practicing this to remove the negative thinking skill and ingrain the positive thinking skill. With time and effort, you will retrain your thinking skills so that when you get to a race, you will be positive and confident about your skills. And when you get into challenging situations, instead of being your own worst enemy and knowing you will fail, you will be your own best ally and you will know that you will ski your best.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “I would try to remember that if I allow myself to be discouraged, I made myself my own worst enemy” (Armand Hammer).

IMPORTANCE OF MISTAKES

One of the most frustrating aspects of developing as a ski racer are the mistakes that racers make as they work to improve. Unlike in other sports, the consequences of mistakes in ski racing are dramatic and sometimes painful, in the forms of blowing out in training courses or crashes in races. Yet, racers often don’t realize that mistakes are an essential part of becoming a better racer. Mistakes are a natural part of the learning process and are valuable information showing you on what you need to work. Mistakes mean you are moving out of your comfort zone and working to improve. If you are not making mistakes, you are not pushing yourself to be your best.

Many racers view mistakes as failure. If they didn’t have a perfect run, they failed. But mistakes only mean failure when you do not learn from them and if they are repeated. Mistakes should be viewed as success because they mean you are trying to get better. Mistakes mean success when you learn from them and are not repeated.

Rarely has there ever been a perfect race run, even by World Cup racers. The best ski racers in the world make mistakes, so if you are not at that level, you shouldn’t be surprised that you make mistakes too. What makes World Cup racers different is not that they don’t make mistakes, but rather how they respond to them. Instead of getting angry, depressed, and frustrated when they make mistakes, the best racers stay positive and motivated. Also, they learn from their mistakes so they don’t make them again.

To ensure that mistakes mean success, immediately after a mistake, identify what exactly you did incorrectly, decide what you need to do to correct it, and focus on the correction on the next run.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “In training, the only true failure is the failure to learn.”

RACE IMAGERY

Race imagery is the most powerful psychological tool you can use to ski your fastest. It is used by all great ski racers in training and race preparation. There is also considerable scientific evidence showing that when you combine actual training with race imagery, you will improve more than just with training alone.

Race imagery involves total mental reproduction of an actual training or race situation. Race imagery is more than just picturing yourself skiing well. Good race imagery includes seeing, hearing, and feeling everything you would when racing and having the same thoughts and emotions too.

Race imagery is a skill that develops with practice. Many racers, when they first try race imagery, don’t have clear images or make mistakes and fall in their imagery. They assume that they are just not good at it, so they stop using it. But with some time and effort, race imagery will improve and the benefits will emerge.

Race imagery can be used in a variety of ways to improve training and race performance. Off-snow race imagery can continue your skiing development even when you are not skiing. A race imagery program during the off-season can include imagining race scenarios and seeing and feeling yourself working on parts of your skiing such as technique, aggressiveness, intensity, or focus.

Race imagery can be used while training as well. At the top of a training course, imagine how you want to ski that run. After the run, if you made mistakes, rewind the imagery and “edit” it, replacing the negative image and feeling with positive ones. If you had a great run, “replay” it to ingrain the positive image and feeling.

On race day, you can use race imagery to memorize the course and, in the start area before your run, you can imagine yourself skiing fast and aggressively. Particularly before a race, move your body with the race imagery, increasing feelings associated with skiing fast.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “I visualized GS for two weeks and then after a few runs, it was a breakthrough. I realized, I’m there, that’s what it’s supposed to feel like” (Casey Puckett, USST member).

POSITIVE CHANGE FORMULA

Training is, at the same time, one of the most rewarding and frustrating parts of ski racing. It feels so good to finally learn something technically or hit just the right line on a course. But it seems like it takes forever for that improvement to occur. Despite the time it always takes to make changes in your skiing, racers often think they can work on something for a short time and expect to use it effectively. And just because you can do it on a training course doesn’t automatically mean you can do it in a race. This is because most racers don’t really understand how they go about improving. The reality is there are no shortcuts, magic dust, quick fixes that will greatly speed up how fast you learn. Change of any sort, whether technical, physical, or mental, does not occur automatically and change due to trial and error is slow and inefficient.

There are three steps, which I call the Positive Change Formula, that racers must go through to improve. First, have an awareness of what you are currently doing and how you need to improve it. If you don’t know what you are doing wrong, there is no way you can work to improve it. Second, control that which you want to improve. In other words, you have focus on the improvement and make the change in your skiing. But making the change a few times will not ingrain that improvement into your mind and muscles. So, third, put in the necessary repetition to instill the positive change fully.

The biggest mistake racers make is underestimating the amount of repetition that is required to completely learn something. It takes thousands of turns for an improvement to become automatic. That sounds like a lot, but consider that ten runs of a 30-gate course gives you 300 repetitions. It is also important to understand that the repetitions must be done in increasingly more difficult conditions. It may be easy to execute an improvement on easy terrain, but you may not have learned it well enough to do on steep terrain. You know you have made a lasting improvement when you can do it automatically without thinking in the most important race of your life under the most demanding conditions.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way” (John Holt).

THREE D’S OF PRIME MOTIVATION

To be the best ski racer you can be, you have to be highly motivated to put in the time, effort, and energy in all aspects of training. That level of being so highly motivated is called “prime motivation.” To achieve prime motivation, you must respond to what I call the “Three D’s.”

First, choose a direction. Before you can attain prime motivation, you must consider the different directions you can go in your ski racing participation. You could stop ski racing completely, continue at your present level, or strive to be the best you can be.

Second, make a decision. With these three choices, you must now select one direction in which to go. None of these directions is necessarily good or bad, right or wrong. They are simply your choices. Perhaps you find something more enjoyable for you, so you decide to pursue that area in place of ski racing. Or you are perfectly happy at your current level and do not have the desire to sacrifice other areas of your life to put more time and effort into your ski racing. Or you truly want to find out how good you can be and are willing to commit yourself to the pursuit of that goal. The decision you make will dictate the level of ski racing in which you participate and achieve.

Third, have dedication. Once you have made your decision, you must dedicate yourself to that decision. You must devote yourself to that decision totally. If your decision is to become the best ski racer you can be, then this last step, dedication, will determine whether you have prime motivation. Your decision to be your best must be your top priority, taking precedence over almost everything else. Only by being completely dedicated to your direction and decision will you ensure prime motivation and put in the necessary time, effort, and energy into your physical, technical, and mental training to realize your dreams.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “With motivation, you can be involved or committed. Just like with ham and eggs: the chicken was involved, but the pig was committed. You have to be like the pig” (Martina Navrotilova).

GOAL SETTING FOR SKI RACING

Goal setting is one of the most valuable tools that ski racers can use to build motivation and direct focus. Goal setting increases commitment to training and racing and provides deliberate steps toward your ski racing aspirations. Goals act as a road map to your desired destination. In other words, goals show you how to get there.

There are five types of goals you should set before every race season. Long-term goals specify what you ultimately want to achieve in your racing, for example, win an Olympic goal medal or get a college scholarship. Seasonal goals indicate what you want to accomplish this season, for instance, reach a certain ranking or qualify for the Junior Olympics. Competitive goals designate how you want to perform in particular races during the season that will lead to your seasonal goals, for example, place in the top ten of JO qualifiers. Training goals specify what you need to do in your training to reach your competitive goals, for example, improve your technique or tactics. Finally, lifestyle goals indicate what you need to do in your general lifestyle to reach the above goals, for instance, related to sleep, diet, and alcohol or drug use.

There are a number of goal guidelines you should follow in setting your goals. First, goals should be challenging, yet realistic. You should be able to attain them, but only with hard work. Second, Goals should be specific and concrete. For example, you should set a goal of increasing your leg strength by 15% rather than a goal of just getting stronger. Third, focus on degree rather than absolute attainment of goals. Not all goals will be reached, but there will surely be improvement toward the goal. Fourth, goal setting never ends. As soon as one goal is reached, another should be set. Fifth, prepare a written contract detailing your goals. If they are clearly detailed, you are more likely to achieve them. Sixth, get regular feedback showing progress toward your goals. By seeing consistent improvement, you will be more motivated to keep working toward your goals.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “The resources of the human body and soul are enormous… We go part of the way to consciously tapping these resources by having goals that we want desperately” (Herb Elliot, Olympic running goal medalist).

PRIME LAWS OF TECHNICAL TRAINING

Engaging in quality on-snow training is the foundation for successful ski racing. To ensure that you get the most out of your training opportunities, there are a few Prime Laws you can follow. First, always engage in purposeful training. Many racers believe that they will improve just by showing up to training, skiing, and running gates. But that approach will only ingrain old habits. To have quality training, you should always have a particular purpose, that is, have something specific you can focus on that will improve your skiing.

Second, learn from your mistakes. Mistakes are an important part of the learning process. If you are not making mistakes, you are staying in your comfort zone and not trying to improve. After every mistake, learn how to keep from repeating it.

Third, over-learn your skills. Learning new skills takes a lot of quantity as well as quality. You have to practice the things you are working on thousands of times. Over-learning is accomplished in several steps. Engage in high repetition of what you are working on. Then, practice it in a wide variety of conditions such as different types of courses, terrain, and snow conditions. Finally, rehearse it under adverse conditions. If you can execute the new skill consistently in diverse and challenging conditions, you know you have learned it and will be able to use it in a race.

Fourth, be patient. Too often racers unrealistically expect to learn a new skill in a short time and use it immediately in a race. Learning new skills takes time and repetition. You must be patient and willing to put in the necessary time to fully learn the skill.

Fifth, never give up. The learning process is the most frustrating part of ski racing because of the time, effort, and energy it takes to improve. There are times when it seems like you will never learn a new skill no matter what you do. It is easy to get frustrated and give up. But if you give up, you automatically lose because you are no longer working to improve. No matter how difficult and frustrating your training can be, if you keep trying, you will, in time, improve and succeed in your ski racing.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, and skillful execution.”

MAXIMIZING THE BENEFITS OF VIDEO

Watching videos of yourself and top racers is a valuable tool for improving technique and increasing motivation, confidence, and focus. Video enables you to more clearly understand and see what you need to work on and proper technique and tactics demonstrated by world-class racers. Video, as a form of external race imagery, also helps you generate the image and feeling of skiing your best.

But you may not be watching video in the most effective way. You may watch only your mistakes in the belief that this will help you correct it. But this approach ingrains a negative image into your mind. You may focus too much on details of the video, for example, hand position, rather than on the whole image. Watching too much World Cup video and not enough of yourself may cause you to imagine yourself skiing like one of them rather than the way you ski.

When you watch video follow these rules. Take in the whole image rather than paying too much attention to details. Allow the image of good skiing sink into your mind. Though you learn about what you need to work on by watching your mistakes, I recommend watching at least 75% “highlight” videos of yourself skiing well. Watching World Cup racers is valuable, but rather than imagining yourself skiing like them, include their good technique into how you actually ski. To maximize this benefit, when you watch World Cup footage, identify racers who are physically and technically similar to you so you can more easily incorporate good technique into your style.

You can enhance the value of video by using race imagery as part of a video session. After watching yourself make a mistake on video, “edit” the video in your mind and replay the run with race imagery, seeing and feeling yourself skiing better. After a “highlight” run on video, replay the run with race imagery to ingrain the positive image and feeling. After watching World Cup racers, take key parts of their skiing and include them in your skiing with race imagery.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “It’s a mental thing. There’s a psychological zone I have to discover to ski my best” (AJ Kitt).

POINT A TO POINT B

The start and finish of a training course are the most important parts of training. They often determine the quality of training runs. Yet, the start and finish are also the most neglected parts of training. A course can be thought of as Point A (the starting gate) to Point B (the finish line). Since the clock starts at Point A and finishes at Point B, it is essential that you learn to ski your fastest from Point A to Point B.

Racers often have weak starts or take several gates to settle into the training course and establish their rhythm before they start skiing hard. In effect, they haven’t started racing the course even though they have left the starting gate. By doing this, they are developing the habit of easing into a course, so on race day, that is what will come out. Since the race clock starts as soon as racers trip the wand, this approach is causing them to already be behind at the first gate and will be playing catch up the rest of the course.

Coaches should always have a starting gate set up for training courses and ideally a wand should be used as well. If there is no starting gate, pretend there is one. Train yourself to go 100% from the start. Have a strong start and attack the first gate with abandon. Then continue this “attacking attitude” for the remainder of the course.

Another annoying habit of many racers is to ease up a gate or two before the finish. Also, coaches often don’t even set a finish gate. This too creates a bad habit of letting up before Point B when the clock stops. This can cause you to lose focus and intensity before the training course or race is over. In fact, it is quite common for racers to make a mistake like hook a tip a few gates from the finish.

Coaches should always set a finish gate in training. Be sure you go all out and maintain the attacking attitude through the finish line. Experiment with ways of finishing the course fast, for example, skating or tucking. During training, always think in terms of Point A to Point B, going all out and not letting up from start to finish.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “I think training’s just like racing. I want to go out there and pretend it’s a race every day. That way, when I get to the race, it’s no big deal” (Eric Schlopy, former USST member, current pro racer).

RACE PRIMING

Race priming is the final stage of training that follows technical work and precedes races. This is the place in which you gear yourself up for the confidence, intensity, and focus necessary to ski your fastest in races. In order to achieve race priming, there are four rules you can follow.

First, if you have to do it in a race, you must do it in training. Whatever skills and habits you develop in training, good or bad, will come out in a race. The purpose of training is to develop effective technical, tactical, mental, and competitive skills and habits. Whatever you need to do in a race in order to ski your best must be ingrained, automatic, and comfortable from training or it will hurt your performance.

Second, consistent training leads to consistent race performance. Perhaps the most important thing that distinguishes great racers from good ones is their level of consistency in races. The great racers can go out and ski consistently fast day in and day out whereas the good racers have some good races, but also many bad ones. Learning to ski consistently fast develops from race priming in all areas of training including your thinking and emotions during training, the quality of your off-snow training, your efforts in your Mental Edge training, your training routines, and how well you maintain your equipment. The bottom line is that consistent preparation in these areas leads to consistent race performances.

Third, speed is an acquired skill. There is often such an emphasis in training on developing proper technique that the most important skill for ski racing, namely, learning to go fast, is forgotten. Speed too is a learned skill that develops with time. The only way to learn to go fast is to focus on speed in training and progressively increase speed during race priming. Speed is the last skill you must learn before race season.

Finally, you must believe in speed. To ski your fastest, you must believe in your ability to ski fast. This confidence comes from all of your preparation to this point. This belief enables you to trust in your ability to ski your best. This belief in speed comes from knowing you have put your full effort into your training, over-learned your technical and tactical skills, and practiced going fast. Real belief in speed enables you to forget technique before races, let your body do what you have trained it to do, and focus entirely on going as fast as you can.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “I wanted always to be very fast in races, but I couldn’t find the right way to transfer my training to my race” (Marc Girardelli).

WHEN TO ARRIVE AT THE START

An important part of racers’ pre-race preparation is deciding how far before their run they want to arrive at the start. You can arrive well before your run or shortly before it. There are two start arrival approaches you can use: methodical and spontaneous. Which approach you choose depends on several factors.

The methodical approach involves arriving at the start 15-30 minutes before your run. This time enables you to slowly go through your pre-race routine. It allows you to progressively prepare your equipment, then yourself physically and mentally. The methodical approach provides structure and time to complete your pre-race routine and offers a strong sense of control over your race preparation and performance. This approach is recommended if you need to keep a narrow focus on your race preparation, have a high need for structure and control, and perform best at a lower level of intensity. Marc Girardelli is a World Cup racer who prefers the methodical approach in which he must go through a thoughtful and deliberate process in his race preparation to ski his best.

The spontaneous approach consists of arriving less than ten minutes before your start and quickly going through a brief pre-race routine. The spontaneous approach allows little time to think, increases intensity, keeps your focus off the race until the last minute, and allows your body to do what it has been trained to do without interference from your mind. This approach is suggested if you get overwhelmed if you think too much about the race, need a sense of “letting it happen,” and perform best at a higher level of intensity. Picabo Street is a racer who is most comfortable with the spontaneous approach, in which she thinks little before her race and can ski her fastest relying on her emotions, energy, and instincts.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “I was too nervous before almost every race. To deal with it I came late to the start or did something to keep myself busy so I didn’t think too much.”

TRAIN LIKE YOU RACE

A question I often ask racers and coaches is, “Should you race like you train or train like you race?” I never get clear consensus. I say that it’s impossible to race like you train because there is one big difference: races matter. I believe that racers should train like they race. If they’re used to the feeling of being in a race, when they get to a race it will be no big deal.

When I say train like you race, I don’t mean skiing every run as fast as you can like a race run. There are times when racers need to work on technique or tactics and speed isn’t the focus. What I mean by train like you race is that you put in race-level focus and intensity into whatever you’re working on. Too often I see racers free skiing at 60% focus and intensity because they think it’s not real training. When they get into gates, they may up their focus and intensity to 75%.

The problem is when they get to races. If they have trained at 60-75% and they try to race at 100%, one of two things happens. Either they only race at 60-75%, and go slow, or they try to get to 100%, but since they’re not accustomed to it, they crash and burn.

The bottom line is that if you don’t train like you race, you won’t be able to ski your best in races. Training like you race offers several benefits. It increases your familiarity with race conditions. It helps you understand what you need to think, feel, and do to ski your best. It also makes your mind and body comfortable with race focus and intensity.

Be sure that every run you take, regardless of whether you’re free skiing, working on technique, or training for speed, you are totally prepared to ski your best. This includes having your equipment ready to go before you get in the gate. It also involves being completely warmed up physically. Finally, you should be at your race level of focus and intensity.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “I think training’s just like racing. I want to go out there and pretend it’s a race every day. That way, when I get to the race, it’s no big deal.” (Erik Schlopy, former USST member)

TAYLOR’S FOUR LAWS OF PRIME TRAINING

It is my belief that races are not won on the day of the race, but rather on the training days leading up to the race. Because of this, I place tremendous emphasis on importance of what I call Prime Training. Prime Training is defined as being able to consistently train at the highest level of quality throughout a training session. The ability to achieve prime training depends on whether racers can follow Taylor’s Four Laws of Prime Training.

Taylor’s First Law of Prime Training is the purpose of training is to develop effective technical, tactical, and mental skills and habits. Too often, I see racers practicing skills and habits that will hurt rather than help their skiing. For example, racers don’t maintain an effective focus that enables them learn new technical skills. Or they are totally prepared for each training run. If you want to be able to ski your best in races, you must ingrain effective skills and habits in training.

Taylor’s Second Law of Prime Training is that whatever you need to do in a race, you better do it in training first. Have you ever tried doing something new in a race because you thought it would help? Typically, it doesn’t work and you either go slow or fall. Races are not the place to try new things. What you need to do is decide what you need to do in a race and practice it in training.

Taylor’s Third Law of Prime Training is that prime training requires clear purpose, and prime focus and intensity. I often see racers without any clear idea what they are working on. So what happens is that they practice old skills and habits that slow their progress. Every run you take you should know exactly what you want to do to improve. You also need prime focus and intensity. If you’re not totally focused on skiing your best and if your body doesn’t have the intensity it needs to be strong and quick, you’re not going to ski as well as you can.

Taylor’s Fourth Law of Prime Training is that consistent training leads to consistent race performance. One of my primary goals with athletes is for them to ski at a consistently high level. But you won’t be able to race consistently if you don’t train consistently. Consistent training comes from consistently prepared equipment, consistent physical preparation, consistent motivation, consistent confidence, consistent focus, and consistent intensity.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention sincere effort, intelligent direction, and skillful execution.”

PRIME LAWS OF RACE PREPARATION

What you do in your pre-race preparation will often dictate how well you ski in the race that day. There are several simple laws you should follow to ensure that your preparation helps rather than hurts your race performances.

There are a lot of things on race day that you have little control over, for example, the weather, snow conditions, and other competitors. At the same time, there are some things that you have total control over such as your equipment and your mental and physical preparation. Yet, I often see racers giving control over these areas to other people such as coaches and tech reps. If you do this, you’re taking a chance because they might not get done. And if they don’t get done, they might hinder your race performance. Anything that impacts your preparation and performance, you should take responsibility for and be sure it gets done. Because the result sheet doesn’t have an excuse section.

Every race presents new and different things that could change your preparation, for example, weather, snow conditions, length of lifts, start times, and warm-up space. When things are not exactly as you like them, it’s easy to get rattled. When this happens, you can lose confidence, get distracted, and feel nervous. To ensure that these changes don’t negatively affect you, you should identify them as soon as you can. Once you know what they are, you can figure out how to adapt to them so instead of getting stressed out about them, you can just go with the flow.

Your pre-race routine is your connection between the hours of training you put in and the race performance. Your pre-race routine should consist of physical, technical, and mental skills and habits that you have ingrained in your training. Your pre-race routine is the foundation of the consistency of preparation that will lead to Prime Performance.

On race day, you should focus on only one thing: skiing as fast as you can. Any other thinking or preparation you do should be directed toward that single focus. Any other thoughts or distractions about technique, other racers, or results will detract from that focus. As you approach your race run, you should constantly remind yourself that your focus is speed.

Mental Edge Quote of the Day: “There’s nothing mysterious about winning. It’s a matter of executing the fundamentals.” (Baseball star, Cal Ripken, Jr.)

WHAT IS PRIME SKI RACING?
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I define Prime Ski Racing, as “performing at a consistently high level under the most challenging conditions.” There are two essential words in this definition. The first key word is, “consistently.” I’m not interested if a racer can have only one or two great races. That is not enough to be truly successful. I want racers to be able to ski at a high level day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out. Prime Ski Racing means performing at a high level with only minimal ups and downs instead of the large swings in performance that are so common among racers. The second key word is, “challenging.” What makes the great racers successful is their ability to ski their best under the worst possible conditions against tough competition when they’re not skiing their best.

Where does Prime Ski Racing come from? Though I focus on its mental contributors, the mind is only one necessary part of Prime Ski Racing. You must also be at a high level of physical health including being well-conditioned, well-rested, eating a balanced diet, and free from injury and illness. Prime Ski Racing is also not possible if you’re not technically sound. Your technical skills must be well-learned and your tactics must be ingrained.

Have you ever experienced Prime Ski Racing? Let me describe some of the common experiences of Prime Ski Racing. First, Prime Ski Racing is effortless. It’s comfortable, easy, and natural. You don’t seem to have to try to do anything. Prime Ski Racing is also automatic. There’s little thought. The body does what it knows how to do and there’s no mental interference getting in the way. You also experience sharpened senses. You see, hear, and feel everything more acutely than normal. Also, time seems to slow down, enabling you to react more quickly. I’ve heard World Cup racers say that when they are skiing well, everything seems to be moving in slow motion. Prime Ski Racing also has effortless focus. You’re totally absorbed in the experience and are focused entirely on the process. You have no distractions or unnecessary thoughts that interfere with your skiing your best. You have boundless energy. Finally, you experience what I call prime integration. Everything is working together. The physical, technical, tactical, and mental aspects of ski racing are integrated into one path to Prime Ski Racing.

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “It’s way mental. The biggest thing is the psychological aspect of believing I can go out and give it 100 percent. When I’m going for it really aggressively I ski my best. The toughest part is finding that zone.” Olympic champion Tommy Moe

THE 12 LAWS OF PRIME PREPARATION

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First Law: Races are not won on the day you race, but rather in the days, weeks, and months before the race. If you’ve put in the time and effort to develop your physical, technical, tactical, and mental abilities, you will have the skills and the belief to ski your best on race day.

Second Law: Take responsibility for everything that can impact your ski racing. These areas include all of the components of preparation. If you address every area that impacts your racing—physical, technical, tactical, and mental—you can be sure that when you get to the race, you will be totally prepared to ski your best.

Third Law: Preparation is the foundation of all physical, technical, tactical, and mental skills. Developing skills of any sort requires awareness of what you’re doing incorrectly, control to do the skills correctly; and repetition to ingrain the new skills.

Fourth Law: The purpose of training is to develop effective skills. If you practice effective skills and habits, you’ll develop skills that will help you ski your best. If you practice poor skills and habits, you’ll develop skills that will hurt your skiing.

Fifth Law: Racers should train like they race. Racing like you train is impossible for one simple reason: racing matters. Training like you race means putting as close to the same level of motivation, focus, and intensity into training as you do in a race.

Sixth Law: Prime preparation requires clear purpose, prime focus, and prime intensity. You must have a clear purpose that tells you what you’re working on. You must consistently maintain focus on your purpose. Your body must be physically capable of performing the purpose.

Seventh Law: Consistent training leads to consistent ski racing. Consistency relates to every aspects of race training including conditioning, technique, and tactics, attitude, effort, focus, intensity, emotions, sleep, and diet.

Eighth Law: Patience and persistence are essential to achieving Prime Tennis. You must the patience to allow yourself to develop and the persistence to face the setbacks and obstacles that are a part of achieving Prime Ski Racing.

Ninth Law: Failure is essential for Prime Ski Racing. There can not be success without failure. Failure shows you what is not working. It means that you are moving out of your comfort zone. Failure means you are taking risks. Failure teaches you how to deal positively with adversity.

Tenth Law: Prime Ski Racing comes from “one more thing, one more time.” When you feel you have done enough, by doing one more thing, one more time, you are doing that little bit extra that would separate you on the day of the race.

Eleventh Law: It takes 10 years and 10,000 hours to become a great ski racers. Research has found that the longer you have skied and the more hours you have trained, the better you will be.

Twelfth Law: Prime preparation is devoted to readying racers to ski their best under the most demanding conditions in the most important races of their lives. The ultimate goal of Prime Ski Racing is for you ski your best when it really matters.

Quote of the Day: “Preparation is everything to winning. It is easy to say, ‘I am going to win.’ So I don’t think about it; instead I concentrate on my training…which really determines who will make it. Then, on the day of the race…I can say with confidence, ‘I am ready.’” Olympic champion Jean-Claude Killy

MENTAL EDGE PROFILING

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One of the most difficult things about dealing with the mental side of ski racing is that its not tangible. Unlike physical conditioning where you can see yourself getting stronger by the amount of weight you’re lifting or technical training where you can see progress on video and on the clock, mental training can’t be directly seen or measured.

Mental Edge profiling helps you make your mental strengths and weaknesses more concrete. By having a better understanding of yourself mentally, you can more clearly specify the areas you need to work on. I have identified 12 mental and emotional factors that I have found to be important to ski racing success. To create your Mental Edge profile, rate yourself on a one to ten scale for each of the 12 factors listed below.

Confidence is how strongly you believe in your ability to ski your best in races (1-not at all; 10-very much). Motivation is how committed you are to your ski racing and how hard you work in your training (1-very low; 10-very high). Intensity is how well you are able to reach and maintain an ideal level of intensity in training and racing (1-poor; 10-ideal). Focus is how well you’re able to concentrate on things that help your skiing and block out distractions that hurt your skiing (1-poor; 10-prime). Imagery is how often you use mental imagery in your training and race preparation (1-never; 10-often). Understanding is how well you know what you need to work on to reach your ski racing goals (1-not at all; 10-completely). Training is how much focus and intensity you put into your training (1-0%; 10-100%). Emotions are how positive or negative you feelings are before a race (1-very negative; 10-very positive). Pressure is how well you respond to pressure situations (1-respond poorly; 10-respond well). Preparation is how physically and mentally prepared you are for races (1-not at all prepared; 10-totally prepared). Routines is how much do you use routines in your training and pre-race preparation (1-not at all; 10-a great deal). Mental skills is how much do you include mental skills into your training and race preparation (1-not at all; 10-a great deal).

Having completed the Mental Edge profile, you now have a clear description of your mental skills in ski racing. Scores below a 7 indicate areas that you need to work on. Write down the factors that you need to address, set goals related to improvement in those areas, and decide how you will develop the areas. Then consistently work on them until you have strengthened them.

Much like physical testing, take the Mental Edge profile every few months to see your progress. With some time and effort, you can develop your mental strengths and alleviate your weaknesses so you can achieve the Mental Edge.

Quote of the Day: “A winner goes through a problem; A loser tries to go around it, and never gets past it.” Pat Williams, NBA general manager

NO SUCH THING AS FREE SKIING

12-1-00

I hate the words free skiing. They are inaccurate and misleading. These words suggest that when you’re not running gates, it doesn’t matter what you do. I see this with a lot of racers. When they’re running gates, they are focused and intense, but when they’re free skiing, they’re often not doing anything to make themselves a better skier.

The fact is free skiing is anything but free. It will cost you or you will profit from it. Free skiing should be called gateless training. It is the time when most fundamental technical work is done. Only after you are able to do something technically while gateless training will you be able to do it in gates. So gateless training should have the same level of purpose, focus, intensity, and effort that you put into your gate training.

Gateless training is so important because every turn you make counts. Becoming the best ski racer you can be is about repetition. You have to make thousands upon thousands of turns before you can make a good turn. But repetition alone isn’t enough. You have to have quality repetition. If you don’t here’s what will happen. You’re going to make a run of 40 turns. Since you’re free skiing rather than gateless training, you only maintain good quality for the first 20 turns. So you made 20 good turns and 20 bad turns. Did you improve that run? Absolutely not! The 20 bad turns erased any benefit you may have gotten from the 20 good turns.

You must make sure that every turn you make is of the highest quality. Okay, so every turn may be unrealistic. But if you make 90% good turns, you’re way ahead of the game. To have quality repetition, you must have clear purpose, 100% focus and intensity, and give your best effort.

Quote of the Day: “I started to free ski more consciously, controlling all of my movements. I set imaginary gates in front of myself. I tried to feel all of the movements during free skiing.” March Girardelli

PERSPECTIVE ON COMPETITION

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Ski racing is obviously important to you. You put a great deal of effort into your ski racing participation. Because of this, you put your ego on the line every time you get in the starting gate. When you don’t ski well, you’re disappointed. This may not feel good, but it’s natural because it means you care about your ski racing.

There is, however, a point at which racers can lose perspective and their feelings toward their racing can hurt their performances. The key warning signal of this overinvolvement is “too.” When they care too much, when it is too important to them, when they try too hard to win, when they press too much in critical races, then they have lost perspective.

In this “too” situation, racers’ investment in their skiing is so great that it is no longer enjoyable. If you find yourself feeling this way, you should reevaluate what your ski racing participation means to you and how it impacts your life and your happiness. You will probably find that it plays too big a role in how you feel about yourself. When this happens, you not only ski poorly and have worse results, but you may find that ski racing is no longer fun to you.

To ski your best and to have fun, you need to keep your ski racing participation in perspective. It may be important to you, but it should not be life or death. What is important is that you have a balanced view of ski racing. Remember why you participate; it’s fun, it feels great to become a good skier, and, yes, you like to compete and win. The Prime Ski Racing view of competition means keeping your ski racing in perspective. If you have fun, work hard, enjoy the process of ski racing, and do not care too much about winning and losing, you will enjoy ski racing more, you will ski better, and you will have better results as well

Quote of the Day: “I have never made sports bigger than life. I just played and enjoyed them. My whole approach was based on what I could learn from sports.” NFL quarterback Rick Mirer

Developing Prime Motivation

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Motivation is the foundation of lies at the base of the Prime Ski Racing. Without your desire and determination to improve your ski racing, everything else is meaningless. To become the best racer you can be, you must be motivated to do what it takes to maximize your ability.

Focus on your long-term goals. To be your best, you have to put a lot of time and effort into your ski racing. But all of that time and effort is not always enjoyable. I call this the Grind, which involves having to hours upon hours of time into training, well beyond the point that it is fun and exciting. During those times, focus on your long-term goals. Remind yourself why you’re working so hard. Imagine exactly what you want to accomplish and tell yourself that the only way you’ll be able to reach your goals is to go through the Grind.

Have a training partner. It’s difficult to be highly motivated all of the time on your own. There are going to be some days when you don’t feel like getting out there. A training partner is someone who can push you through those motivational lows. The chances are on any given day that one of you will be motivated. Even if you’re not very psyched to train on a particular day, you will still put in the time and effort because your partner is counting on you.

Focus on greatest competitor. Another way to keep yourself motivated is to focus on your greatest competitor. I have racers identify who their biggest competition is and put his or her name or photo where they can see it every day. Ask yourself, “Am I working as hard as him/her?” Remember that only by working your hardest will you have a chance to overcome your greatest competitor.

Set goals. There are few things more rewarding and motivating than setting a goal, putting effort toward the goal, and achieving the goal. The sense of accomplishment and validation of the effort motivates you to strive higher. You should set clear goals of what you want to accomplish in your ski racing and how you will achieve those goals.

Daily questions. Every day, you should ask yourself two questions. When you get up in the morning, ask, “What can I do today to become the best ski racer I can be?” and before you go to sleep, ask, “Did I do everything possible today to become the best ski racer I can be?”.

The heart of motivation. Motivation is not something that can be given to you. Motivation must ultimately come from within. You must simply want to ski race. There are two things that should motivate you to race. You should compete because you have a great passion for ski racing. You should race because you just love to get out there and do it.

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “Training to win takes competitive drive.” USST member Sarah Schleper

Progression of Prime Confidence

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The ultimate goal of Prime Confidence is to develop a strong and resilient belief in your skiing ability so that you have the confidence to give your best effort, ski at your highest level, and believe you can be successful in the most important races of your life. I have identified four steps that are required to develop Prime Confidence.

Preparation breeds confidence. Preparation is the foundation of confidence. If you believe that you have done everything you can to ski your best, you will have confidence in your ability to ski well. This preparation includes the physical, technical, tactical, and mental parts of ski racing. If you have developed these areas as fully as you can, you will have faith that you will be able to use those skills gained from preparation to ski as well as you can.

Mental skills reinforce confidence. Confidence is a skill that develops with practice. A meaningful way to strengthen your confidence is to use mental skills that provide repetition of the confidence. These mental skills include goal setting to bolster motivation, positive self-talk and body language to fortify confidence, intensity control to combat anxiety, keywords to maintain focus and avoid distractions, and emotional control to stay calm under pressure.

Adversity ingrains confidence. Your biggest challenge is to maintain your belief in yourself when you’re faced with adversity. To more deeply ingrain confidence in your skiing, you should expose yourself to as much adversity as possible. Adversity can involve anything that makes you uncomfortable and takes you out of your comfort zone. Adversity can include bad weather, poor snow conditions, or a race hill on which you have never skied well.

Success validates confidence. All of the previous steps in building Prime Confidence would go for naught if you did not then ski well and have success in races. Success validates the confidence you have developed in your ability. It demonstrates that your belief in your ability is well-founded. Success further strengthens your confidence, making it more resilient in the face of adversity and poor races. Finally, success rewards your efforts to build confidence, encouraging you to continue to work hard and develop your skiing.

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “Confidence comes from laying the strong foundation to build a career on: physical conditioning, eating a well balance diet, getting plenty of rest, having the right equipment to fit your needs, and having a well thought out long range plan. Confidence comes from hard work and making sacrifices.” Former U.S. Olympic ski coach Finn Gundersen

Determining Prime Intensity

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An essential part of developing Prime Ski Racing involves identifying what is your prime intensity. Think back to several races in which you skied very well. Recall your level of intensity. Were you relaxed, energized, or really fired up? Then remember the thoughts, emotions, and physical feelings you experienced during these races. Were you positive or negative, happy or angry, relaxed or tense? Then, think back to several races in which you skied poorly. Recall your level of intensity. Remember the thoughts, emotions, and physical feelings you had in these races. If you’re like most racers, a distinct pattern will emerge. When you ski well, you have a particular level of intensity. This is your prime intensity. There are also common thoughts, emotions, and physical feelings associated with skiing well. In contrast, when you’re skiing poorly, there is a very different level of intensity, either higher or lower than your prime intensity. There are also decidedly different thoughts, emotions, and physical feelings.

Another useful way to help you understand your prime intensity is to experiment with different levels of intensity in training and see how the differing intensity impacts your skiing. Here is a good exercise you can use to learn more about your prime intensity:

Let’s say you’re going to take six training runs of slalom. Break up the training session into three segments. The first two runs will emphasize low intensity. Before you begin the run, take several slow, deep breaths, relax your muscles, and focus on calming thoughts (e.g., “Easy does it,” “Cool and calm.”). As you start the run, stay focused on keeping your body relaxed and calm.

The next two runs will focus on moderate intensity. Before the run, take a few deep, but stronger breaths, jump around a bit, and focus on more energetic thoughts (e.g., “Let’s go,” “Pick it up.”). Before the run, bounce on your skis lightly and feel your intensity picking up. During the run, pay attention to feeling the intensity and energy in your body.

The final two runs will highlight high intensity. Before the run, take several deep, forced breaths with special emphasis on a hard and aggressive exhale, start bouncing up and down on your skis immediately, and repeat intense thoughts (e.g., “Fire it up,” “Get after it.”), saying these out loud with energy and force. Feel the high level of intensity and energy as you begin the run, and focus on maintaining the intensity throughout the turn.

I encourage you to use this exercise for several days so you can see clearly how your intensity impacts your skiing. You will probably see a pattern emerge in which you ski better at one of the three levels of intensity. With this knowledge, you will have a good sense of your prime intensity and can then use that information to recognize when you’re not at prime intensity before a race and when you need to adjust your intensity to a prime level.

I should also point out that prime intensity may differ between events. The feedback I get from many racers is that the technical events usually require a higher level of intensity than the speed events. However, this view in not unanimous. You should use the two strategies I just described to determine your prime intensity for each event.

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “Every day I trained at 100 percent World Cup intensity. You have to eat, breath, sleep, and live that intensity.” USST member Chad Fleischer

Focus Styles

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One of the most important developments I’ve made in my work in recent years is in understanding the importance of identifying racers’ focus styles. A focus style is a preference for paying attention to certain cues. Racers tend to be more comfortable focusing on some cues and avoid or don’t pay attention to other cues. Every racer has a dominant style that impacts all aspects of their skiing. This dominant style will surface most noticeably when they’re under pressure. The two types of focus styles are internal and external.

Internal focus style. Racers with an internal focus style ski best when they’re totally and consistently focused on their skiing during training or a race. They need to keep their focus narrow, thinking only about their skiing. These racers tend to be easily distracted by activity in their immediate surroundings. If they broaden their focus and take their mind off their skiing, for example, if they talk about non-skiing topics with their friends before a race, they’ll become distracted and will have trouble narrowing their focus back onto their skiing.

External focus style. Racers with an external focus style ski best when they only focus on their skiing when they’re about to begin a training or race run. At all other times, they broaden their focus and take their mind off their skiing. These racers have a tendency to think too much and become negative and critical. This overly narrow focus causes them to lose confidence and get nervous. For these racers, it’s essential that they take their focus away from their skiing when they’re not training or racing.

External focus style runs counter to beliefs held by many coaches. They think that if racers are not totally focused on their skiing, then they’re not serious about it and they won’t ski their best. Yet, for racers with an external focus style, they don’t want to think too much or be too serious because this causes them to be negative and critical. They’ll ski their best when they’re not thinking too much about their skiing and they simply allow their natural abilities to emerge on their own.

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “I am aware of what’s going on around me, but I’m not paying attention, because I don’t care what anyone else is doing.” Olympic champion Picabo Street

Emotional Threat vs. Emotional Challenge

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In recent years, I have found that a simple distinction appears to lie at the heart of the emotional reactions racers have to their skiing: threat vs. challenge. At the heart of emotional threat is the perception that winning is all-important and failure is unacceptable. Emotional threat is most often associated with too great an emphasis on winning, results, and rankings. Pressure to win from parents, coaches, and racers themselves is also common. With these beliefs, it is easy to see why competing in ski racing would be emotionally threatening.

Emotional threat manifests itself in a negative “emotional chain” in which each link separately and cumulatively makes racers feel badly and hurts their skiing. The most common reaction to a threat is the desire to avoid the threat. There is often a loss of motivation to ski and compete, especially when the threat of losing is immediate, for example, when a racer is behind after the first run, (think of giving up as a major loss of motivation). Emotional threat also suggests to racers that they’re incapable of overcoming the situation that is causing the threat, so their confidence is hurt and racers are overwhelmed with negative and defeatist thoughts. The threat produces strong negative emotions such as fear, anger, frustration, depression, despair, and helplessness.

The emotional threat also causes anxiety and all of the negative physical symptoms associated with anxiety. The previous links in the emotional chain make it nearly impossible to focus effectively because there are so many negative things pulling racers’ focus away from a useful process focus. All of the previous links in the chain ultimately result in very poor skiing and little enjoyment in ski racing.

In contrast, emotional challenge is associated with racers enjoying the process of ski racing regardless of whether they win or lose. The emphasis is on having fun and seeing racing as exciting and enriching. Ski racing, when seen as an emotional challenge, is an experience that is relished and sought out at every opportunity. Thus, emotional challenge is highly motivating, to the point where racers love competing in big races.

Emotional challenge communicates to racers that they have the ability to meet the demands of ski racing, so they’re confident and filled with positive thoughts. Emotional challenge generates many positive emotions such as excitement, joy, and satisfaction. It also stimulates racers’ bodies to achieve prime intensity, where their bodies are relaxed, energized, and physically capable of performing their best. Racers also have the ability to attain prime focus, in which they’re totally focused on what enables them to ski their best. All of these links in the emotional challenge chain lead racers to Prime Ski Racing and great enjoyment in their ski racing.

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “I can maintain a level head when I make huge mistakes. I don’t get down on myself between turns or when something goes wrong, or in a larger sense between runs or races.” USST member Bode Miller

Prime Ski Racing Training

3-2-01

Too often, I see racers begin training without any clear idea of what they’re working on to improve. When this happens, racers are not only not improving, they’re also making it more difficult to improve because they’re ingraining old and ineffective skills, which makes it harder to learn new skills. You should follow these rules to get the most out of your training.

Goal and purpose. You need to always train with a goal and a purpose. A goal is some aspect of your ski racing that you want to improve—physical, technical, tactical, or mental. A purpose is something specific you work on in training to enable you to achieve your goal. For example, if a racer’s goal is to maintain a lower tuck on the flats, his purpose would be to lower his hips and feel his chest against his thighs.

100% focus and intensity. Most racers need to work on their focus and intensity in training. Racers should train at a level of focus and intensity that will allow them to ski their best in races. Too often I see racers training around 70-80%. When they get to a race, they want to ski at 100%, but since they haven’t trained at that level, their skiing actually gets worse rather than better.

One more thing, one more time. One of the greatest lessons I have learned from world-class racers came from 1972 Olympic downhill gold medallist Bernhard Russi. He told me a simple rule that he found enabled him to elevate himself above the other great racers of his time: One more thing, one more time. He assumed that all of his competitors were working hard. So, every time he came to the end of a workout, he said to himself, “One more thing, one more time.” He would then do one more sprint or one more set of weights or take one more training run.

Get out of your comfort zone. To become your best, you must move out of your comfort zone. This means making changes to your skiing that will enable you to ski faster in the future. The risk of moving out of your comfort zone is that you’ll make some mistakes at first and might ski poorly for a while. But as you do it more, you’ll become more skilled and familiar with it, and before you know it, you’ll have raised your comfort zone and your skiing to a new level.

Never give up. There’s a tendency among many racers to give up in training when they’re not skiing well. They rationalize giving up by saying that training doesn’t really count for anything. But if you give up in training, you’ll give up in races.

Never giving up is so important because something rather important happens every time you give up: You automatically lose. If you keep fighting, you may not win, but at least you have a chance. You want to ingrain never giving up no matter what happens during training or a race.

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “It’s doing more than everyone else. It’s finding your own way to make your body tough, and fit. It’s the extra two reps in the weight room. It’s an extra interval.” Sarah Schleper

Ensuring a Prime Race Start

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One of the first lessons that emerged from my work with World Cup racers was that they could not afford to work their way into a race run. Many racers I have seen believe that they can take the first few gates to settle into their race run. But these racers seem to forget that the clock starts when they leave the starting gate. If racers are not going for it from the moment they trip the wand, they are falling behind and having to play catch up the rest of the run. In ski racing, where races are won and lost by hundredths of a second, racers can warm up on the race course.

Having a prime start depends on being totally prepared to ski your best from the very start of the race. Your ability to experience a prime start is based on whether you’re physically and mentally ready to ski your best from the moment you leave the starting gate.

At the heart of this readiness is your pre-race routine. It should ensure that you are completely ready to ski best from the start of your race run. You must have a good physical warm-up, which should include everything necessary to ensure total physical readiness. Common physical warm-up activities in ski racing include a short run, jumping rope, stretching, and agility drills.

The next step should be your skiing warm-up that is organized and comprehensive, and include both free skiing and training course warm-up. Your skiing warm-up should begin relaxed and comfortable, allowing your body to warm up, and then increase in energy and effort to race focus and intensity.

The final step of the prime start warm-up is mental. You should check and adjust your focus and intensity. You can also preview your race run using mental imagery. With a prime start, you can ski to your fullest ability and ensure that you will be competitive from the moment you kick the wand.

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “My best races this year have consisted of a good mental warm-up.” Sarah Schleper

Next Season Starts…NOW!

4-6-01

The race season is finally over. It’s time to hang up your skis, pack away your gear, kick back, and relax, right? WRONG!!! Being the best ski racer you can be is not a part-time activity. It requires a year-round commitment and consistent effort in your physical, technical, tactical, and, yes, mental training. If you’re a ski racer serious about achieving your competitive goals, the end of the race season simply means it’s time to start your preparations for next season. After a short period of rest and relaxation, you need to begin your planning and your training that will get you ready to continue your progress next winter.

Evaluate last season. The first thing you want to do is to look back on the recently completed race season and evaluate how you did. Did you improve during the course of the season? Are you physically stronger than last year? Are you technically better? Did you achieve the results you wanted? Did your rankings go up?

With these questions answered, you can then decide what in your training worked and what did not. You can use this information to adjust your off-season training program to build on your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

It’s about preparation. How you do ski next year depends on what you do this summer and fall. The foundation of conditioning and skills you develop in the off-season will determine how much you improve and whether you reach your goals next winter. There are three areas in which you must focus to maximize your preparation.

First, you must commit to an intensive physical conditioning program. Ski racing has become a sport of strength, power, agility, and quickness. The only way to develop these areas is with an organized fitness program that may involve weight training, plyometrics, speed work, some endurance training, and stretching.

Second, most racers spend at least part of the summer and fall on-snow. Without the pressure of racing, summer and fall skiing allows you to take the time to make significant technical and tactical changes in your skiing. It also enables you to test and adapt to new equipment.

Finally, the off-season is the best time to engage in mental training. Just like physical conditioning and technical skills, mental aspects of ski racing take time and effort to develop. An organized program of mental training can have huge benefits when you enter the race season.

Goal setting. To help you figure out how to work on all of these areas, you should write down your goals for next season. The first goal you should set is your long-term goal, that is, what you want to accomplish next year in terms of results, rankings, etc. Then, using the information you gained from your evaluation of last year, you can set specific goals for your conditioning, technical development, and mental training to achieve those goals. These goals should be specific (e.g., amount of weight lifted, frequency of workouts) and structured into a weekly training plan. The idea is that every day when you get up, you know exactly what need to do that day to achieve your goals.

Mental skills. There are several essential mental skills that you can work on in the off-season that will enable you to be as conditioned mentally as you are physically next winter. The first area is motivation. Your ability to commit to the goals that you set will depend on your level of motivation. If you have trouble motivating yourself, there are several things you can do. Having an organized weekly training program will help you build your training into your daily activities. Also, having a training partner to work out with increases commitment because someone else is counting on you.

Second, a major purpose of off-season training is to build confidence. If you are working hard and improving during the summer and fall, when the winter begins, you will know that you will have the confidence that you have done everything possible to ski your best. Also, maintaining a positive attitude and practicing positive self-talk can increase confidence.

Mental imagery is perhaps the most powerful tool you can use in your mental training during the off-season. Mental imagery, which involves regularly imagining yourself in different race situations, is like weight training for the mind. It can develop all of the different mental areas that impact your training and racing. Mental imagery increases motivation because you see yourself skiing well and reaching your goals. It builds confidence because you are seeing yourself succeed and ingraining the image and feeling of skiing your best. You improve your intensity and focus because you are creating actual race scenarios that require that you get your body psyched up and your mind focused. Finally, mental imagery instills positive emotions about your ski racing because, with each positive image, you are also generating positive emotions that make you feel good about your ski racing.

Mental imagery can also help your technical and tactical development. As you imagine yourself racing, you can incorporate improvements into your skiing that will make your skiing better even though you are not actually on-snow. Considerable research has shown that if you combine physical and mental practice, you will improve more than just by physical practice alone.

How important is your skiing to you? How badly do you want it? The key to your success next winter starts now! If you commit to an intensive off-season physical, skiing, and mental training program, when you get in the starting gate of your first race next winter, you will know that you have done everything in your power to prepare yourself to ski your best. And the chances are, you will be successful and reach your goals.

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “Life isn’t easy and the important things take hard work. I learned that to accomplish my goals, I have to look at what it will take to get there, the steps along the way. If I take those steps, the desired outcome will follow.” Hilary Lindh

qUALITIES OF A PRIME SKI RACING COMPETITOR

10-19-01

Looking back at the great ski racers over the years from Jean-Claude Killy and Nancy Greene to Gustavo Thoeni and Annemarie Proell to Herman Maier and Deborah Campagnoni, you see in them common qualities that made them Prime Ski Racing competitors. Each had unique abilities, styles, and personalities, but all shared several essential characteristics.

At the heart of all Prime Ski Racing competitors is an unwavering determination to be the best. They are driven to get better and better. They have a great passion for hard work. They spend hours training every day to improve their skiing. They love the grind and repetition of training and they are willing to suffer to succeed. Most basically, their love of ski racing precedes their love of competing and winning.

Prime Ski Racing competitors have a deep and enduring belief in themselves. They have the confidence to take risks, to do seemingly impossible things, and to never give up no matter what. This belief enables them to be inspired rather than discouraged by defeat and allows them to keep faith in their ability even when they are not skiing their best. Difficult conditions and tough competition are exciting challenges and opportunities to showcase their skills.

Prime Ski Racing competitors are able to raise their performances when they need to in order to win. They seem to seek out and thrive on pressure of the “big race” like the World Championships. They have the ability to stay calm and focused with an Olympic gold medal on the line. Most fundamentally, Prime Ski Racing competitors ski their best in the most important races of their lives.

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “The most important thing is to be convinced of your chances.” (Alberto Tomba)

SUCCESS AND FAILURE ARE NECESSARY
FOR PRIME SKI RACING

12-7-01
Defining Success and Failure
How you define success and failure, and your perceptions of the roles that winning and losing play in developing Prime Ski Racing, will determine your ability to ski your best consistently. Too often, success and failure are defined narrowly with only one winner and many losers. The racer who wins the race is the winner and everyone else is a loser. But how many times have you skied well, yet lost. The fact is you can’t usually control whether you win or lose. What you can control is the effort you put in and how well you ski. It’s fruitless to strive for something that’s out of your control, so winning and losing should be defined in terms of things over which you have control. With this in mind, I define success as giving your best effort, performing to the best of your ability, and achieving your goals. I define failure as not trying your hardest, not performing as well as you can, and not reaching your goals. The nice thing about these definitions is that they’re within your control, you’ll feel less pressure, you’ll ski better, and as a result, you will probably win more.

Myth and Reality of Winning and Losing

There are many myths and misconceptions that racers hold about winning and losing. Many racers believe that the only way to win is to have always won; that winners rarely lose and losers always lose. The reality is that winners lose more often than losers. Losers lose a few times and quit. Winners lose at first, learn from the losses, then begin to win because of what they’ve learned.

Both winning and losing are essential to becoming a consistent winner. Winning builds confidence and reinforces your belief that you can ski well and at a high level. There are, however, problems with winning too much and too early. Winning can breed complacency because, if you win all of the time, there’s little motivation to improve. Sooner or later though, as you move up the competitive ladder, you’ll come up against someone who is just as good or better than you, and since you haven’t improved your skiing, you won’t be successful against them. Winning also doesn’t identify areas in need of improvement. If you always win, your weaknesses won’t become apparent and you won’t see the need to work on your skiing . Winning also doesn’t teach you how to constructively handle the inevitable obstacles and setbacks of ski racing. You will be so accustomed to winning that when you finally do lose, it will be a shock to you.

There are also benefits to losing that will ultimately enable you to win more. Losing provides you with information about your progress. It shows you what you’re doing well and, more importantly, what you need to improve on. Losing also shows you what doesn’t work, which helps you identify what works best. Losing teaches you how to positively handle adversity.

Rather than becoming discouraged by losing, you should focus on how it will help you become a better ski racer. If you learn the valuable lessons from both winning and losing, you’ll gain the perspective toward ski racing that will allow you to achieve Prime Ski Racing.

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “Michael Jordan told me once that you have to learn how to fail before you can learn to succeed.” Shaquille O’Neal

MEET THE CONFIDENCE CHALLENGE

12-14-01

The real test of confidence is how you respond when things are not going your way. I call this the Confidence Challenge. It’s easy to stay confident when you’re skiing well, when the conditions are ideal, and when you’re competing against a weak field. But an inevitable part of ski racing is that you’ll have some down periods. What separates the best from the rest is that the best racers are able to maintain their confidence when they’re not skiing their best. By staying confident, they continue to work hard rather than give up because they know that, in time, their skiing will come around. They also know that even when they aren’t at their best, they can still be competitive.

Most racers when they ski poorly lose their confidence and get caught in the vicious cycle of low confidence and poor performance. Once they slip into that downward spiral, they rarely can get out of it. In contrast, racers with prime confidence maintain their confidence and seek out ways to return to their previous level. All racers will go through periods where they don’t ski well. The skill is not getting caught in the vicious cycle and being able to get out of the down periods quickly.

The Confidence Challenge can be thought of as a Prime Ski Racing skill that can be developed. Learning to respond positively to the Confidence Challenge comes from exposing yourself to demanding situations, difficult conditions, and tough competition in training and races and practicing positive responses.

There are several key aspects of mastering the Confidence Challenge. First, you need to develop the attitude that demanding situations are challenges to be sought out rather than threats to be avoided. When you’re faced with a Confidence Challenge you must see it as an opportunity to become a better ski racer. You also need to believe that experiencing challenges is a necessary part of becoming the best ski racer you can be. You have to realize that, at first, these challenges are going to be uncomfortable because they are difficult and unfamiliar. As you expose yourself to more challenges, they will become less threatening and more comfortable.

With this perspective, you should seek out every possible challenge in training and races. Be sure you’re well-prepared to meet the challenges. You can’t master the Confidence Challenge if you don’t have the preparation and skills to do so. Stay positive and motivated in the face of the difficulties. Don’t allow yourself to be sucked into the vicious cycle. Then, focus on what you need to do to overcome the challenge rather than on how difficult it may be or how you may fail. Also, accept that you’ll make mistakes and may not fully succeed when faced with a challenge for the first time. Don’t take this as a failure, but rather as an experience you can learn from to improve next time. Finally, and most importantly, never, ever give up!

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “I have no secret. I just feel very confident, and that allows me to take all the risks I want and to push all the way down the hill.” Michael Von Greunigen

Mind Over Matter:

Incorporating Mental Skills Training into Your Race Program

10-18-02

No ski coach in America would deny the importance of mental preparation to ski racing success. Whether for an aspiring JIV, a top junior, or an established USST star, there is almost unanimous agreement that the mind plays an essential role in racers’ efforts to achieve their goals. Yet, despite this consensus, little formal mental training occurs in junior race programs.

Given its well-accepted importance, the question is: What keeps programs from incorporating mental training into their athlete development? The answer I have found is that, most often, coaches have so many other responsibilities—physical conditioning, technique and tactics, and program administration, and race schedule planning—that mental training simply slips through the cracks.

The only viable solution to this dilemma is to make it easy for you to integrate mental training into your normal training program. This article shows you the few essential mental areas that you should emphasize, what simple and practical techniques you can teach your racers, and how to incorporate mental skills into your athlete development programs without undue time and energy.

Prime Ski Racing

Before you can teach young racers mental skills, you have to give them a goal to aim for. That goal is Prime Ski Racing: “performing at a consistently high level under the most challenging conditions.” There are two essential words in this definition. The first keyword is, “consistently.” I want racers to be able to ski at a high level day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out. The second key word is, “challenging.” What makes the great racers great is their ability to ski their best in the worst possible conditions against tough competition in the most important race of their lives.

Prime Ski Racing Pyramid

There are five mental factors that will lead to Prime Ski Racing: motivation, confidence, intensity, focus, and emotions. To develop these areas, you can choose a few basic techniques and then insert them into your training schedule so that they simply become part of what your racers do. This is essential because if you don’t make it a part of your team’s usual and expected routine—like the mandatory two warm-up runs before the kids get into the gates—mental training will go by the wayside within a few weeks.

Motivation

Motivation is perhaps the most difficult mental area to develop because motivation can not be given to racers, but rather they must find the reasons they want ski race. There are several strategies you can use to help racers find their motivation. First, at the start of the season, ask your athletes why they race. Is it because ski racing is fun, they like the competition, they like being with friends, they like improving, they want to make the U.S. Ski Team, or their parents are forcing them to? Understanding why they race will help them stay motivated throughout the season especially when their results may not be what they want. This discussion will also help you give them what they need to stay motivated, for example, if they ski race to be with their friends, make sure they are in the same training group and don’t emphasize technique or results.

Setting goals, working toward them, and then achieving them is one of the great sources of satisfaction and motivation for young athletes. At the start of the season, have your racers complete write down their goals for training, races, and the season that tell you what they hope to achieve this year. As the season progresses, remind them why they should continue to work hard.

Confidence

Confidence is the most important mental factor because it affects racing performance directly —if racers don’t believe they can ski fast and finish, they won’t go all out—and it also influences every other mental area; athletes without confidence are unmotivated, nervous, unfocused, and frustrated.

The foundation of confidence comes from good preparation. Your goal should be for athletes to get in the starting gate of a race and be able to say, “I am totally prepared to have my best race.” Remind racers of the work they are putting in and the progress they are making. Preparation builds confidence without racers even knowing it.

Exposing your athletes to adversity is another great way to build confidence without them realizing it. Challenging your racers with bad weather, difficult snow conditions, and tough courses and helping them to respond positively to the adversity instills in racers the belief that they can handle anything that is thrown at them on race day.

Self-talk is the most powerful tool racers have to build their confidence. Help your athletes become aware of their negative talk and teach them to be more positive. Make negative talk about themselves (“I suck!”) or others (“You suck!”) against the rules. Force them say something positive (“I can do it better next run”) even if they don’t believe it at first. Make being positive a fun and cool thing for the racers to practice.

Intensity

All of the mental skills in the world won’t work if racers aren’t physiologically prepared to ski their best. This means helping them to achieve “prime intensity.” Ask your racers if they race best really relaxed, somewhat energized, or really wired. If they don’t know, have them experiment and find out what works best for them. Then have them either psych up (e.g., jump around, listen to high-energy music,) or psych down (deep breathing, listen to relaxing music, do muscle relaxation exercises) before every training run. Practicing prime intensity in training helps them ingrain it so they can reach prime intensity at races.

Focus

The ability to stay focused is essential for racers to ski fast and consistently. Using keywords and mental imagery during their training runs can help athletes achieve “prime focus.” After you have given your athletes some instruction, have them come up with a keyword that they can say to themselves repeatedly when they’re free skiing or in gates that will help them stay focused on what they are working on. Racers can use mental imagery on the lift and just before a training run—seeing and feeling themselves ski their best—to narrow their focus, remind them what they want to work on, and give them a positive image of good skiing.

Emotions

The emotions that racers experience before races will often determine how they ski. If they are excited and happy, they will likely ski well. If they are fearful, frustrated, or feeling despair, their race will not go well. There are no specific mental training techniques to improve emotions. You can help your athletes develop “emotional mastery” by teaching them to recognize what emotions they are feeling, what is causing the emotions, and then look for solutions to resolve the cause of the emotions. You should use opportunities in which your racers are feeling bad to teach them how they can change their emotions so they can feel good and ski better.

In general, you should look for situations in which you can teach your athletes lessons about how the mind influences performance (and life) and how they can use their mind to work for them rather than against them. These lessons will not only help them achieve their ski racing goals, they will also help them in all areas of their lives.

POSITIVE PARENTING

Expectations: Weapons or Tools

11-15-02

One of the most common questions I am asked by parents is: “Should I set expectations for my child?” My answer is a resounding—though qualified—“Yes!” Expectations can be a powerful tool you use to help your child become successful and happy. Or expectations can bee a destructive weapon that can cause you child to fail and be unhappy. Which impact expectations has on your child depends on how you use them.

An unfortunate mistake that many parents make is to set expectations that make achieving those standards less likely. An ability expectation is one in which a child is expected to achieve a particular result based on his or her natural ability—“We expect you to win because you’re gifted.” If children fail to meet ability expectations, they’re forced to attribute their failure to a lack of ability—they weren’t skilled or smart enough. This type of attribution is harmful because ability is not within children’s control; they may come to believe that they are incapable of being successful.

An outcome expectation is one in which parents expect their child to produce a certain outcome—“W expect you to be the podium.” Our society places great emphasis on competition and winning. Moreover, outcome expectations are often based on how children compare to their peers—“You are a much better skier than your friend Eddie. You should definitely beat him.” Yet children may do their best, but still fail to perform up to the level of their peers and fail to meet their parents’ outcome expectations. This is particularly unfair because children develop at different rates; a child who is less successful at age ten may surpass his peers at age 14.

Healthy expectations hold your child to high standards that will encourage his or her growth as athletes and people. Your challenge is to set expectations that will help your child achieve his or her goals, internalize essential values, and develop beliefs and attitudes that will foster his or her growth as a successful and happy person.

The first step in ensuring that you convey healthy expectations to be sensitive to your own expectations and what expectations you communicate to your child. What ambitions do you have for your child? Are your expectations realistic? Are you setting our child up for success or failure? Do your expectations contribute to your child’s health, happiness, and success?

You should ensure that you only set expectations over which your child has control. Effort expectations emphasize how much determination, hard work, and persistence you expect your child to put into his or her achievement activities—“We expect you to always try your hardest and do your best.” If your child meets these reasonable expectations, he or she will learn the essential relationship between effort and outcome. If your child doesn’t meet your effort expectations, he or she learns the downside of this relationship, but the lesson is still learned. Your child may be disappointed, but he or she knows what needs to be done to meet those expectations next time—work harder.

Many parents don’t realize that outcome expectations often keep children from being successful. Concentrating on the results of children’s efforts prevents them from paying attention to what they need to do to meet those expectations, namely, work hard, stay focused, improve their skills, be prepared, and be patient and persistent. If children meet these effort expectations, they will be as successful as they are capable of.

Ultimately, meeting expectations should be a choice that your child makes about his or her behavior and achievement. Your child can choose to meet realistic expectations and reap the internal and external rewards of success, or he or she can choose not to meet the expectations and accept the consequences of parental disapproval, low achievement, and dissatisfaction. Considering expectations as choices places more of the onus for meeting the expectations on your child rather than his or her feeling forced to accept the expectations. The responsibility for meeting the expectations is his or her own, and this sense of ownership motivates your child to meet the expectations. Expectations as choices also give your child control over how he or she responds to the expectations, further fostering the essential perception that he or she alone has the power to be successful.

POSITIVE PARENTING

Strive for Excellence, Not Perfection

11-29-02

Perfectionism is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, perfectionists can be very successful people who are driven maniacally to achieve. On the other hand, perfectionists often crumble under the weight of striving for perfection and find neither success nor happiness. Children who are raised to become perfectionists come to believe that nothing short of perfection is good enough for their parents, so they must be perfect or they won’t be worthy of love. Dr. David Burns describes perfectionists as people “whose standards are high beyond reach or reason…who strain compulsively and unremittingly toward impossible goals and who measure their worth entirely in terms of productivity and accomplishment.”

Perfectionists set unrealistic expectations, have little tolerance for mistakes, are never satisfied with the fruits of their efforts, and show little enjoyment in their achievements. They often lack confidence in their capabilities and are highly critical of themselves. Perfectionism has been found to be associated with a variety of psychological problems including eating disorders, substance abuse, fear of failure, performance anxiety, and depression.

Children usually learn their perfectionism from their parents. Parents who are perfectionists abhor failure and show great distress when they are unable to live up to their own impossible standards. They communicate the importance of being perfect in many ways. Parents who raise perfectionistic children set unrealistically high goals and are excessively critical of their children. They rarely reward good results and often punish what they see as poor performances. Children see the perfectionistic messages of their parents, internalize them, and their parents’ perfectionism become their own.

Perfectionistic children are fundamentally unhappy because they strive toward goals they can never achieve, and that failure tells them that they are not worthy of being loved by their parents, themselves, or by anyone else. Imagine what life must be like for children who are perfectionists, living in a constant state of fear of feeling worthless and unloved. Every morning waking up and needing to prove to themselves and to the world that they are deserving of love and respect. Every success is only the briefest respite from the fear of not being loved. Every failure is painful confirmation of their worthlessness.

Excellence is the antidote to perfectionism. I define excellence as being successful most of the time. Whereas perfection is unattainable and, consequently, a fruitless pursuit, excellence is an achievable and worthwhile goal toward which you should encourage your child to strive. Children who strive for excellence will achieve a high degree of success and they will find happiness in their efforts.

Striving for excellence takes the best that perfectionism has to offer and removes its harmful aspects. Excellence still demands that children set high expectations. It still encourages them to give their best effort and to do the very best job they can. However, excellence lightens the burden of having to avoid mistakes and failure because they are seen as necessary parts of striving for success. It removes the fear of failure because children know that their parents will love them no matter how they perform. And excellence allows children to enjoy their achievement efforts, even if they aren’t successful all of the time.

Striving for excellence has several essential benefits. Excellence is an goal that any child can achieve. With hard work alone, your child can attain some level of excellence. Excellence also allows for mistakes and failure. Your child doesn’t have to be perfect—what a relief!. It’s not only okay to fail, but also encouraged because failure offers valuable lessons that will help him or her to become successful—patience, perseverance, responding positively to adversity. A child who strives for excellence can be satisfied with a 10th place in a race if she skied her best. She can slide low on a gate and still be happy with her run. Your child can even have bad runs periodically and find some gratification in having given her best effort.

Perfection is a huge burden on a child’s shoulders. As author Shirley Gould suggests: “If you don’t expect your offspring to be perfect, you encourage them to accept themselves as they are, freeing them to function in productive ways.” Striving for excellence lifts the burden of perfection from children. Striving for excellence relieves the need for children to achieve the impossible so they can achieve the highly probable.

POSITIVE PARENTING

Overscheduling Your Child and Your Family

12-06-02

A ubiquitous—and unfortunate—phenomenon that has emerged in the last ten years is the overscheduling of a child’s life. Today’s ski racing children are not only racing, but also taking piano lessons, playing soccer, and acting in their school play, in addition to having their normal school and family responsibilities. These overly ambitious lives do more harm than good not only to children, but also to the entire family. The children are overloaded with work, feel stressed by the time constraints, and have little time for free play, creativity, and just being a kid. This overplanned life interferes with rather than fosters their achievement and happiness. With so much to do, children have limited time to devote to or focus on any one or two activities to find out whether they actually enjoy it enough to want to explore it further.

Parents are similarly overloaded trying to organize the schedules of one or more children, experience even greater stress trying to juggle all of these demands and to “keep up with the Jones,’” and have little free time to spend with their families and even less time for themselves and their spouses. They also put themselves under so much stress trying to live up to society’s image of “good parents” that they lose sight of what really makes parents good.

One family I know has three kids. The mother was a world-class performing artist and the father was an elite athlete. They both have successful careers. Both parents are high achievers who want their children to adopt similar values. Here is the breakdown of their children’s activities. Eldest child: tennis and piano. Middle child: basketball, soccer, baseball, and guitar. Youngest child: cross-country running, baseball, and tennis. All of the children attend two sleep-away summer camps. The mother says that it is most difficult for her and her husband because they have to manage both family and careers—“This is what makes parents crazy,” she says.

Though I can’t give you definitive guidelines for how much of your child’s life should be scheduled and how much should be unstructured, I can offer a few reasonable suggestions. Your child shouldn’t be involved in more than two achievement activities at one time. He or she should participate in only one achievement activity each day. Scheduling shouldn’t interfere with your child’s getting a good night’s sleep or eating three healthy meals—fast-food dinners in the car going from one activity to another doesn’t count as a healthy meal. Your family should be able to sit down and eat dinner together more times than not each week. Your child should be able to finish his or her homework well before bedtime and get to bed at a reasonable hour. Your child should have time at least several days a week to play outside during the day and inside in the evenings. At least several times a week your family should have “hangout” time during which you do something—or nothing—together. Your family should share an activity at least twice a month, such as going for a day hike, visiting a museum, or attending a dance concert. You should have time to read a newspaper or a book, watch something you enjoy on television, or share a relaxed, non-child-related conversation with your spouse most evenings each week. At least half of each month’s weekends during some parts of the year should be open and unplanned.

These are very general guidelines. The motivation of your child, your values, and the demands of the activities in which your child is involved will all cause these guidelines to need to be modified at times. For example, ski racing is a very time-intensive sport, requiring winter-long commitment to a race program, often long drives to get to your home ski area and even longer drives to get to races, in addition to many hours of training on and off the hill. The great thing about ski racing, however, is that while your child is training, you can go have fun skiing yourself—imagine the tennis, golf, or chess parents who just sit around all day! Also, ski racing is seasonal so when the snow melts, life can become more normal (at least until summer training camps start). Ultimately, you are the best judge of how much is too much. I believe that you know when enough is enough, but you may be reluctant to assert yourself because you’re afraid you will be viewed as a “bad parent”—in reality, the Jones’ will be jealous of you.

POSITIVE PARENTING

Parent and Child Responsibilities in Ski Racing

12-13-02

For your child to have a great ski racing experience—which, for me, means developing essential life skills, achieving his or her goals, and having fun—both you and your child must understand and fulfill your respective responsibilities. Taylor’s Law of Family Responsibilities states that if family members fulfill their own responsibilities and do not assume others’, then children develop into healthy, mature, and successful people, and everyone is happy. However, problems arise when parents take on the responsibilities of their children and their children are not allowed to assume their own responsibilities. This usurping of responsibilities results in parents taking ownership of their children’s ski racing.

Your Responsibilities

Your responsibilities revolve primarily around providing your child with the opportunity, means, and support to pursue his or her ski racing goals. The practical means include ensuring that your child has the necessary equipment, proper coaching, and transportation, among other logistical concerns. The psychological and emotional means include providing love, guidance, encouragement, and perspective in his or her efforts.

Your Child’s Responsibilities

Your child’s responsibilities relate to doing what is necessary to maximize the opportunities that you give him or her. These responsibilities include being motivated, giving his or her best effort, being responsible and disciplined, listening to coaches, and staying committed. Other practical responsibilities include participating in all training programs, getting the most out of coaching, being cooperative, and expressing appreciation for others’ efforts.

Taking on Your Child’s Responsibilities

Problems arise when parents take on the responsibilities of their children. If you are assuming your child’s responsibilities, you are communicating that you don’t think they are competent enough to adequately fulfill their own responsibilities. Your child may internalize the belief that he or she is not trustworthy or competent. For many children, it also opens the door to avoiding their responsibilities: “Heck, why should I do it if my parents will do it for me?”

A practical way for you check whether you are taking on your child’s responsibilities is to ask yourself whether you “micromanage” his or her life. It is a fundamental responsibility for you to manage your child’s life by instilling important values, providing guidance and direction, setting appropriate boundaries, and attaching consequences to his behavior. However, micromanaging means getting involved in areas of your child’s life that are not your responsibility. As a general rule, any action on your part that interferes with your child’s ownership of his ski racing, his sense of control over his participation, his learning the connection between effort and outcome, and his being held accountable for his actions can be considered micromanagement. For example, if you find yourself working on your child’s equipment and packing his or her bags, you are micromanaging.

Teach Responsibility

The best way to ensure that you and your child assume the appropriate responsibilities is for each of you to know what your responsibilities are. When your child begins a new race season, you should sit down with him or her and outline each of your responsibilities.

Make a list of what you as a parent will be doing to help your child succeed—pay the bills, make sure they have the necessary equipment, get them to training and races, show interest in their efforts. Ask your child about what he or she believes you can do to help. Encourage your child to tell you about a particular responsibility should not be yours.

Next, make a list of what your child’s responsibilities should be. Before you share your thoughts with your child, ask him or her. If you feel your child has missed some important responsibilities, suggest them. Then, identify other individuals who will have responsibilities in your child’s ski racing, such as a coach. List what responsibilities they should have.

There should also be consequences for not fulfilling responsibilities. Ideally, there should be consequences for both your child and you, but it is probably unrealistic for your child to “punish” you in some way (though there are certainly some parents who could use a “time-out”). The best consequences are those that remove something of importance to your child and give him or her the control to get it back by acting appropriately.

Knowing your respective responsibilities provides absolute clarity to both you and your child about what your “jobs” are. It also allows for no confusion at a later point when either of you step over the line and assume the other’s responsibilities or neglects your own.

Maximize Your Race Imagery

Jim Taylor, Ph.D.

11-13-03

Race imagery is perhaps the most powerful mental skill you can develop to help you achieve Prime Ski Racing. There are four factors that will impact the quality of your race imagery: perspective, control, multiple sense, and speed. You can develop each of these areas so you can get the most out of your race imagery.

Imagery perspective. Imagery perspective refers to where the “imagery camera” is when you do race imagery. The internal perspective involves seeing yourself from inside your body looking out, as if you were actually skiing. The imagery camera is inside your head looking out through your eyes. The external perspective involves seeing yourself from outside your body like on video. The imagery camera follows your skiing from the outside. Research indicates that one perspective is not better than the other. Most people have a dominant perspective with which they’re most comfortable. You should use the perspective that’s most natural for you and then experiment with the other perspective to see if it helps you in a different way.

Control. Have you ever been doing race imagery and you keep making mistakes, for example, you keep falling in your imagery? This problem relates to imagery control, which is how well you’re able to imagine what you want to imagine. It’s not uncommon for racers to ski poorly in their imagery. If mistakes occur in your imagery, you shouldn’t just let them go by. If you do, you’ll ingrain the negative image and feeling which will hurt your skiing. Instead, when you ski poorly in your imagery, immediately rewind the “imagery video” and edit it and rerun the imagery video until you do it correctly.

Multiple senses. Good race imagery is more than just visual. The best imagery involves the multi-sensory reproduction of the actual skiing experience. You should duplicate the sights, sounds, physical sensations, thoughts, and emotions that you would experience at an actual race. Visual imagery involves how clearly you see yourself skiing. Vivid auditory images are important because sounds can play an important part in ski racing. For example, the sound of the skis on the snow tell you about the snow conditions. The most powerful part of race imagery is feeling it in your body. That’s how you really ingrain new technical and mental skills and habits. A useful way to increase the feeling in your race imagery is to combine imagined and real sensations. Imagine yourself skiing and move your body with the imagined skiing. You see World Cup racers doing this before races.

Speed. The ability to adjust the speed of your imagery will enable you to use race imagery to improve different aspects of your skiing. Slow motion is effective for focusing on technique. When you first start to work on technique in your imagery, slow the imagery video down, frame by frame if necessary, to see yourself executing the skill correctly. Then, as you see and feel yourself skiing well in slow motion, increase the speed of your imagery until you can ski well at “real-time” speed.

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “I slip by each gate, imagining myself at full speed busting through it. After imagining myself skiing the entire course, I’m so ready to ski…that I can barely wait…for my start.” Sarah Schleper

Getting Ready for Your Own Big Race:

Lessons Learned from St. Moritz

2-21-03

You’ve worked hard all winter. You’ve qualified for the big races that you set as a goal in the fall: the States, Junior Olympics, U.S. Nationals, or perhaps the World Championships. But getting there isn’t enough; you want to ski your best in the “big one!” Continuing to improve your technique and sticking with that winter physical conditioning maintenance program will help. But whether you succeed or fail to achieve your goals at these all-important races ultimately depends on what happens between your ears as these events near. Approaching these races with the right attitude is your key to skiing your best.

The problem is that important races can play mind games with your head. Instead of just wanting to do your best, you REALLY want to do your best. Your focus can shift from “What do I have to do to ski well?” to “What will happen if I don’t ski well?” What had been goals turn into pressure-laden expectations. What is supposed to be a challenge to enjoy becomes a threat to fear. If you go the “dark side” of big races, you have lost before you even get in the starting gate.

There are two schools of thought on how to prepare for a big race. One approach is to try to ignore the fact that it is a big race and simply say, “It’s no big deal so there is nothing to get worked up about.” The U.S. Ski Team took this tack in their athletes’ preparations for the World Championships in St. Moritz. Wanting to continue the successes their charges have already had so far this season, the coaching staff had their athletes training in isolation in Italy, keeping the media away so that they didn’t get distracted or buy into the expectations that the outside forces, such as the press, can often impose on athletes before big events. The USST wanted their athletes to treat the World Championships like just another race and to ignore the hype surrounding this event.

The risk of this approach is that big races like the World Championships are hard to ignore even if the athletes are kept isolated. By ignoring the reality of the situation, you are not preparing yourself for the magnitude of the event that will inevitably hit you sooner or later. You will have to face the hyped expectations—usually from family, friends, and coaches—at some point, but you won’t be mentally prepared to handle the inescapable pressure that comes with the big race. However, despite these dangers, this approach worked for some of the USST athletes, as Bode Miller won two gold and one silver medal, Erik Schlopy won a bronze, and Kirsten Clark and Jonna Mendes earned the silver and bronze medals. This strategy may have been less effective for other members of the USST, in particular Daron Rahlves, Caroline LaLive, and Sarah Schleper.

The other school of thought argues that big events can’t be avoided, ignored, or downplayed. Rather, athletes must face the reality of these races and do what they can to respond positively to the unavoidable expectations and pressures. The Austrians assume this approach as, given the popularity of ski racing in their country, there is nowhere for them to hide. This approach has athletes say, “This race is a big deal, so let’s figure out how to deal with it positively.” With this approach, you must acknowledge that your upcoming race is a huge event and is not to be taken lightly. You must establish an attitude that will enable you to achieve your goals (“I am going to believe in myself, stay grounded, and focus on what I need to do to ski my best.”). This attitude helps you deflect the external and self-imposed pressures and enables you to maintain a positive and healthy perspective and focus as you approach the big races. You need to figure out what you need to do to be totally prepared to ski your best (e.g., on-hill training, physical conditioning, mental preparation, social activities). You also should recognize what and who might interfere with your preparations (e.g., too much time with family and friends). Finally, you must take deliberate steps to ensure that you maintain the attitude and do the things that you have learned will lead you to success.

The risk of this approach is that, despite your best efforts, you won’t be able to deflect the expectations and pressure. Instead of inoculating yourself against the pressure, you actually succumb to it. This tactic has worked for the Austrians as Stephan Eberharter and Herman Maier earned the gold and silver medals in the Super G and Michaela Dorfmeister won the gold medal in the women’s Super G, but may have hurt Benjamin Reich who was on the podium after the first runs in two events only to lose ground on his second runs. I would like to note that the reasons why some athletes falter can never be known with certainty and that my speculations are not intended to assign cause for their difficulties, but rather to illustrate the importance of preparing the right way for big races.

What we can learn from this is that there is no one ideal approach. You must look at how you have handled big races in the past. If you skied well using one approach, then stick with it (“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”). But if it didn’t work before, don’t expect it to work next time. In this case, you will want to do something different. Regardless of the approach you take, the goal is to enter a big race feeling motivated, confident, relaxed, and focused. If you feel that way, you will ski your best and, most likely, achieve the goals you have set for yourself.

VISUALIZE SUCCESS:

Train Your Mind to See the Best You Can Be

10-13-04

Race imagery is perhaps the most powerful mental skill you can develop to help you achieve Prime Ski Racing. There are four factors that will impact the quality of your race imagery: perspective, control, multiple sense, and speed. You can develop each of these areas so you can get the most out of your race imagery.

Imagery perspective. Imagery perspective refers to where the “imagery camera” is when you do race imagery. The internal perspective involves seeing yourself from inside your body looking out, as if you were actually skiing. The imagery camera is inside your head looking out through your eyes. The external perspective involves seeing yourself from outside your body like on video. The imagery camera follows your skiing from the outside. Research indicates that one perspective is not better than the other. Most people have a dominant perspective with which they’re most comfortable. You should use the perspective that’s most natural for you and then experiment with the other perspective to see if it helps you in a different way.

Control. Have you ever been doing race imagery and you keep making mistakes, for example, you keep falling in your imagery? This problem relates to imagery control, which is how well you’re able to imagine what you want to imagine. It’s not uncommon for racers to ski poorly in their imagery. If mistakes occur in your imagery, you shouldn’t just let them go by. If you do, you’ll ingrain the negative image and feeling which will hurt your skiing. Instead, when you ski poorly in your imagery, immediately rewind the “imagery video” and edit it and rerun the imagery video until you do it correctly.

Multiple senses. Good race imagery is more than just visual. The best imagery involves the multi-sensory reproduction of the actual skiing experience. You should duplicate the sights, sounds, physical sensations, thoughts, and emotions that you would experience at an actual race. Visual imagery involves how clearly you see yourself skiing. Vivid auditory images are important because sounds can play an important part in ski racing. For example, the sound of the skis on the snow tell you about the snow conditions. The most powerful part of race imagery is feeling it in your body. That’s how you really ingrain new technical and mental skills and habits. A useful way to increase the feeling in your race imagery is to combine imagined and real sensations. Imagine yourself skiing and move your body with the imagined skiing. You see World Cup racers doing this before races.

Speed. The ability to adjust the speed of your imagery will enable you to use race imagery to improve different aspects of your skiing. Slow motion is effective for focusing on technique. When you first start to work on technique in your imagery, slow the imagery video down, frame by frame if necessary, to see yourself executing the skill correctly. Then, as you see and feel yourself skiing well in slow motion, increase the speed of your imagery until you can ski well at “real-time” speed.

Prime Ski Racing Quote of the Day: “I slip by each gate, imagining myself at full speed busting through it. After imagining myself skiing the entire course, I’m so ready to ski…that I can barely wait…for my start.” Sarah Schleper

THE THINKING COACH

Published in American Ski Coach (1988-94)

PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES IN SKI COACHING EFFECTIVENESS

The roles of ski coaches are many and diverse. Coaches must be teachers, trainers, friends, parents, and, yes, psychologists. Moreover, they are expected to have expertise in many fields including physiology, biomechanics, psychology, and education. Much time and energy has been directed toward the education of coaches on the technical and physical aspects of skiing. However, only relatively recently has the skiing community begun to examine the important role that psychology plays in coaching.

Coaches have a significant influence on the psychological development of their racers. This influence is profound because the beliefs that racers develop about themselves through their skiing participation can significantly affect other aspects of their lives. As a result, coaches should give careful thought to how they can teach their athletes a healthy, positive approach to participation and competition at all levels of skiing. More importantly, coaches should consider not only how they can help them to become better athletes, but also better people. This four-part series of articles will present a discussion of issues that relate to the psychological aspects of coaching. It is hoped that it will provide to coaches a better understanding of the psychological dynamics that occur in ski racing. The goal of these articles will be to offer practical skills and methods that coaches may employ as a means of creating the most positive atmosphere and provide the best instruction possible for their racers.

This series will address a number of topics of interest and importance to ski coaches. First, a much neglected area in coaching development involves the notion that coaches are people too. In other words, coaches should have a basis for maintaining motivation and developing enjoyment in their work. The concepts and skills that sport psychologists teach to athletes can also be valuable to coaches as a means of managing stress, and developing a greater sense of self-worth and satisfaction in their profession.

A second area of importance to ski coaches is the development of a sound foundation of upon which to build their specific skills. This foundation, termed Interpersonal Coaching Style (ICS), is the general manner in which coaches present themselves and communicate with others.

The third area to be examined consists of the psychological and motor aspects of skill acquisition. This topic discusses the role of the coach in the technical development of racers. Issues of importance include the four steps in the learning process, concentration in learning, and the role that expectations and goals play in learning.

The fourth area involves how coaches may most effectively convey instructional information to their racers. Topics to be addressed include information feedback, reinforcement, and teaching independence.

The value of the issues that will be presented is that they can be offered in parts or as a comprehensive program. This knowledge can be used with the coaching staff of a team to improve specific areas of each coach and to enhance the overall functioning of the staff as a whole. Alternatively, these issues can be incorporated into a systematic coaching education and development program. Finally, only when these issues have been addressed fully can coaches be sure that they are providing the best instruction possible for their athletes and they are creating the best possible environment for them to develop both athletically and personally.

COACHES ARE PEOPLE TOO

It is a commonly held belief that ski coaches are overworked and underpaid. They are often under a great deal of pressure to succeed and their positions can be tenuous. These issues can contribute to a wide variety of difficulties. Considerable attention is paid to difficulties that are experienced by athletes at all levels of skiing. However, little consideration is given to similar problems that coaches must face. Many people simply do not realize that ski coaches are people too. It is important for the mental, emotional, and physical health of coaches that individuals within the athletic community appreciate that coaches have doubts, worries, fears, and other problems and that these issues can lead to more serious difficulties that will affect the coaches as individuals and in their involvement with their racers and teams. Addressing this issue directly is essential in assisting coaches in building a sound foundation for maintaining motivation and enhancing the satisfaction and enjoyment they derive from their work.

Why’s and What’s of Coaching

The first step in building this foundation is to aid coaches in understanding their own motivations and reasons for coaching. This phase can be accomplished with a process termed, the why’s and what’s of coaching. This strategy involves, first, asking coaches to identify and list the reasons why they are coaching. Responses to this query should include issues related to personal values, quality of life, and financial expectations. Second, coaches are then asked to indicate what they believe are the benefits and detriments of coaching for them. The coaches’ answers should be comprehensive in their appraisal of all of the positive and negative aspects of coaching. Third, coaches should indicate what they want out of coaching, i.e., what are their goals in their career. Once again, their responses should encompass all aspects of their coaching experience.

Once the why’s and what’s of coaching have been clarified, it is then necessary for the coaches to set personal goals. These goals can be classified into three general categories: attitudes and behavior, skill development, and individual athlete and team performance. Attitude and behavior goals involve setting goals for the attitudes and behaviors that coaches exhibit in their interactions with athletes, coaches, and others such as parents and officials. Skill development goals comprise standards for the acquisition of the skills that are necessary for effective coaching. Lastly, perhaps the most significant measure of coaches’ ability and success is the performance of the team and individual athletes on the team. As a result, goals involved with individual and team performance can be set as a means of maintaining motivation.

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1) WHY DO YOU COACH? “I like working with kids, not only making them better athletes, but also better people. I don’t want to sit behind a desk. I enjoy being outdoors”.

2) WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS AND DETRIMENTS OF COACHING? “Seeing the kids improve and mature, being able to travel around the world, participating in my favorite sport for a living are all benefits. Detriments include low pay, long hours and burn-out, and freezing all the time”.

2) WHAT DO YOU WANT OUT OF COACHING? “I would like to develop some world-class skiers and be respected by my peers. I would also like to make enough money to maintain the quality of life I want and have some security in the future”.

3) WHAT PERSONAL GOALS DO YOU HAVE SET FOR YOURSELF? “On a personal level, I would like to get less frustrated with my kids and be more positive rather than critical. I would also like to develop my knowledge in the areas of physical and psychological training. I would like to see several of my athletes named to the USST. Lastly, within the next few years, I would like to be a coach for the USST”.

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Developing a Coping Repertoire

A significant source of difficulties that negatively influences coaches’ motivation, satisfaction, and performance is common problems that they face on a regular basis. These problems can range from the trivial such as broken or lost equipment to the serious such as substance abuse among team members. The ability of coaches to address these issues in a positive, constructive manner will influence significantly their coaching performance and their own sense of self-worth and well-being. As a result of this importance, the development of effective preventive measures and coping skills is essential. A useful way to initiate this process is through group brainstorming with the coaching staff. This method allows coaches to share techniques they already use and to generate and have consensus on the most effective means of dealing with problems.

The first step in developing a coping repertoire is to identify common sources of problems. Within any particular skiing setting, there is usually a common set of difficulties that coaches must address regularly. These frequent problems include intra-team conflict, negative attitudes, and injuries. A detailed identification of these areas will clarify for the coaches the problems that are most frequent and frustrating and provide the basis for prevention and coping.

The most effective means of dealing with problems involves using preventive measures. In other words, the best way to deal with problems is not to have to deal with them. Through active management of the team environment, coaches can create a setting that prevents many problems from arising. As a result, a significant source of stress for the coaches can eliminated.

Invariably, not all difficulties can be prevented. Consequently, it is necessary for coaches to develop a coping repertoire as a means of addressing these problems in a healthy fashion. There are many ways to deal with obstacles. However, the ideal solution should be one in which all involved parties emerge with good feelings and a sense of closure. As a result, careful consideration should be given to the best means of solving problems. Techniques such as time-out, i.e., getting away from the problem, assertiveness, and honest communication are examples of ways that difficulties can be addressed in a positive manner.

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PROBLEM: Overbearing parents at training and races.

PREVENTIVE MEASURE: No parents at training, parent education classes.

COPING SKILLS: Role-playing of diplomatic, but firm response to parents. Relaxation techniques to control anger.

PROBLEM: Burn-out.

PREVENTIVE MEASURE: Limit and structure work hours, delegate responsibilities.

COPING SKILLS: Time-out, build social support, seek counseling.

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Building Support System

Perhaps the most important way that coaches can maintain their motivation and satisfaction and deal with the stresses associated with coaching is through the development of a broad-based social support system. First, possibly the greatest source of frustration for coaches is the lack of financial, logistical, and moral support from upper-level management. The inability to accomplish necessary tasks that are outside of the immediate responsibilities of the coach is detrimental to coaches on both a psychological and practical level. As a result, considerable effort should be made to open up lines of communication between coaches and upper-level staff.

A second important area of support must come from within the coaching staff itself. A cohesive, mutually-supportive staff will be more efficient and will be able to address a greater variety of issues more effectively. A meaningful issue relative to this concern is in the selection of the staff. Consideration should be given not only to the individual abilities of the coaches, but also to how their strengths and weaknesses complement and support each other. A well-balanced staff does not have to be composed of individuals possessing every necessary coaching skill. Rather, a carefully selected staff will be comprised of coaches who, in aggregate, possess all of the requisite skills necessary to fulfill their responsibilities. A useful method for building and maintaining support within a coaching staff is to schedule regular coaches meetings with the express purpose of solving problems, providing an emotional outlet, and developing preventive and coping strategies.

Another significant source of support for coaches is from family and friends. Particularly for coaches that are required to travel extensively, time away from home can be lonely and stressful. In order to minimize these difficulties, teams can incorporate a program by which coaches have ready access to support from family and friends.

Finally, the sport psychologist can play an important role in the support system of coaches. It is often the case that coaches are experiencing difficulties that they do not feel comfortable discussing with other coaches. In this situation, the sport psychologist is an essential source of support, providing problem-solving, emotional catharsis, and simply someone with whom coaches can speak.

In sum, it must be emphasized that coaches are people before they are coaches. As such, if coaches are expected to do the best job they can, they must be considered on a personal level. Moreover, active management by coaches can ensure that they maintain their motivation and derive satisfaction and enjoyment from their work. So when coaches ask themselves why they coach, they can come up with a lot of good reasons.

INTERPERSONAL COACHING STYLE

The interpersonal coaching style is the foundation upon which all specific coaching skills, whether technical, physical, or psychological, are built. Interpersonal coaching style (ICS) is defined as the manner in which coaches present themselves to and communicate with their athletes. How they look, how they carry themselves, how they communicate both verbally and nonverbally, have a profound effect upon the athletes with whom they interact. Particularly among young, developing coaches, this notion should be considered and addressed.

The interpersonal coaching style is comprised of several specific components. They include issues related to leadership, authority and discipline, overt and covert communication with athletes, coaches, and others, the effective communication of technical and performance information, organizational skills, and coaches’ response to stress and pressure.

Coaches’ interpersonal style will influence their racers in several ways. First, it will affect their overall attitude and perspective toward their skiing, e.g., whether competition is viewed as enjoyable or stressful. Racers’ interactions with their coaches largely determine their perception of the sport.

Second, coaches’ ICS will affect their athletes’ motivation to practice and compete. In other words, their ICS will dictate whether athletes perceive their experiences on the race hill as positive and healthy, thereby increasing their desire to participate, or as negative and detrimental, thus reducing their motivation to participate.

Third, the coaches’ ICS will affect the racers’ receptivity to the specific coaching skills that they employ during the course of training. Quite simply, if racers do not like or respect their coach, they are going to be less receptive to the subsequent instruction and it is likely that training will be viewed as a negative experience.

The type of athletes that are to be coached is an important issue that must be considered relative to the suitable ICS. Several athlete factors have to be examined. First, what is the goal of the participation? Clearly, coaches would behave differently if they were working with a junior program who’s primary goal was participation and fun as compared to elite racers training for the Olympics.

It must also be stressed that, like technical instruction, there is no single best ICS. There are many interpersonal coaching styles that are effective. In fact, for every successful coach, there is a unique and valuable style. For instance, some are funny and energetic, others are serious and encouraging. However, despite the diverse styles, they share some common characteristics such as the ability to instill self-confidence and motivation, and to make the learning experience fun and satisfying. As a result, it is not so important for coaches to mold themselves into the ICS of a famous, well-respected coach. Rather, what is important is that coaches know what ICS they want to convey and then work to develop it. In addition, the successful coach does not have one ICS that is used with all racers. Rather, different styles will be used to fulfill the needs of each individual athlete.

In order for coaches to develop an effective ICS, it is first necessary to evaluate their present style. It is sometimes the case that coaches are unaware of their own demeanor, i.e., how they behave during training or at races. As a result, the development of this awareness will enable coaches to judge the quality and effectiveness of their current ICS. This process can be accomplished in several ways. A technique that is often used in academic education is the video-taping of teaching performances. Applied to coaching, an actual training session or competition can recorded and then reviewed, enabling coaches to become aware of the particular attitudes and behaviors that they exhibit. Self-monitoring of behavior and feedback from racers and, more importantly, from other coaches are additional tools that are valuable in the evaluation process.

Once the current ICS is clarified, it is necessary to establish the criteria for the desired ICS. This can be done by specifying all of the desired characteristics that coaches wish to project. These attributes might include being more enthusiastic, speaking more slowly, or using more physical demonstrations of skills.

When both the current and desired ICS are established, they can be compared for congruence. If some disparity exists between the two, then a plan of development can be implemented that employs self-monitoring, practice, and feedback as a means of bridging the gap between the present and desired styles. By following this procedure, coaches can gain a greater understanding of and enhanced control over the manner in which they communicate with their athletes. This process results in a highly effective, individualized interpersonal coaching style that enables coaches to maximize the particular aspects of skiing they wish to convey to their athletes.

In addition to developing the overall interpersonal coaching style, it is also useful to identify and nurture specific behaviors within the ICS. In other words, regardless of the ICS they develop, coaches should develop a wide repertoire of behaviors in order to effectively address the different situations which they often face. Coaches who possess a broad behavioral repertoire have the ability to successfully handle more types of athletes, problems, and circumstances. A strategy similar to the one used for developing a coping repertoire (discussed in the previous article) can be used to identify and incorporate an extensive behavioral repertoire into coaches’ interpersonal coaching style.

THE LEARNING PROCESS

A primary responsibility of coaches is technical instruction. However, this task does not simply involve demonstrating a particular technical skill, then having athletes perform it. Rather, instruction is a complex interaction of physical, motor, psychological, and communication skills that occur between coaches and racers in the learning process. As a result of this complexity, the education of coaches in the learning process is essential for sound coaching and effective skill acquisition.

The Learning Process

Perhaps the most central question that coaches must ask when studying the issue of effective instruction is, “How do people acquire physical skills?”. Without understanding the learning process, it is difficult to determine the most effective means of teaching. The present model suggests that the learning of physical skills is composed of four steps that must be accomplished in sequence in order to produce rapid, consistent, and lasting learning.

1. Intellectual understanding. This stage emphasizes the importance of racers having an understanding of the incorrect and correct means of executing a skill. In other words, they must understand what they did wrong and how to correct it. Without this awareness at the intellectual level, transfer to physiomotor learning will be no more than a trial-and-error procedure. It should be noted that two groups of athletes seem able to by-pass this stage: Young children and highly gifted athletes. These individuals rely primarily on imitation to learn.

2. Kinesthetic awareness. In order to acquire new skills or change old ones, it is necessary to develop kinesthetic or muscle awareness. That is, racers must have a sense of what their bodies are doing and where they are in space. To determine athletes’ muscle awareness, coaches may use a simple test. Ask them to close their eyes and to assume a ready position in preparation for the execution of a particular skill, e.g., aerodynamic tuck position. Next, ask them to describe their body position. Coaches will find significant error in the responses of most racers, indicating that they do not have precise kinesthetic awareness.

It is also important to stress that kinesthetic awareness is not something that racers have or do not have. Rather, it can be developed. One useful method is having athletes watch themselves on video. This technique enables them to create a visual representation of their body while executing skills that can transfer to the physiomotor level. This transfer facilitates the development of kinesthetic awareness. Another method is to have racers direct their concentration onto their body during performance of the skill, e.g., focus on arm position while free skiing. This refocusing allows them to gain conscious awareness of what their body is doing and how it is moving.

3. Initial motor learning. The third step in this process is where the actual learning begins and there is the first evidence of technical development. At this point, a simplified environment is essential, in which the coach has the racer perform with no distracting variables, e.g., on smooth, steady terrain with a simple course. Racers are then able to correctly execute the new skill. However, at this early stage of learning, the ability to maintain proper execution deteriorates with the inclusion of additional variables, e.g., changes in terrain or course rhythm.

This phase is perhaps the most crucial in the learning process. In examining the acquisition of skills, it is important to understand that motor learning involves teaching the muscles to respond in a particular manner. During learning, this component should be the principal focus.

An essential point worth emphasizing is that the only way neuromuscular training can occur is through repetition. One method that can facilitate this process is for coaches to give their athletes “assignments” during training. In other words, coaches can have their athletes practice the desired skill away from the training course with minimal distractions. In this manner, racers are able to engage in sufficient repetition to enhance neuromuscular training and, as a consequence, the learning process. Then, when the athletes return to gate training, learning has progressed to the point where the new skill has become more reflexive and attention can be directed toward executing the skill in a training course.

Another notable concern in this stage is concentration. Racers’ ability to concentrate on the appropriate cues is essential for effective learning. The learning phase requires racers to concentrate on different things than in the performance phase. A difficulty that often arises is that during the learning phase, racers tend to focus too much on the course or on how fast they are going rather than on those elements that will enable them to acquire the skill.

The primary focus while learning should be the athletes’ own bodies, specifically their kinesthetic awareness and motor control, and the skill to be learned. If the focus is not appropriate, the new skill is forgotten, old habits return, and no learning takes place.

4. Generalization. The fourth step involves generalization of the skill to increasingly more complex settings. The generalization process for a racer working on his body direction (i.e., countering) might go as follows: working on countering while free skiing, during training in an easy course on steady terrain, in a difficult course on variable terrain, then in competition beginning with races of little importance and moving up to races of increasing importance. This process of generalization moves from proper execution due to conscious volition to correct execution that is entirely reflexive.

Expectations and Goals

A significant influence on the successful completion of this stage is the expectations and goals that racers develop when learning new skills. Too often, athletes have unrealistic expectations and set unreachable goals relative to learning. Typically, they learn a new skill and then expect to use it immediately and effectively during competition. The subsequent and predictable failure to achieve these expectations causes anger and frustration. As a result, they may view their learning experience as negative, thereby reducing the likelihood that they will strive to improve in the future. In addition, athletes are inclined to attribute their failure to themselves, which may result in a loss in self-confidence and a decrease in the motivation to learn.

It is important for coaches to explain the learning process to their athletes, to inform them of its likely course, and to assist them in developing reasonable expectations and goals. Demonstrating the probable learning curve is of particular value. Most athletes have the misconception that learning occurs in a consistent, linear fashion, i.e., improved performance follows directly from learning. However, learning and performance, in fact, follow a cyclic pattern. In other words, the early stages of learning tend to produce a temporary drop in performance. It is at this point that the muscles are being retrained and are not yet able to respond effectively, resulting in a transient period of poor performance. However, in the later stages of learning, performance returns to and surpasses its original level.

Coaches can facilitate the acquisition of skills by educating their racers about the learning process, the progression of generalization, and the time that is required for the process to reach completion. As a result, coaches can minimize the likelihood that their athletes will have a negative learning experience and maximize the feelings of satisfaction that are derived from the process of learning and improvement.

PROVIDING EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK

Perhaps the single most important tool that coaches must develop is their ability to convey performance information effectively. During instruction, technical development is only as good as the quality of the performance feedback that is provided by coaches. Considerable research has indicated that performance feedback produces significant performance improvement.

Type of Feedback

There are three primary ways of conveying technical information: verbal, visual, and kinesthetic. The most common method is verbal feedback, which involves telling athletes what technical changes need to be made. Verbal feedback appears to be, however, the least effective technique for coaching because verbal feedback does not appear to transfer as quickly or effectively to the neuromuscular level as the other types of feedback.

Visual feedback is a more useful method for effective performance feedback. This type of feedback consists of having coaches demonstrate rather than verbalize the particular technical information or by having the racers view the visual feedback on a video. Visual, as compared to verbal, feedback seems to transfer more effectively to neuromuscular learning and, as a result, will produce better learning.

Another technique for conveying information is kinesthetic feedback. That is, instead of telling or showing their athletes what to do, coaches can physically place them in the appropriate position and run them through the desired motion. Kinesthetic feedback, rather than having to be transferred from the brain, provides direct information to the body at the neuromuscular level. As a result, the feedback can be more effective and the learning process is facilitated. In addition, this type of feedback will enhance athletes’ kinesthetic awareness, enabling them to better integrate the feedback that is provided by coaches.

Personal Processing Styles

It should be noted that, though the effectiveness of the three types of feedback generally holds true, experience has indicated that individuals have different processing styles. In order to maximize the value of the feedback that is given, it is useful for coaches to be able to recognize these styles in their racers and provide the appropriate feedback. Consequently, all three types of feedback can be useful in different situations and with different athletes. Coaches can be sensitive to these personal styles and provide the type of feedback that will best enable their athletes to process the instructional information.

Corrective Feedback

In providing instruction, it is important to not only indicate what racers are doing wrong, but also to emphasize the correct execution. It must be understood that the appropriate corrective action is not implicit in the description of the incorrect action. For example, telling a racer that her weight is too far back does not provide much information as to how it should get forward. So during instruction, performance feedback should convey what is wrong and how to correct it.

Amount of Feedback

There is often a tendency on the part of coaches to give their racers too much information. For example, a coach might tell a racer to straighten out his line, get more weight on the downhill ski, and drop the hip into the hill more. A deluge of information like this one causes racers to be overloaded with information and are thus unable to focus sufficiently on any one piece of information in order for them to utilize it. As a result, it is suggested that only a single piece of information that is most relevant to the particular instruction be offered at any one time.

Positive-Negative-Positive Approach

Though there is no one prescribed method of conveying performance information, John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, developed a teaching approach that has been widely accepted in the coaching community. It is referred to as the “positive-negative-positive” approach and it involves three steps. One, the correct execution of the skill is explained and demonstrated. This first step provides an initial positive orientation to the instruction and also gives athletes a correct point of reference for comparison in the second step. Two, the way that the athlete executed the skill, i.e., what the athlete did incorrectly, is explained and demonstrated. The second step allows athletes to understand what they did wrong and enables them to compare the improper with the proper execution of the skill. Three, step one is repeated in order to reinforce the correct execution and re-orient the athlete in a positive, constructive direction. It should also not be assumed that athletes readily understand the performance that is provided. A useful tool that coaches may use to determine whether the conveyed feedback is understood is to ask the athletes to explain and demonstrate the skill themselves.

Reinforcement

Another essential technique that coaches may employ while providing instruction is reinforcement. Reinforcement, i.e., overt approval of desired skills, behaviors, and attitudes, can be used as a means of enhancing self-confidence and motivation and developing technical skills. From a technical perspective, the goal and result of effective reinforcement is to increase the likelihood that a desired skill will be repeated and to instill in racers the belief that they can execute particular skills.

Amount of reinforcement. The amount of reinforcement that is given is critical to its effectiveness. A typical problem associated with reinforcement involves either over- or under-reinforcement. Coaches may reinforce every performance regardless of quality. This approach may enhance motivation, but does not provide racers with information relative to whether they executed the skill properly. As a result, they are unable to distinguish between correct and incorrect execution and learning does not occur. Too infrequent reinforcement has a similar effect. Lack of reinforcement also provides little information about how a racer is performing and tends to produce low motivation and poor skill acquisition.

Ideally, reinforcement should be intermittent and only given when the desired skills have been demonstrated. This variable reinforcement enables athletes to perceive a connection between proper execution and the reinforcement and provides them with valuable information relative to their performance of the skill.

Type of reinforcement. Another issue that influences the effectiveness of reinforcement relates to the type of reinforcement that is given at the various stages of learning. It is important to give reinforcement that is specific to what is being learned. Providing inappropriate reinforcement can inhibit learning by focusing racers’ attention on information that is not relevant to the particular stage of learning.

At early stages of learning, neuromuscular training, i.e., acquiring technical skills, is emphasized, so reinforcement should be specific to those skills. Coaches should specifically reinforce demonstration of the correct execution of that particular skill rather than more general reinforcement relative to the overall performance. For example, a coach should reward a good tuck position not whether the racer went fast.

In contrast to this technical reinforcement, at later stages of learning, the focus becomes more outcome-oriented. Once neuromuscular training has taken place and the technical skills have been mastered, the outcome of the proper execution is stressed. As a result, coaches may reinforce these aspects of the performance. By doing so, coaches indicate to their athletes the desired outcome of a well-executed skill. For example, a coach can reinforce the fact that the newly-learned tuck resulted in greater speeds and better times.

Teaching Independence

Another issue that coaches should consider is the emergence of independence and self-instructional skills on the part of their racers. Coaches can encourage their athletes to teach, critique, and reinforce themselves. In other words, coaches can show their athletes how to become their own coaches. Development of these skills are valuable because they provide racers with a greater sense of control and responsibility over their performances. In addition, it enables athletes to continue the learning process when coaches are not present. On a practical level, this ability permits them to make “on-the-spot” technical changes and to reinforce themselves during competition.

This process can be accomplished in several steps. First, coaches can nurture in their racers an understanding of their own technical, physical, and psychological attributes. In other words, they can teach them to identify the strengths and weaknesses in their own performances. Second, coaches can make communication bi-directional. Instead of coaches always telling their athletes what they did wrong and how to correct it, they can ask the racers to tell them. Consequently, in addition to an enhanced awareness of what they are doing during training and competition, racers will develop the ability to critique objectively their own performances. Third, when athletes look to their coaches for approval, coaches can ask them to evaluate and reinforce themselves.

Emergence of independence and self-coaching skills would contribute to the development of more complete athletes and to the satisfaction, enjoyment, and confidence that is derived from becoming a better athlete. Moreover, the athletes’ enhanced self-understanding would increase rather than undermine the importance and effectiveness of coaches. This enhanced teaching ability on the part of coaches would be due to the improved capability of athletes to provide additional useful performance about their performances to the coaches. This added information could then be utilized by coaches in critiquing their racers’ performances, thereby enabling them to provide better feedback. Finally, these self-coaching skills would allow racers to better understand and integrate the corrective performance, thereby facilitating the learning process and enabling them to raise the quality of their performances.

TEACHING MENTAL SKILLS TO SKI RACERS

The awareness of the importance of mental preparation in ski racing has grown dramatically in the last several years. This realization has resulted in a high degree of motivation among ski coaches at every level of competitive skiing to learn as much as possible about mental training. However, there still remains considerable misunderstanding about the role of sport psychologists and the nature of mental training.

A common misconception is that athletes either have it mentally or they do not and no amount of work can developmental weaknesses in athletes. This is rarely the case. A fundamental aspect of the mental side of sports is that athletes possess differing levels of mental skills that, like technical skills, can be developed with time and practice. In other words, mental factors such as self-confidence and concentration are malleable characteristics. Given the appropriate training, significant improvement may result. So coaches should think of mental skills the same way they view physical fitness and technical development.

Another misconception is that sport psychologists have “magic dust” and can simply sprinkle their knowledge over the athletes and they will improve. I have been called by coaches on many occasions a few nights before a major competition asking that I work with their athletes. I typically turn down these opportunities because no matter what I do, it is unlikely that the athletes will be able to benefit in such a short time. However, I do recommend that they contact me in the early part of the season so that I can implement a mental training program for their athletes that they can work on in preparation for their competitive season.

Still another misconception is that mental training takes alot of time and energy for coaches and athletes. However, mental training is very time-effective. Serious racers typically spend up to four hours per day on physical or technical training. In contrast, mental training away from the hill can be accomplished in 10-15 minutes per day several times a week. Considering the importance of the mind at any given level of competition, this seems like a good investment of time.

In addition, I emphasize that mental training can be incorporated directly into dryland and on1snow training. In fact, the best way to develop mental skills is along with physical and technical skills because they are quite inseparable. Clearly, physical and technical ability has little value if athletes do not have the belief that they possess those abilities.

Also, the incorporation of mental training into other facets of preparation does not involve using a lot of complex techniques. Rather, a few simple and practical strategies may be easily included into dryland and on1snow training to provide tangible personal and competitive benefits.

From this perspective, this year’s series of articles will rely on this approach in describing practical ways in which coaches may incorporate mental training into their regular pre-season and competitive season programs. Topics that will be discussed include developing positive attitudes, controlling anxiety, and improving concentration.

PRACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR
DEVELOPING POSITIVE ATTITUDES

In an article I wrote in The American Ski Coach last year (Mid Winter), I discussed different ways to build self-confidence in your athletes. These techniques included positive role modeling, active positive thinking, and objective evaluation. I believe self-confidence is essential for competitive success because it is so critical due to its influence on every other psychological factor. First, low self confidence results in a lot of negative self-talk which feeds into a vicious cycle of low confidence and performance. Second, low self-confidence is usually associated with higher anxiety which will hurt performance further. Third, it produces negative emotions such as anger, depression, and frustration. Fourth, low self-confidence hurts concentration by focusing attention on negative thinking. Finally, it inhibits motivation because if athletes have low confidence and are performing poorly, they will not be having fun and, as a result, will be less likely to work hard.

As part of my work with the USST Development Camp at Mt. Bachelor in June, 1989,I developed several more simple and practical strategies that coaches may incorporate into training as a means of developing positive attitudes. I will describe these methods in the context of my work with the Development skiers.

Commit the Crime, Do the Time

As part of their on-snow training, each training group was required to choose a “punishment” for any skier who said something negative. The purpose of this exercise was to provide the athletes (and coaches) with greater awareness and control over their thinking and, in particular, their negativity. I instructed them that the punishment should help them become better skiers or better people.

The punishments were diverse and creative. One group decided that anyone who was negative had to do 50 jump turns. Another group’s punishment was that the offenders had to walk up to a stranger in the base lodge, introduce themselves, indicate the negative statement, and indicate what positive thing they would say in future situations.

The rallying cry for this technique was, “Commit the crime, do the time”. In addition, coaches (and sport psychologists) were also bound by this rule. This approach proved to be both fun and effective. Within days of its inception, the athletes were policing their own ranks for negativity and the amount of negative talk decreased markedly.

Ski Racers’ Litany

Another practice that I incorporated into training was the Ski Racers’ Litany at the early morning warm-ups. The Litany was a set of positive statements that the group said out loud (with conviction) every morning. The litany I developed for this group was as follows:

I love to ski race.

I am a great ski racer.

I always think and talk positively.

I always work as hard as I can.

I expect to feel pressure and that’s okay

because I know how to handle it.

I am confident, relaxed, and focused when I race. The purpose of the litany is, in a sense, to exercise their self-confidence muscle. I believe that if athletes tell themselves something enough times, they will start believing it. This technique also proved to be fun and effective, as the skiers began to say it by themselves and apply them to other, less pleasant areas of their training, e.g., “I love to do intervals”.

This approach can be included at the beginning of daily training and provides an initial positive orientation to the day. Also, I would recommend that parts of the Litany be printed on posterboard and placed around the training center.

Walk the Walk

An observation that I have made during my years as an athlete and a psychologist is that champions walk and carry themselves and move differently than other people. In other words, they “walk the walk”. As a result, athletes at the Development camp were required to practice walking the walk. In particular, this involves walking with their shoulders back, chin up, and eyes forward. The rationale behind this strategy is that it is difficult to feel down when the body is up. Also, with repetition, having the appearance of confidence will be internalized and improve confidence.

Skiwords

A technique that I developed while I was competing was to write keywords on my skis, e.g., “I can win” and “hustle”. The purpose of this practice is to constantly remind athletes of positive cues. Every time they look at their skis, the skiwords are repeated and internalized. Skiers can use skiwords that will focus not only on confidence but also on other mental or technical concerns.

MANAGING COMPETITIVE ANXIETY/FEAR

A certain amount of anxiety is essential for optimal performance. Moderate arousal increases heart rate, respiration, and blood flow, releases adrenaline for greater strength and quickness, and enhances endurance. However, too much anxiety can be detrimental to performance. Moreover, as racers move up the competitive ladder, the pressure to perform increases, thereby raising anxiety levels.

Excessive anxiety is typically caused by several factors. First, as discussed in an earlier article, athletes with low self-confidence tend to be more anxious. Second, fear of success or failure can also raise anxiety to detrimental levels. Third, unfamiliarity with situations are often associated with too much anxiety.

Anxiety manifests itself in a number of ways including muscle tension, fatigue, choking, butterflies, loss of coordination, and narrowing of concentration. Furthermore, any or all of these factors will hurt performance. As a result, it is important that coaches teach their athletes how to actively reduce their anxiety.

Breathing

The most obvious, yet often neglected, way to reduce anxiety is simply to take some slow, deep breaths. This serves several purposes. First, deep breaths will reduce heart rate and reduce muscle tension. Second, muscles cannot function effectively without adequate oxygen (i.e., loss of coordination), so by taking deep breaths, muscles will be able to perform properly.

Progressive Relaxation

Often coaches will see an anxious athlete and tell them to relax, so the athlete can be seen pacing back and forth telling himself to calm down. Often, this approach has the opposite effect. In fact, it is difficult for an athlete to reduce anxiety and muscle tension in this way. Consequently, it is recommended that, when muscles are tense, athletes should engage in progressive relaxation. This technique involves tightening the muscles up even more than before, then relaxing them.

Why does this work? Muscles work on what is called an opponent-process principle. In other words, if muscles are at a level 7 of muscle tension (where 10 is very high tension), but an athlete performs best at level 5, by tightening muscles up to 10, then relaxing them, tension levels will drop past 7 to a lower level.

Progressive relaxation can be used effectively in the start area before race runs. A useful procedure would be for athletes to tighten their muscles for 3 seconds, then relax, and repeat this several times.

Counter Irrational Thinking

Another significant cause of anxiety is irrational thinking. Athletes, particularly young ones, develop bizarre thoughts which create unnecessary anxiety. For example, a development racer I worked with told me that, when training for downhills, she would see a tree and truly believe that “the tree has my name on it”. This thinking caused her to become fearful and it hurt her skiing. I suggested that she counter this irrational thinking by going to the tree and seeing if, indeed, the tree did have her name on it. Invariably, it did not and she felt much better.

It is important for coaches to be aware of the thinking of their athletes and actively counter any irrational thinking that emerges. This awareness is especially critical in high pressure situations such as major competitions and in difficult or fear-provoking conditions such as foggy downhills or icy courses. Simply providing a rational perspective for their distorted perceptions may reduce anxiety.

Increase Familiarity

Since unfamiliarity with a situation is a cause of anxiety, it follows that if the situation can be made more familiar, anxiety will diminish. This can be accomplished in several practical ways. Typically, racers ski best on hills they have competed on before. As a result, it is useful for racers to be able to ski on the race hill the previous day. In the event this is not possible and the course is easily accessible from the base, coaches can encourage their racers to walk up the hill at the end of the day to get a feel for the terrain. Also, they can use mental imagery to see themselves racing on the hill, thereby increasing familiarity.

A significant source of unfamiliarity and, in turn, anxiety comes when racers move up to a new competitive level, e.g., their first Senior Nationals. Coaches can assist this transition by having round table sessions in which older competitors describe their experiences at that level, what new things to expect, both positive and negative, and what practical strategies they use to prepare for them.

Regardless of the level of competition, a general rule to teach athletes is, “Expect the unexpected”. I encourage coaches to discuss with their racers what could possibly go wrong and then how to effectively deal with these unexpected problems. For example, coaches may ask their athlete what they would do if their skis were stolen or they forgot their helmet. Having plans for possible eventualities will make those unexpected events less unexpected, thereby making them less anxiety provoking.

Pre-Competitive Routines

Related to the issue of familiarity is the use of precompetitive routines to minimize anxiety in pressure situations. By using these routines, athletes condition their minds and bodies to believe that whenever they are going through the routines, whether in a local or international competition, it is just another race, not something to get nervous about.

It is suggested that coaches ask their racers to write out and rehearse a routine with which they feel comfortable. These pre-competitive routines can begin the night before the race, continue when the racers wake up, and conclude in the start area. It can again be valuable to have experienced racers describe their routines to younger skiers. It should be emphasized that there is no single correct pre-competitive routine. Rather, athletes need to design a routine that fulfills their particular needs.

Smiling

Perhaps the simplest and most hard believe technique that I have found to be effective in reducing anxiety is the act of smiling. I do not mean finding something funny or laughing, simply raising the sides of the mouth and smiling.

Smiling influences our feelings in two ways. First, we are brought up believing that when we smile, we must be happy and relaxed. Second, research has shown that when we smile, biochemical changes that result in a relaxing effect. As a consequence, when coaches see highly anxious athletes, simply forcing them to smile can markedly reduce their anxiety, thereby allowing them to perform better.

MAINTAINING THE RIGHT FOCUS

Concentration is one of the most misunderstood mental factors in sport. Typically, people think of concentration as the ability to focus on one thing for a long period of time. However, concentration in ski racing is a much more complex process than that.

The basis for understanding concentration lies in the term, “attentional field”. The attentional field is everything outside of people, e.g., sights, sounds, smells, plus everything inside people, e.g., thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, that they could focus on at any single moment.

Good concentration may be characterized as focusing only on performance-relevant aspects of the attentional field. In other words, concentrating only on those things that are necessary for good performance. For racing, these factors include the course, terrain, and snow conditions. In contrast, bad concentration involves focusing on performance-irrelevant aspects of the attentional field. That is, attending to those things that are not necessary for good performance. For example, how a racer did on the first run, the size of the trophy, or who is watching. There are several techniques that can be used to maintain concentration.

Concentration Styles

Individuals possess a variety of concentration styles. At the USST Development Camp in June, I administered a questionnaire that assesses these styles. Two dominant styles emerged. The first, overly internally focused, involved racers who tended to think too much and ruminate on

their thoughts and feelings. This obsessive thinking is often negative and hurts their performances. Also, they would become so inner directed that they forget to attend to external cues. At the start of a race, they are the ones who go off by themselves and sit quietly away from the activity of the start area. For this type of athlete, it is suggested that they work on directing their attention outward to keep them from thinking too much about the race. In addition, they should do whatever they can to keep their minds off the race. For example, they can listen to music or interact with other racers in the start area.

The second style, overly externally focused, tend to concentrate too much on external cues such as the activity in the start area and the times on the public address system. They are easily distracted and have difficulty focusing on their race. These racers are often the ones who are constantly interacting with others in the start area, talking, joking, wrestling. For these athletes, it may be more effective for them to focus more on performance-relevant information such as imagining the course. In addition, it may be helpful for them to go off by themselves away from the start area in order to minimize the external distractions.

Skiwords

Coaches can assist athletes in developing a skiword that can be repeated to remind racers of what they need to focus on. Using skiwords have several benefits. First, since people can not think of two things at once, if a racer is repeating the skiword, she can not be thinking about some distracting thought. Second, using the skiword constantly prompts the racer to think of something that will help her ski her best.

Skiwords can be motivational such as “go, go”, technical such as “arms, arms”, or psychological such as “calm, calm”. Coaches can help racers to identify the most crucial factor for good skiing and then have them devise a skiword to focus their attention on that area.

Skiobjects

An alternative to using a skiword is to identify a skiobject on which to focus. The benefit of a skiobject is that it may be a salient part of the racer’s attentional field. As a result, it is easy to concentrate on. For example, in the start area before a run, pounding a pole in the snow provides a noticeable physical sensation and acts as an effective focusing tool. Other skiobjects may be the base of the gates or squeezing the pole grips.

Breathing

Another effective focusing and centering technique is simply breathing. In other words, when an athlete is distracted, coaches can tell them to take several slow, deep breaths. This focused breathing has two functions. First, it relaxes the body, which results in a broadening of concentration and redirecting of focus away from anxiety. Second, by attending to the breathing, concentration is shifted from distracting thoughts. From this point, focus can then be directed to more performance-specific cues.

Keys on Skis

One problem with re-establishing concentration is that athletes often become so absorbed in the competition, they literally forget to do the things they need to do to ski well. As discussed in a previous article, writing appropriate skiwords on their skis, poles, or gloves will provide a tangible reminder of what to concentrate on, thereby making refocusing easier.

MOTIVATING DEVELOPING SKI RACERS

The quality of any skiing performance is influenced by three factors: ability, motivation, and the difficulty of the task (see table 1). Of these factors, only one, motivation, is entirely within the control of the athlete. Consequently, coaches should focus much of their energy in developing and maintaining a high level of motivation among their racers. This task is not easy because of the length of the pre-season, the intensity of the competitive season, and the mental, emotional, and physical stress the athletes are under during these periods.

What is Motivation?

Simply put, motivation is the ability to initiate and persist at a task. At a practical level, motivation involves athletes being able to keep working hard in the face of boredom, fatigue, pain, and the desire to do other things. Highly motivated ski racers are willing to do everything they can to become the best that they can be. This drive must be directed into physical conditioning, technical training, mental preparation, and general lifestyle including diet, sleep, school, family and social relationships. A simple progression helps illustrate the importance of motivation to performance:

High Motivation —> Total Preparation —> Maximum Performance

Symptoms of Low Motivation

It is not often difficult to identify those athletes who lack motivation. These athletes have a lack of interest in some or all aspects of training, give less than 100% effort, and may skip training altogether. They also may shorten their training routines, use minor injuries to get out of training and take unnecessary days off.

Developing Motivation

Regular Training Partners

No matter how hard athletes train alone, they will work that much harder if they have someone pushing them. A useful way to increase motivation is have athletes work in pairs. This is especially effective if the skiers are of similar ability, and have similar goals and training programs. On any given day of training, at least one of them will be motivated to work hard. They will also be more dedicated if they know someone else is counting on them.

Identify Greatest Competitor

Another effective motivator is to ask your athletes who is their greatest competitors. Have them place the name or a picture of that competitor where they can see it regularly. Also, you can periodically ask them whether they are working as hard as their competitor.

Motivational Keys

As with developing self-confidence, the more you can remind them, the more it will sink in. A useful way to constantly remind them is to identify some motivating keywords, e.g., hustle, go for it, phrases, e.g., “if you’re going to be a bear, be a grizzly, and photographs, e.g., Tomba, Roffe, and place them around the training center, particularly above the door as they to train.

Ask Daily Questions

Finally, there are two questions that you can ask your racers at the beginning and end of every day. Before training, ask your athletes, “What can you do today to become the best ski racers you can be?”. After training, ask them, “Did you do everything possible today to become the best ski racers you can be?”.

Training Diary

It is reinforcing for athletes to see improvement in different areas of their training and performances. An effective way for them to clearly see their progress is by keeping a training diary. Maintaining a detailed training log enables racers to record important aspects of race preparation such as physical, technical, and mental training. It also enables them to track their race performances. Plotting improvement provides clear and tangible evidence to racers providing reinforcement to their efforts which increases their motivation. Training diaries are also useful means of identifying the causes of overtraining, illness, injuries, and performance slumps and streaks.

GOAL SETTING FOR BETTER ATHLETE PERFORMANCE

One of the most widely used techniques to increase motivation among athletes is goal setting. Having racers establish goals at different levels of training and competition will improve their effort and intensity. In order to ensure the value of goal setting, there are several components that must be included in well-organized goal setting program.

Macro-Goals

Long term goals specify what the racers ultimately want to achieve in their careers. Examples of long term goals include receiving a college scholarship or winning a World Cup race. These objectives are similar to dreams because they are so far off they may seem unreachable. Due to their distance, these goals should be kept in the back of racers’ minds, but not focused on often.

Seasonal goals indicate what the racers want to accomplish in the coming season, such as reach a certain ranking or attain a new level of competition. These goals are important because they will dictate all subsequent goals that are set.

Competitive goals designate how racers want to perform in particular competitions during the season. Competitive goals might include a certain placing to qualify for the next race series or racers lowering their points to be named to a team. These goals are critical because attaining these goals should lead to reaching their seasonal goals.

Training goals specify what racers need to do in their physical, technical, and mental training that will enable them to reach their competitive goals. Training goals might involve increasing leg strength by 10%, working on giant slalom line, or learning to control anxiety.

Lifestyle goals indicate what racers need to do in their general lifestyl to reach the above goals, e.g., develop better sleeping habits, eating better, or being more disciplined studying.

As can be seen, these goals are incremental and progressive from the bottom to the top. In other words, the lower goals lead step-by-step to the higher goals.

Goal Guidelines

In setting goals, it is important to follow several guidelines to maximize their value. First, goals should be challenging, but realistic and attainable. That is, they should be reachable, but only with hard work. Goals that are too easy or too hard have little usefulness because they will be reached without effort or are unreachable even with extreme effort, respectively.

Second, goals should be specific and concrete. For example, an ineffective goal is “I want to get stronger”, whereas a useful goal is “I want to increase my bench press 20% in the next three months”. They also should be objective, tangible, measurable, and be time-limited.

Third, athletes should focus on the degree, rather than absolute attainment, of goals. Inevitably, not all goals will be reached, but there will almost always be improvement toward a goal. By emphasizing measurable improvement, changes in performance can be followed and progress can be rewarded.

Finally, goals should be examined and updated regularly. Some goals may turn out to be too easy and must be made more difficult. Other goals are too hard and must be eased. Also, goal setting is a process, there really is no end. When one goal is reached, a new higher goal should be established. In addition, there does not need to be a goal for every aspect of performance all of the time. There are times when certain areas should be stressed and others should be de-emphasized.

Micro-Goals

In addition to the macro-goals described above, racers can improve their motivation and the quality of their training on a daily basis by setting micro-goals. These goals specify exactly what the athletes want to accomplish every time they train. Coaches may assist racers in developing micro-goals by simply asking them what they are working on before each training session. If the racers do not know, they shouldn’t be allowed to train until they have a particular objective in mind. Micro-goals are an excellent means of helping athletes stay focused during training and increasing the quality and decreasing the quantity of training.

The role of the coach in the goal setting process is critical. Young racers often do not have the experience or objectivity to set appropriate goals. Coaches can provide guidance as to the specific goals to which racers should aspire, assist them in developing realistic, challenging, and measurable goals, and help them monitor their progress.

DEVELOPING AN OFF-SNOW SKI IMAGERY PROGRAM

Ski Imagery is one of the most powerful tools racers have to enhance the quality of their competitive preparation and performances. It is used by virtually all great ski racers and research has shown that, when combined with actual training, increases performance more than training alone. Ski Imagery may be used prior to and during the racer season and can provide mental, physical, and technical benefits. Coaches may make Ski Imagery sessions a part of training and help the athletes to develop their own Ski Imagery programs. These programs may be organized in team meetings during pre-season training.

Set Imagery Goals

Coaches may assist racers in deciding what they want to focus on in their Ski Imagery. Athletes may have a significant technical flaw that needs to be improved. They may want to improve their self-confidence or other mental area. Some component of overall performance may be the emphasis such as being more consistent or more attacking.

Climb Competitive Imagery Ladder

Racers must create a competition ladder of races in which they will be competing in the upcoming season. The ladder should start with the least important races and increase through more important races up to the most important race in which they will compete. Ski Imagery is then begun at the lowest level of the competition ladder. Racers should stay at that rung until they can reach their Ski Imagery goal. When that is achieved, they should stay at that step for several imagery sessions to reinforce positive, images, thoughts, and feelings. Racers then should work their way up the ladder until they reach their Ski Imagery goal at the top of the ladder.

Race-Specific Ski Imagery

Racers should not imagine themselves racing on some hill in some race at some time. Rather, they should choose a particular competition, event, and race site, e.g., Nor-Am slalom at Vail. Racers can then select a different race for every Ski Imagery session, thus reaching their Ski Imagery goals on different hills and in varying events and conditions. One thing that must be emphasized to racers is that races, sites, and conditions should be appropriate to their competitive levels.

Ski Imagery Sessions

Ski Imagery sessions should be done 3-4 times per week. Ski Imagery should not be done too often because, as with any type of training, racers can get burned out on it. A quiet, comfortable area where they will not be disturbed should be set aside. Each session should last about 10 minutes. Racers may expect to see some results in 6-8 weeks.

Ski Imagery Journal

One difficulty with Ski Imagery is that, unlike physical training, the results are not tangible. An effective way to deal with this problem is for racers to keep a Ski Imagery journal. These logs should record key aspects of every imagery session including the quality of the imagined performance, any thoughts and feelings that occur, problems that emerged, and what they need to work on for the next session. Ski Imagery journals enable racers to see progress in their imagery, thereby making it more rewarding.

Enhancing Ski Imagery Quality

Imagine realistic conditions. It is important that racers imagine themselves performing under realistic conditions. That is, if racers are seeded farther back and the courses are usually rough, they should imagine themselves on rough courses. They should only imagine themselves racing under ideal conditions if they usually start in the early seeds. Racers should always do imagery under those conditions in which they normally compete.

Imagine realistic performance. Racers should focus on skiing well rather than perfectly in their imagery. For example, junior racers imagining themselves skiing under tough conditions should not see themselves skiing flawlessly like a World Cupper. Instead, they should picture themselves skiing within their ability and coping well with the difficulties.

ON-SNOW MENTAL EDGE TRAINING

Some of the most effective Mental Edge training can be done on the hill during regular free skiing and gate training. Incorporating Mental Edge skills into on-snow preparation will enhance the quality of the training and reinforce the value of the Mental Edge training to the racers.

On-Snow Ski Imagery

Ski Imagery can be useful at three phases of gate training. First, typically after you have given feedback following a training run, racers will say they understand and head to the lift. How well the instruction sinks in questionable. In order to ensure that racers really process the feedback, have them close their eyes and imagine themselves doing the technical change for 15 seconds. This practice serves two purposes. It increases the likelihood that they will remember the instruction. Also, since visual information transfers to the muscles better than verbal information, the imagery will enhance the learning of the skill. Additionally, if racers have a good run, they should mentally review the run so they will remember the feelings associated with it.

Second, racers spend more time riding lifts than skiing. That time on the lift is usually spent talking, i.e., wasting time. Instead, racers can use the lift ride to increase the quality of their training. On the ride up, they can close their eyes and imagine themselves on the next training run doing the new skill. This will further ingrain your feedback and facilitate the learning process.

Third, racers should use imagery just prior to their next training run. Before leaving the gate, they should briefly imagine what they want to work on that run. This further ingrains the new skill and establishes effective concentration for the run.

Skiwords

Maintaining concentration when working on technique is one of the biggest difficulties racers have during training. Typically, at the end of a training run, coaches will provide some kind of lengthy technical instruction. However, it is likely that the racers can not retain the entire instruction they were just given and, often, they forget what they are working on by the time they reach the start of the next training run.

In addition, even if racers are thinking about the new skill in the starting gate, as soon as they leave the gate, other more salient factors such as speed, fear, and finishing the course may push the new technique out of their mind. Quite simply, if racers are not thinking about the skill during free skiing or training, they will not work on it. If they don’t work on it, they will not learn it.

Coaches can assist the learning process with the use of skiwords. After the detailed instruction, coaches should reduce the information to one or two words. For example, from a discussion of body rotation, the skiword, “counter” could be used. Then, during free skiing and gate training, racers may go through a skiword learning progression.

The first step in this progression is for racers to say the skiword outloud repeated during free skiing and training. This repetition ensures that the skiword and the corresponding technique are remembered and practiced. Once the racers are able to execute the skill while saying the skiword out loud, they can then say the skiword to themselves. The ultimate goal of this strategy is for racers to be able to do the skill without conscious thought. When this occurs, they will have mastered the skill and will be able to use the technique effectively in races.

Pre-Training Run Routines

Similar to on race day, it is useful for racers to develop a routine in preparation for each training run. Too often, racers are not adequately ready physically or mentally to have a quality training run. This results in poor training, little learning, and inefficient use of training time.

A sound pre-training run routine should leave racers totally prepared to have a training run that will further their development. Table 1 describes a basic pre-training run routine that may be used to enhance gate training.

There are several benefits of using on-snow Mental Edge training that includes ski imagery, skiwords, and pre-training run routines. It facilitates the development of skills in racers. It also enables coaches to increase the quality and decrease the quantity of training. Finally, it will result in better competitive performances and greater enjoyment and satisfaction for the racers.

PLACING DEMANDS ON YOUNG ATHLETES

Self-esteem is the single most important thing that young people need to develop in order to be happy, successful, and productive adults. Unfortunately, most people have a misconception about how to best develop self-esteem. Many people think that this is accomplished by constantly reinforcing, encouraging, and supporting children. This approach, however, does not develop confident people. Rather, it creates individuals who are dependent upon people and feel good about themselves only when reinforced by others.

The fact is that life, whether in ski racing or the “real world” can be difficult and stressful. It can be lonely and punitive. As an adult, there is not always someone there to pick a person up and pat them on the back. If they can not pick themselves up, they are probably going to stay down. So it is important to teach young people how to do just that. This is the basis for developing self-esteem.

Self-esteem emerges by challenging young people and providing them with skills that they may use to meet those challenges. Thus, people with high self-esteem are those who have the confidence to expose themselves to challenges and possess the coping skills to effectively master these difficult experiences.

The tough question is: “How do we help young people to develop these skills?”. The answer to that is by placing expectations and demands on them. Children do not naturally know to what level they should aspire. So they look to adults like parents, coaches, and teachers to give them feedback about their expectations and their performances. Starting out, they are probably going to work until it becomes a little uncomfortable, then stop. If you, as coaches, don’t tell them that was not enough, they are going to conclude that that was far enough.

An essential lesson I have learned in my work with young athletes is that young people must learn to make choices. Moreover, in order to make choices, it is necessary to have alternatives from which to choose. Too many people these days do not make choices. Rather, they simply do what they have been brought up to believe they should do. It is important for you to provide the experiences from which children can make informed decisions about the life they lead. For example, young people can not decide whether they want to work hard in their ski racing unless they have, in fact, experienced pushing themselves to their limits. It is essential that they know what it is like to give 100% effort, to try their hardest. Once they have, they can then make a choice. I should point out that it is okay if they decide not to work their hardest. Not everyone has to be a superstar. There is great value in being a good friend, husband, or mother. The important thing is that they make an informed decision in the direction they choose to take their life.

What kinds of expectations should be placed on young people? They should not be ability-based demands. Due to heredity, people have only a certain amount of ability, whether intelligence or athleticism, and they have little control over it. Moreover, I have known many people who were very bright or physically gifted, but they were not happy or successful. One difficulty for these people is that these abilities enabled them to succeed without expending much effort. To them, they did not have to do much to succeed. As a result, they had difficulty taking ownership of their successes, it was not really them succeeding.

As a result, the demands placed on the young people should be effort-based. These types of expectations are those that should emphasized. Learning the relationship between effort and results is one of the most valuable lessons people can learn because, though a cliche, the value, the satisfaction, the joy that comes from success does not come from the result, but rather from the process. Also, since effort is controllable, people can take ownership of their successes, they can say I did it.

People think that since I am a psychologist, I believe in being very supportive and caring toward young people. However, this is not entirely true. As I have said earlier, placing demands on them is most important and I encourage coaches to do so. However, this approach can be as damaging as it can constructive. Before the demands are placed on the young people, you must explain to them that you are going to be tough on them. They must understand that you are not doing it because you hate them and think them a bad person. Rather, it is because you care for them, see something worthwhile in them, and want to help them bring that something special out. By explaining what you are going to do beforehand, racers will not waste a lot of negative energy hating you. Also, you will be joining them in a partnership to help them explore the limits of their ability.

Once this foundation has been established and the understanding is there, then it is your responsibility to place those demands on the young person strictly and consistently. It should be pointed out, also, that being tough does not mean being punitive. It does not mean being derogatory and humiliating. Rather, being tough means setting standards and not allowing young people to stop until those standards have been met. By consistently applying these demands, young people will learn the relationship between effort and performance and, hopefully, internalize the great value in trying their hardest.

This, in my view, should be the goal of coaches: teaching young people to discover what they are truly capable of. Having them learn that successful people are not those who are the smartest, most talented, or the best athletes, but rather are those who understand the meaning of effort and strive to do their best in every area of their life. Showing young people that true joy and satisfaction comes not in achieving a goal, but rather in striving for it.

RESPONSIBLE RACE SELECTION

One of the most difficult tasks for coaches from the development level to the World Cup is seeing that their athletes develop in a consistent and progressive manner. This process involves many decisions such as what is the appropriate level of off-season physical training, how much gate training do they need, and how often should racers compete in order to reach their developmental goals. The latter issue, namely, race selection, may be the most important issue because competition is the bottom line in a ski racer’s life.

Why Responsible Race Selection?

Responsible race selection is critical because the competitive season is very long and physically demanding. This problem was illustrated by a recent member of the U.S. Ski Team who, in one year, had 60 FIS starts and became one of the top young racers in the world. Unfortunately, the next year he slumped considerably and developed a chronic injury that has sidelined him indefinitely.

Racing too much can cause fatigue, produce burnout, and, as demonstrated above, result in injury and illness. This is especially important because most of the important races are at the end of the year. It is all too common for racers to say “I can’t wait for these races to be over with” or “The season is almost over, great”. This is not a good attitude to have entering key races. Rather, racers need to maintain their attitude, motivation, and health in order to perform well to the very end of the season.

When to Race

Racers should only compete when a race meets certain criteria. As a general rule, races should serve a specific purpose in fulfilling racers’ seasonal goals. More specifically, first, racers should compete when they need more race experience. Second, they should race when they need a start for qualification purposes. Third, when they have the opportunity to race against their peers or to gauge their progress. Fourth, competing is advisable when racers need some starts under their belts before an important race series. Finally, keep in mind that races should provide positive learning experiences for the athletes that benefits their development.

When Not to Race

Racers should never compete to build their confidence. Confidence does not come from competing, it comes from sound preparation. Typically then, racers will come out of a “confidence-building” race with less confidence than they had before.

Racers should never enter a race because they know they will win. This is, in fact, a no-win situation. If they win, little is gained because they are expected to win. If they lose, it can be a severe blow to their confidence.

Racers should never compete unless they are totally prepared to ski their best. If they are not totally prepared, either mentally or physically, they will not ski well and the experience will hurt them.

Racers should never enter a race to break out of a slump. If a racer is in a slump, racing is not the way to get out of it. The pressure they place on themselves to break out of the slump will almost ensure that they will not ski well. Rather, racers get out of slumps by relieving themselves of the pressure, understanding why they are in the slump, and, through proper training, progressively raising their level of skiing.

Finally, racers should never race for no reason, just for the sake of racing. Invariably, motivation will be low and poor skiing will be inevitable.

In sum, coaches should, in planning a racer’s competitive schedule, consider these criteria and carefully select races that will facilitate the racer’s long-term development. Ultimately, coaches should follow one basic rule: racers should only compete when they have more to gain than lose.

THE IMPORTANCE OF REST

Rest is perhaps the most under-rated training tool at a coach’s disposal. It is an absolutely critical part of any effective training program, yet it is often over-looked by coaches and racers alike. A common mentality that has emerged from the “nose to the grind” attitude is that more is better, for example, if four miles of running is good, six will be better; if 10 runs of slalom is good, 15 will be better.

Athletes are conditioned to believe that not training is a sign of weakness. Typical fears about rest held by athletes (and some coaches) include “I will lose my timing”, “I will get out of shape”, I will forget how to ski”, and “I am lazy if I don’t train”. Yet, as exercise physiologists have demonstrated, rest following a period of training is the time when the actual physical gains are made. This is when the body, which has been broken down from training, can repair and build itself beyond its previous level.

Rest as Part of Training and Competition

Rest is as important to competitive preparation as physical, technical, and mental training. Rest influences every aspect of an athlete’s performance: (1) physical condition (strength, flexibility, endurance); (2) mental state (confidence, anxiety, concentration, motivation); (3) ability to handle pressure; and (4) enjoyment in training and competition.

In addition to the wear-and-tear of training, the pressure of regular racing schedule and daily stressors unrelated to sports will also wear athletes down. Regular rest guards against the accumulated long-term effects of the grind of the competitive season. Even if racers do not feel tired does not mean they do not need rest.

Warning Signs

There four clear symptoms of the need for rest that coaches should watch for in their racers. First, racers who are always tired, yawning a lot, falling a sleep in the van, and dragging to training. Second, a loss of enjoyment, interest, and motivation to train is a sure sign of the need for rest. Third, lingering illness and injury that won’t quite go away suggests that the body does not have sufficient resources to repair itself at its current pace.

Incorporate Rest into Training

Coaches can show athletes the importance of rest by making rest a regular part of the training regimen. This can be accomplished in several ways. Mandatory rest days can be scheduled once a week. The Monday after a weekend of races is common. The intensity of training should also be varied depending upon the time of season, the upcoming race schedule, and how the racers are feeling. This process, called periodization, is the new wave in training technology.

Racers should also take extra days off following a stressful period of training or racing. For example, following a race series of six races in eight days, coaches should close training for at least three days. Coaches, if necessary, should force their athletes to rest even if they do not feel tired. Finally, coaches should plan time off about three weeks before a major race series or end of the season races. This will ensure that the racers are fresh and fired up for these races.

Finally, one of the most important lessons coaches can teach their racers is to listen to their body. Our bodies are very good at telling us when we need to back off. The most difficult thing is to get racers to be aware of these signals and to act on them.

TALK TO YOUR ATHLETE

Understanding your athletes is one of a coach’s primary responsibilities. Knowing racers’ needs, what motivates them, and what is happening in their lives is critical to your work with them. This, however, is not an easy task. You can not read minds and there are often a large number of athletes in your training group. Keeping track of them is a job in itself. But this information is essential for you in order to enhance their ski racing experience.

Essential Information

What information do you need to know to best serve your athletes? You need to know about their needs in training, at races, as part of the team, and issues going on off the hill.

1. Since off-season training and preparation is typically the foundation of competitive season, you want to understand your athletes’ motivational needs. Do they need to be pushed hard by you, encouraged and supported very positively, paired with a motivated athlete, or can they be left alone because they are self-motivated?

2. An important part of leading a team or training group is maintaining harmony and reducing conflict. Knowing the interpersonal needs of your athletes will benefit them by making the team experience more positive and you by having everyone get along better. So for each athlete, you want to know how they best fit into the team. Do they like to be alone or around teammates, who are their friends on the team, and what communication problems and conflicts do they have with teammates?

3. While training on-snow, you want to make sure that the coaching you give each athlete is understood. So you want to ask them what their learning style is. Do they learn best with verbal, visual, or kinesthetic instruction? Do they need to be given technical cues to remind them of what they are working on?

4. On race day, your interaction with the athletes can significantly affect how they perform. But it is not often clear what you should do with them. For example, in the start area, does the athlete like to be talked to or left alone? Does he or she like to be given some technical, motivational, or performance cues? Does the athlete want radio course reports before their start? Since the pre-start period is critical to their race performance, this is information that is important for you to know.

5. Finally, athletes are not in a vacuum while on the hill. Issues that are present off the hill will certainly influence their skiing. So you should make an effort to understand each athlete’s life away from the team including family and social relationships, health concerns, and school performance.

Obtaining the Information

In order to understand your athletes fully, you need clear information that you can best obtain by placing the onus on them. That is, give them the opportunity to supply you with the necessary information. You can get this useful information by having them complete a brief questionnaire, which I call the Talk to Your Coach Questionnaire (see Appendix A). You may then study at your leisure. It is also useful to put each athlete’s information on an index card that you may refer to quickly and easily.

1. What motivates you most in training?

2. What are the most common types of conflicts that arise within the team?

3. Who are your friends on the team and with whom do you not get along?

4. Which type of instruction do you learn from best: verbal, visual, kinesthetic, or a combination?

5. What should and shouldn’t I do in the start area to help you prepare for your race (talked to or left alone, given technical cues, radio reports)?

6. What are some things occurring in your life off the hill that I should know to help me work with you best (e.g., family, social, school, health)?

START AREA MANAGEMENT

The time that racers spend in the start area is the most crucial period of race preparation. What they think, feel, and do in the start area will dictate how well they perform in the race. Due to this importance, coaches can help ensure that each athlete is optimally prepared.

Racers have three goals in the start area before a race. First, their equipment should be ideally tuned and prepped. Second, their bodies must be warmed up and at an optimal level of intensity. Third, they must be confident in their ability and focused on performing their best in the race.

There are several key factors that will either help or hinder racers’ preparation in the start area. The first question is: where in the start area can they best accomplish their preparation? This will depend largely on their concentration style. If they tend to think too much, they should stay amid all the activity of the start area and get prepared. If they tend to be distracted by the activity, they should go off by themselves to prepare.

Next, racers must decide what they need to do to be totally prepared. As just discussed, there are three major areas, but within each of them, every athlete has particular things they like to do. For example, each racer may have specific exercises he or she likes to do to get physically ready. Coaches should assist their racers to develop structured routines that enable the athletes to fully prepare themselves in the three areas.

Racers then need to determine who they must interact with and what they should avoid in their preparation. They should only interact with those individuals in the start area who can facilitate their preparation, for example, coaches and race technicians. Conversely, racers should identify who and what they should avoid that might interfere with their preparation such as chatty racers, officials, and unwanted course information.

In sum, coaches should assist their racers in identifying what they need to do to be totally prepared to ski their best. Racers may then develop a start area management plan that enables them to control these factors, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will have their best race.

POST-SEASON COACH EVALUATION

As coaches know from their work with athletes, improvement in any particular area comes from being made aware of a weakness and then working on improving it. Despite this knowledge, coaches are themselves rarely evaluated in any organized and systematic manner as a means of developing their abilities. Moreover, even more rarely is feedback obtained from those individuals who are the recipients of the coaches’ skills, namely, the racers.

A common practice that occurs within the field of higher education is the evaluation of teachers by students. This information is used as constructive feedback for the future development of the teacher and in hiring and promotion procedures. This same process could be used to the benefit of the profession of coaching and the sport of ski racing as a whole.

Drawing on the teacher evaluation form used in the School of Psychology at Nova University, adapting a form for ski coaching would assess performance in a variety of areas on a five-point scale (1: poor; 2: below average; 3: average; 4: good; 5: excellent). Along with each numerical rating, a section for comments would enable racers to provide specific feedback to the coaches.

1. Coaching knowledge – The depth and breadth of knowledge that the coach possesses in the areas of technique, physical and mental training, and equipment.

2. Manner and explanation – The ability of the coach to clearly convey relevant information to athletes.

3. Enthusiasm and stimulation – The amount of energy and love for the sport that the coach brings to his or her coaching responsibilities.

4. Attitude toward the athletes – The manner in which the coach treats the athletes in terms of respect, concern, and discipline.

5. The coach generally – How the athlete views the coach in general.

In addition to these assessments by the racers, other important areas of coaching performance could be evaluated by the program director and head coach. Of particular note are the coaches’ off-hill responsibilities including organizational and administrative capabilities, interpersonal skills with other staff members, parents, and the ski industry, and intrapersonal attributes such as initiative and time management skills.

In taking this approach, it is important for coaches to view this process for the positive and constructive value it has rather than being perceived as threatening. In fact, using such an systematic approach to coach evaluation would benefit coaches by removing potential arbitrariness and subjectivity from the decision-making process in hiring, pay raises, and promotions. On a more personal level, it would enable coaches to obtain clear information that they could use to improve their coaching.

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