Overall - I think the biggest thing is confidence. In most cases you have the technique, just not the practice. So go practice at your speed and gain the confidence.
Yes. But don't tell me to fall. I'm in my sixties. I don't need to break a hip PRACTICING FALLS. If I'm breaking a hip, it better be because I really fell!
I'm not in a position to tell you to do anything. I just wanted to better understand what specifically was the basis of the fear..
Traverses scare me, and not in a fun way, way more than the actual skiing. .
No, I skied all over under Sacajawea last winter, both days. LOVED it! It was the steeps on Chief Joe side.Huh? You mean Sacajawea?
I don't have any help, but I do have a theory. A lot of us like to be a little bit ... not a lot, just a little ... scared by the terrain. If you aren't one of those people, you are going to focus on the fear and try to make it go away. But "staring" at the fear just makes it worse. Try to accept it and perform through it.
I will often tell my therapy clients something like this:
With practice comes skill,
With skill comes confidence.
I will also suggest imagining what your preferred emotional response to a stressful situation might be. If you were already the wise, experienced, capable person you most aspire to be, how would she deal with the situation? Practice that. Which leads to another favorite phrase: Being awesome takes practice.
So what's happening? We are adapted, exquisitely fine-tuned to be able to respond to perceived dangers or threats. Cortisol is a stress hormone, has a very useful function of enabling rapid thoughts and increased metabolism in order to be physically ready to react. A fabulous evolutionary adaptation, however harmful when done too much and too long. It's like being on "red alert," having the shields up and phasers charged and photon torpedoes loaded, all the time, which stresses the warp core reactor and destabilizes the matter-anti-matter containment field. (Forgive the Star Trek- speak.)
So what do you do?
Act as if you were calm and confident. Strike a powerful pose, like Wonder Woman or Superman. Breathe. Two minutes of that can lower your cortisol levels and thus lower your stress and anxiety. It can also increase testosterone, which is associated with confidence and dominance. Two minutes of this will be a much better result, than 30 minutes of paralysis, I'm willing to bet.
You probably do stuff that is way riskier in terms of speed, chances of direct impact, external factors on a mtn bike than on skis.
I get it, I get gripped in some places usually not because I can't do it but because the consequences are high, I could end in a crevasse or on a long slide. And the times I have ended up in a risky fall its usually because I've been too relaxed and not paying sufficient attention (plus sometimes sh*t happens like a binding breaks). I've no magic recipe other than knowing that thinking about it indefinitely doesn't help. & that there is no shame in stepping out of a line or opting for something easier - skiing is meant to be fun not an ordeal.
Yes, I visualize crashing, getting very hurt (and it doesn't help that I suffered a serious injury on skis in 2015.)Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but for the people who feel fear at the top of a steep run, what specifically are you scared of? Is it a fear that you could get hurt if you fall? Or something else?
My first question is, why ski the steeps that scare you? I know you ski with L3 instructors, but they should know better. In addition, they should have the courtesy to recognize your fear. My wife had never skied when we met and it took a couple years skiing greens before she progressed to blues and a few years more before she progressed to easier black trails. Then after skiing from a beginner level to seven years later, I felt she was ready to try steeps, bumps, etc. She does great but I do not expect her to ski steeps and I do not expect her to like the trails I ski. We mix it up. In fact, I often will take a run on steeps on my own to see if I think she can handle it then I coach her the first time. That strategy has worked out great. Now, when we met I was already and advanced skier and I never complained, rather I invested in her abilities. My suggestion would be to ski steepish trails that do not threaten you and learn to ski them well, then expose yourself to runs that are short but steeper and gain more confidence and technique. My wife used to sit back on steeps and I got her to drive her skis which made a huge difference.
BTW if the people you ski with shrug their shoulders then they are not showing respect for your attempts which is too bad. They need to be patient while to gain confidence and control.
How's your turn asymmetry after the boot and other work?
I'm going to hazard a guess that you are prone to stopping on steeps after the "good" turn for fear of being in more consequential terrain on the "bad" side, and then to start again, you have to make the "bad" turn from essentially a standstill. The "out" is then a traverse.
This isn't necessarily easy to see from the outside, because the adaptations that are covering the bad side are exposed by pitch, and that's where you tend to lose turn rhythm.
This also explains the mountain bike. Keep your preferred side in the control position on the pedals for descents and then you only have one edge and not two so no issue. Bet you still prefer MTB high edge turns to one side, though.
Just a hunch
I CAN tell by the responses from some of you, that you DO fall into the category of not understanding it at ALL. And that's OK. Maybe you can learn something that you can apply one of these days if you see someone panic
I won't speak for Amy, (I see she posted her comments relating to this above) But from my perspective, I showed an interest in doing more difficult terrain. Sometimes its not that you're uninterested in doing something that paralyzes you, its a matter of letting go of the paralysis.My first question is, why ski the steeps that scare you? I know you ski with L3 instructors, but they should know better. In addition, they should have the courtesy to recognize your fear.
So, I want to gather some really basic tools that I can use, then test them out. Whether it's a really loud yell (I'm pretty feisty) or just getting angry as all get out. I don't know.
What perplexes me is that the season prior, I was skiing a lot of stuff that last season, I panicked on.
I'm trying to get my head in the right place and start visualization