The "mental game" of skiing

[Wade]

For me there is no mental game to skiing, at least the type of skiing I do
It's like breathing (well some of you might even focus on that!)
Never an off day, just days where conditions dictate new approaches or different gear. For me that's fun. I can only think of one day in the last couple decades where I quit early. The snow had the quality of Velcro and would literally stop you in your tracks when you came through that 'zone' on the mountain. I had nuth'n in the quiver for that!

The thread has kind of gone in a different direction, but just to be clear, my original question wasn't about having an off day. Other than the day I tore my knee up and broke my leg, I don't think I've ever had a bad day skiing.

I was trying to get at, for example, if I'm standing at the top of something that is challenging to ski, perhaps where there are consequences if I fall, I'd like to be able to ski more freely and trust my body to do what it needs to do to ski the run well. In those situations, I often find my mind defaulting to more technical thoughts (make sure I stay over my downhill ski, shoulders square to the fall line, having my hands in the correct position etc.) rather than just letting go and skiing the line I've picked.

I don't often have the same sort of issue on less challenging terrain. Maybe it's just something that's a safety blanket for me when there's a little fear in the mix.

 

[Xela]

Standing at the top of a cliff, I often experience the go, no-go decision in stark detail. There are the emotional factors: fear, desire, embarrassment, etc. There are rational factors: distance, snow quality, consequences of injury, little kid just did it, I did it last year, etc. Somehow, this mental soup yields a decision. If I do something, I often wonder what all the fuss was about. If I don't, sometimes I think about the chance not taken for months after. I guess if we were truly rational and injury-averse, we wouldn't ski much.

Contrast this to one time I was traversing some rocky, treed terrain along a single-track path. Suddenly, I come around a bend and there's a sizeable drop. No time to think. I just did it. No biggie.

 

[cantunamunch]

Weems' system is powerful but it can take a bit of getting used to and a fair bit of practice to sustain. (Not that it isn't worth it.)

If you want quick nonspecific* results that can help you achieve a more holistic mindset instead of a drills-technique-correction mindset, see if you can't find a copy of Denise McLuggage's The Centered Skier.

http://www.amazon.com/Centered-Skier-Denise-McCluggage/dp/0963248448

The book is 20 years old, sure, but nothing in it is out of date; you can read one chapter and go skiing or you can read the whole thing. You can even start at the last chapter and get something.

*I could list things like
- quicker changes in focus
- realising how perception affects focus
- shifting expectations and priorities more easily

but a priori goals are completely against the nature and tone of the book.

 

[Wade]

Weems' system is powerful but it can take a bit of getting used to and a fair bit of practice to sustain. (Not that it isn't worth it.)

If you want quick nonspecific* results that can help you achieve a more holistic mindset instead of a drills-technique-correction mindset, see if you can't find a copy of Denise McLuggage's The Centered Skier.

http://www.amazon.com/Centered-Skier-Denise-McCluggage/dp/0963248448

The book is 20 years old, sure, but nothing in it is out of date; you can read one chapter and go skiing or you can read the whole thing. You can even start at the last chapter and get something.

*I could list things like
- quicker changes in focus
- realising how perception affects focus
- shifting expectations and priorities more easily

but a priori goals are completely against the nature and tone of the book.

Thanks. Sounds perfect. Just ordered it.

 

[kickerfrank]

Golf and skiing have so many parallels! They both require expensive gear, they both get you outdoors with your friends, maybe you'll have a beer on the lift or in the golf cart... AND when you have that great run or a great hole you think "I'm really good at this! I'm finally reaching my potential.!" Then the next hole/run you come back to reality.
And that's why we love these sports.

 

[Tricia]

Golf and skiing have so many parallels! They both require expensive gear, they both get you outdoors with your friends, maybe you'll have a beer on the lift or in the golf cart... AND when you have that great run or a great hole you think "I'm really good at this! I'm finally reaching my potential.!" Then the next hole/run you come back to reality.
And that's why we love these sports.

Yup.
One of the things Weems used to say (maybe he still says it) - I want to suck at a higher level.

 

[Monique]

Yup.
One of the things Weems used to say (maybe he still says it) - I want to suck at a higher level.

Hmmm. I wonder where that originated (Weems?). Randy Brooks at Breck was repeatedly saying this to us last Saturday. "Yes, you suck, but at a higher level."

 

[Lorenzzo]

Wade...I've had instruction training in both sports. There's a key difference between the two. Golf is an initiation sport while skiing is reactive. They are both highly technical but with skiing it's easier for natural athleticism to flow in reaction while in golf there is more of a mental process before movements begin. Both require feeling different things, a departure from what comes naturally, for change and improvement to occur. There is a distinction between practice and playing in golf while in skiing it's about the same activity.

So in skiing carrying swing thoughts with you works better than when trying to score in golf. In skiing the next turn gives you an immediate mulligan. That said, in skiing, the more you can limit the number of things you"re working on at any one time, and the better the drills you can find so that you are less technically bogged down and more focused on a feeling or sensation, the better. Once you find the new feeling or sensation then you can see if it can be duplicated without technical thought.

 

[AmyPJ]

Yup.
One of the things Weems used to say (maybe he still says it) - I want to suck at a higher level.

That's all I want to do, too.

 

[Tricia]

Wade...I've had instruction training in both sports. There's a key difference between the two. Golf is an initiation sport while skiing is reactive. They are both highly technical but with skiing it's easier for natural athleticism to flow in reaction while in golf there is more of a mental process before movements begin. Both require feeling different things, a departure from what comes naturally, for change and improvement to occur. There is a distinction between practice and playing in golf while in skiing it's about the same activity.

So in skiing carrying swing thoughts with you works better than when trying to score in golf. In skiing the next turn gives you an immediate mulligan. That said, in skiing, the more you can limit the number of things you"re working on at any one time, and the better the drills you can find so that you are less technically bogged down and more focused on a feeling or sensation, the better. Once you find the new feeling or sensation then you can see if it can be duplicated without technical thought.

This is true. If someone is naturally athletic, he/she can hurl down the mountain feeling like the next the next gold medalist, without any skill or efficiency
In golf, you must have some skill and learn some technique in order to get any feeling of doing well.

 

[KingGrump]

Hmmm. I wonder where that originated (Weems?). Randy Brooks at Breck was repeatedly saying this to us last Saturday. "Yes, you suck, but at a higher level."

 

[Philpug]

The thread has kind of gone in a different direction, but just to be clear, my original question wasn't about having an off day. Other than the day I tore my knee up and broke my leg, I don't think I've ever had a bad day skiing.

I was trying to get at, for example, if I'm standing at the top of something that is challenging to ski, perhaps where there are consequences if I fall, I'd like to be able to ski more freely and trust my body to do what it needs to do to ski the run well. In those situations, I often find my mind defaulting to more technical thoughts (make sure I stay over my downhill ski, shoulders square to the fall line, having my hands in the correct position etc.) rather than just letting go and skiing the line I've picked.

I don't often have the same sort of issue on less challenging terrain. Maybe it's just something that's a safety blanket for me when there's a little fear in the mix.

How old are you? I know as I get older more and more of this comes into my head, it used to be "I can do this!"..to more now "Can I do this?" We are human and we know we have a mortality. It is something that I think we all fight with, some days more than others. I know I wish I had complete confidence in what can do and less what I think I can't do any more. For me as much as anything is being in the air, there is stuff I used to turn helicopters off of that I wouldn't think twice and now it has to be the ideal take off and landing and rarely will I get more than 1-2" feet if air. It it that interface between the shoulders and helmet.

 

[bbinder]

Weems' system is powerful but it can take a bit of getting used to and a fair bit of practice to sustain.

I have found that you can apply it to almost anything you do in life -- it helps to remind me to look at something from a different angle and when I do remember to use it, it helps me get 'unstuck'.

 

[Chris Geib]

Hmmm. I wonder where that originated (Weems?). Randy Brooks at Breck was repeatedly saying this to us last Saturday. "Yes, you suck, but at a higher level."

Don't know for certain, but have thus far heard it attributed to Bergie.

 

[Monique]

Don't know for certain, but have thus far heard it attributed to Bergie.

At the risk of sounding like (apparently) an ignoramus, but google isn't helping me here - who is Bergie?

/duck
/donthitme

 

[Chris Geib]

http://www.epicski.com/t/112548/one-of-the-great-ones-jerry-bergie-berg

 

[GerryF]

For me, there are points I try to ALWAYS keep in mind (balance, hand position, stance). But sometimes I try to just get in the moment & ski. Then, maybe on a specific trail, or if something presents itself, i'll stop and narrow my focus and work on something that on my short list.

 

[James]

f you want quick nonspecific* results that can help you achieve a more holistic mindset instead of a drills-technique-correction mindset, see if you can't find a copy of Denise McLuggage's The Centered Skier.

http://www.amazon.com/Centered-Skier-Denise-McCluggage/dp/0963248448

The book is 20 years old, sure, but nothing in it is out of date; you can read one chapter and go skiing or you can read the whole thing. You can even start at the last chapter and get something.

She just died this year in May. Her program was at Sugarbush. aka Mascara Mountain still at that time, late 70's, I think. Apparently she was also involved in starting what became Autoweek. She was a race car driver also.

John [Egan] yet had his brother by his side by the time he made it to the big screen, but he did pick up another partner in a way after reading a book that had just a much profound effect on his life.

“Denise McCluggage’s ‘Centered Skiing’ was so helpful out west,” he said about the book which features a mix of sports psychology and mediation in its approach to skiing. “I’d see these lines and I’d see the perfect run down through there, and I’d jump into that vortex and just do it.”

Centered skiing is at the core of John’s approach to life, a mountain zen of sorts. “It’s a way of thinking about skiing that gets the emotions and the kinesthetic lined up,” McCluggage told “Skiing Heritage” in 2004. When you watch skiers, the really good ones are in tune with the mountain.”

http://www.boston.com/sports/column...nd_john_egan_extreme_skiing_is_still_all.html

 

[bbinder]

She just died this year in May. Her program was at Sugarbush. aka Mascara Mountain still at that time, late 70's, I think. Apparently she was also involved in starting what became Autoweek. She was a race car driver also.


http://www.boston.com/sports/column...nd_john_egan_extreme_skiing_is_still_all.html

She did help start Autoweek -- she was a auto columnist for decades and a race car driver before that. As a driver, she was well respected by her peers, not an easy thing for a woman racer in that era. She was one of the greats.

 

[Warp Daddy]

FWIW I learned that if you.Practiced fundamentals in a PRACTICE session beforehand both in golf and skiing that when you are on the course or the hill in earnest JUST relax , don't think , just BE in the flow ., stay loose and in the moment .


Thinking while doing in many sports will mess you up , stuff like muscles and and nerves get all effed up and when you are tense it can get fugly quick . The time for analytics is in PRACTICE sessions imho