Thursday, July 22, 2010

Mirror Neurons II, Putting it into practice, and some examples

So we're back to talking about Mirror Neurons and their applicability to more effective athletic training. In my last entry on this subject, we looked at the concept and the science behind it, albeit in layman's terms. If you buy into the science and the experiences of those who've benefitted from it, then it's pretty hard to deny the value of learning to utilize techniques to leverage this innate skill.

So now it's time to talk about how the rubber meets the road. How to put these principles into practice, both as a coach and as an athlete? For me, long before I was ever formally introduced to the science behind the process, I would dub my favorite music onto VHS tapes of world cup racing. At the time, back in the mid to late eighties, finding world cup footage was pretty difficult. Outside of the Olympics, skiing wasn't often broadcast in the US, and recording shows in Europe still presented the problem of getting their PAL format translated to something our US VCR's could understand. Can't tell you exactly how I got a ton of world cup skiing footage back then, but let's just say that I did, and that where there's a will, there's a way.

So I would dub the music onto the tapes. At first, this was inspired by a deep desire to shut out Beattie's color commentary, but I had apparently tapped into yet another powerful organic learning technique. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I spent hours and hours watching the best in the world, to my favorite music, again and again, in the comfort of my own home. Then I started taking the music with me on the hill. Remember when dinosaurs roamed and they first invented the Sony Walkman for cassette tapes? Yeah, that's me in that picture... I skied a lot in the spring at A-Basin in those days.. the ski season high in the mountains of Colorado often stretched well into June. When the music played, all of the repetition of correct ski racing movement patterns that I had "experienced" courtesy of my mirror neurons would come to the surface and onto the hill. My learning ceased being incremental at that point and started to consistently take quantum leaps and bounds. To be sure I worked very hard at everything I was supposed to... but then again so do a lot of people. I'm telling you I would not have gotten to the level I got to, not even close, without the video repetition.

Of course, learning this way isn't the ONLY way to learn. I share it with you here simply because the nature of our sport in particular (e.g. limited time spent actually doing the movement to be learned itself) demands that we utilize these built in learning mechanisms. Ironically, very ironically, the hardest part to grasp, ESPECIALLY for those coaching types whose teaching styles have perhaps unwittingly over the years fallen into patterns supporting their job security, ---is how easy and natural the process is.

Like anything else that utilizes the innate plasticity of our brains, developing the ability to learn by seeing... can itself be learned, developed, honed, perfected. It is much like, nay, EXACTLY like, the acquisition of language. Proper movement is like proper grammar. Eventually you get to a point where, if it sounds right, it IS right. Same with athletics, body movement, skiing, and ski racing in particular. As with language, over time the practitioner gets to the point where if the body's "grammar" feels right, it IS right.

And it is so much easier to employ these techniques these days, people. We live in a high bandwidth, zero transaction cost, information rich society. For our purposes (addressing coaches here), that means there are no excuses for not delivering these learning tools directly to wherever our student's laptops reside. In my world, Universal Sports is the biggest thing since sliced bread. On demand, any time, all the time. Wow! I simply turn their sound on zero, plug my laptop into my big screen, and jam out to whatever my current taste in music happens to be.

Its important to remember the "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink" concept. You can't set athletes in front of a video screen and order them to utilize their mirror neurons "or else.." If the viewer isn't interested or motivated, the action is pointless. Mirror neurons require that the viewer have "interest" in what they are seeing. And as you may have guessed the intensity of one's interest can run the full spectrum from ice cold, to tepid, to hot, etc. That's why I strongly recommend taking that extra step and personalizing the individual student's videos with music of their choice. Even better, far better, if the students take it upon themselves to do it themselves. From ownership comes empowerment, from empowerment, motivation, and from motivation... interest. Follows is a video I made that I linked on the Loon Race Team website. NEXT ENTRY: "Balance is not a body position."


Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Zen and the art of ski racing



Recently I've been helping a friend of mine with organizing her yoga retreats, and in doing so, did some focused research (I google'd it..) on yoga travel and the marketing mix of retreats in general. My friend is looking to go international, and having run a few summer race camps overseas and out of country over the years, I thought there would be some knowledge to share. Sure enough, my Macbook Pro yielded its usual window to the world of internet knowledge, and first up was an interesting article published fairly recently in the New York Times about the proliferation of yoga studios beyond spas and retreat centers to mainstream hotels and more traditional resort venues.

This article was helpful in several ways to both my friend and I. As for my yoga friend, it was something of an affirmation to see an article from THE Newspaper of Record pointing out the expansion of an industry niche that precisely fits the business plan upon which she is about to embark. The fact that increasing numbers of mainstream destination hotels are now calibrating their resources to sync up with traveling yoga practitioners can only mean that my friend will have lots more venues at which to plan the perfect yoga experience 'neath skies untouched by city lights, or looking out over the azure waters of Bora Bora... and so on. I'll be the first to sign up, and in fact we are in the beginning stages of creating another something of a first: Skiing and Yoga retreats. Stay tuned.

One thing in the article that caught the attention of yours truly was the mention of a former contemporary of mine: Kristen Ulmer. Ulmer was what I can safely say was an early adopting big mountain skier who in her day could pretty much outski all but a handful of skiers on the planet, men included. To me, the stuff she did still seems incredible, nay, impossible. But, there she is, alive and well, to tell us all about it. Anyway, it seems Kristin has been pursuing a little niche of her own with her company "Ski to Live," which bills itself as "Powerful mindset training for sports and business..." This is the PERFECT transition for someone who made a big name for themselves in the sport, and believe me, she did. What caught my attention was her website's claim that her clinics utilize "world famous Zen Master Genpo Roshi's Big Mind process.. "

As a former world cupper myself who, believe me, read every book under the sun about far eastern philosophy and Zen in particular, this intrigued me greatly. In looking back, my whole competitive ski career organized itself around bringing far eastern ways of knowing into my own practice of the sport that I hold so dear, and, now that I'm fortunate enough to work with young people who are taking on the sport for themselves, I'm able to attempt bringing what I learned into their lives.

So I take such claims with great skepticism. Zen is a buzzword like "fine Corinthian leather..." Show me the money, the beef, the proof in the pudding, etc. I couldn't find anything that Kristin actually wrote or recorded that would betray her deep understanding of satori, other than her beautiful skiing itself, which to be fair is as Zen as it gets, so I guess I will have to sign up for one of her clinics at Alta or Snowbird. She also offers one hour phone counseling.

Neither am I prepared (yet) to fork out $$ for Genpo Roshi's DVD's...

I must tell you that I, a teacher of skiing, do not teach skiing. To clarify.. it does not come from me, not directly anyway. It just doesn't work that way. Rather, I prefer to imagine my role more as facilitator, one who has traveled the path extensively who is able to show the way to those just starting out upon it. I am not the power out there on the mountain. To be sure, the ideas I share about the process may have tremendous power, but those come through me (not from me), and that's another story. No, the real power out there is the mountain, the environment, the large forces that those who are out there in the environment are not only experiencing, but creating, in real time. Further, skiing is all about becoming always aligned with those forces. Hence, skiing has always been one of the great vehicles to understand life: develop an awareness of that which is your world, your reality, then learn your place.. the space you occupy within it, and finally, come into power with it and learn to be wholly creative in, about, and for your own universe. Phew! Or something like that.

When I'm training ski coaches and athletes alike, I find the teacher student relationship remains cleanly defined by this, one of my oft quoted mantras: "The teacher's job is to shine a clarifying light on the path, but the student's job is to actually walk it.." In this regard, everyone has a light to shine.. because everyone has their own unique path to share...

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Back from Hood. Lots of data to process. Some notes.


I'll finish up on mirror neurons from the last post, but before I do, some words about the past two weeks. I've been up at Mt. Hood for the past ten days or so, and it's been a long while since I've skied there. For some reason, after I graduated past the development team, we were always going off to New Zealand or S. America. Certainly cost is an issue, but gosh, you can get an awful lot done at Hood with the proper chemical broadcasting apparatus....

Gone are the glacially slow double chairs that begin to turn at 6:30 or so every morning for coaches and staff, 7:00 for everyone else. Detachable quads have taken their place (yes, this is NEW to me...) Also gone are any traces that skiers are the only snowsports participants who want to partake of Oregon's delicious summer snow. Truth... there's a lot of snowboarders up there... lots of camps with buses emblazoned with Nike, Rebok, etc... big names, for a big sport with big money; a great sport to "be seen" in. Very exciting times continue for boarders and their ilk, but the whole counter-culture appeal thing seems long gone. To me, the leading edge of fashion is something that hits you and gets your attention, without giving rise to nausea. There are so many baggy snowpants, dreads, and Dirk Diggler sunglasses now that, gasp, I really don't even see them any more... they're not on my radar. They've also installed several hand tows in and around the parks, so really, the boarding culture is seen but not felt in the lift lines. I like having them there... Their focus on creativity is actually something I think that's undervalued in the sport of alpine ski racing. No doubt this opinion of mine will come out as my posting continues. Hopefully you'll agree in time.

Regardless of how you feel about those who don't slide around on skis, the things that those in x-sports do remain quite spectacular, at least to me. The sport appears to have matured to the point where those who are in it to make a fashion statement only will soon be looking for the next thing that grabs people's attention with clothing, as opposed to miraculous body control and such. When that happens (e.g. form following function rather than the other way around) I'll be even more of a fan.

One thing that hasn't changed at Hood is the snow. Although I haven't been there in over two decades, there seemed to be no sign of global warming. Granted, the end of June is a fabulous time to partake of Hood, but, generally the snowpack this summer season seemed deep enough to last for a good long while.

Salted snow. As I mentioned in a previous post, Hood has a rather unique snow composition, at least to the uninitiated. On a typical 60+ degree day with the sun high in the sky, you can expect a couple of runs in the morning that will either be frozen or will have a nice thin layer of melt on top of mature corn. It's very fun and easy to ski. The thickness of that layer rapidly deepens however, especially towards the bottom of the mountain, and soon it's pretty apparent that the best natural conditions are retreating "up" the mountain as the morning wears on. Most decent ski racers can, will, and should, tune into the conditions in which they find themselves training. Hood is no different... generally salted summer snow firms up OK, but will consistently peel away even with higher edge angles as the athletes challenge the lateral adhesion capacity of this type of snow. The result is a generally later and lower exit beneath the gate that can be pretty frustrating to the uninitiated, especially on the pitch of the upper half of the Palmer lift where most of the training lanes are. As the speeds increase, and exits get lower, most athletes will simply increase their edge angle for better grip (as would usually be effective with mid-winter ice conditions). This doesn't really work as well on summer salted snow. Apparently this hasn't changed.

So what, exactly, can one do? I mean, someone has to figure this snow out and win the race, as it were, and I would in any event assert that the whole point of our sport is to meet the variables present in the sport as they are, as opposed to how we wish they were. Indeed, this ideal is true for most sports.

I often analogize the Formula One race car approach for this type of situation. When Michael Schumacher has a hot surface, he's going to get more drift, all things being equal, out of the same amount of wheel turn. Professional that he is, no doubt he adjusts not only his line but his timing to accomodate this situation. Racers need to nurture this instinct, and trust it, before they tip out of the starting gate when the clock is on and it really matters.