Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Motivating quotes

Rob handed me a massive publication of master skier, or something like that morphed into a full-on book, so instead of diligently doing student-stuff I read the interesting articles. Good stuff! I was struck by a couple quotes, that I decided to share with you all, if you're ever lacking motivation.

"You have to have the confidence to take the time to recover" - Billy Demong (gold medalist, 2010 Olympics)

He's right! Whenever you're taking days off, or easy weeks, or just not training, its easy to get overwhelmed by this fear that other people are doing stuff to make them faster, and you just have to trust yourself, and your coaches, that you're doing the right thing for YOU. Recovery is the only thing that makes you faster, training is just what you do to give your recovery something to work with.

"Ski like a climber would free-climb, make sure you have it right, focus." - Pete Vordenberg (head coach, USST)

He was talking about classic technique, and how you have to focus for every. single. stride. Never slip, because if you're free climbing and you slip, game over. Ok, so maybe skiing doesn't have quite the same consequences, but still, focus. Without focus, what are you achieving?

"For the amount of energy you put into each stride you need to make sure you are in the right position to eke out the most glide while having the patience and timing to make sure to maximize the free glide." -Caitlin Compton (CXC, Olympian 2010)

Caitlin was referring to uphill skiing, and hammering on three points: Body position, efficiency, strength-to-weight ratio. Body position is the fundamental skill underlying all of skiing - without good body position, you're going nowhere. Efficiency is what we work on every single day. Glide longer. Move smoother. Keep the skis sliding. Strength-to-weight ratio - that's training. We're increasing our fitness, because without fitness, hills look a heckuva lot bigger.

Motivated? Get out there and train, recover, repeat. Snow is falling up north, the ski season is around the corner. Are you ready?

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