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Ski Camp: Lake Placid Edition

The girls training group was giant, and so much fun!

A couple of weeks ago we wrapped up two weeks of training at the Olympic Training Facility in Lake Placid, New York.  Mary, Ben, Colin, and I joined up with skiers from the U.S. Ski Team, SMST2, the Green Team, BSF, and more, to put in some solid and intense training hours.  Highlight workouts of the camp consisted of some threshold intensity workouts, a quality bounding session up Whiteface, two time trials (a sprint race simulation and the Climb to the Castle), and a couple of ODs (a run up Mt. Marcy and a classic ski). Needless to say, I was pretty tired, but it was a happy tired.

So one of the main objectives of ski camps like this for athletes like m is purely to learn. The camp offers the chance to train with not only some of the fastest skiers in the country, but the world. These skiers have been through the ropes before; they know how to get sh** done. (Not to mention they're pretty darn awesome people to be around in general!)

Group shot after the last workout of camp

 For the sake of making a list (because who doesn't like lists??), here's some fun stuff I learned.

1. Technique

We worked on technique on almost every single workout. We watched videos of World Cup skiing before the workouts, and videos of ourselves after the workouts. All of the coaches were extremely helpful in giving us advice out on the roads, and we spent entire hours focused on striding, starting, double poling, skating, climbing, and bounding efficiently.  I learned that for me, it really helps to follow other skiers and mimic how they ski. The distance you cover flies away when you spend so much of it concentrating purely on your motions. 

Working on striding technique with Coach Pat biking next to us

2. How to climb a hill.

The second to last day of camp, we tackled the Climb to the Castle, a skate rollerski race up the roads on Whiteface, one of the highest peaks in the Adirondack mountains.  The race is a little over 5 miles long, and has legitimately no flats or downhills. Honestly, it was one of the hardest races I hae ever done and it's probably a good thing that I had no clue what was coming because I probably might have hidden in the woods to "accidentally" miss the start if I had. But if there's any time to figure out how to climb up a hill effectively when you're dead tired, that was it. Shoutout to Liz and Tim for dominating! 

Gorgeously vibrant views at the top of the climb..

I may or may not have thought this sign was lying.

So. Much. V1.

 3. How to inspire.

We had the opportunity to participate in a Fast and Female event, a program devoted to inspiring young girls to get out and be active, even if they aren't a part of an organized sport.  And it was so much fun! Even though the group was small, it gave us the chance to interact with the girls one-on-one, and hear about the girls' passions and dreams for the future.  The Champ Chat (question and answer session) helped me realize how much of an impact professional and amateur athletes can have on younger athletes, even if we don't realize it at the time. Our actions through training and every day life reflect how we reach our successes or failures. It's a pretty big, but pretty awesome responsibility. Oh. I also learned how to African dance, albeit not very successfully.

The group before the festivities began.

4. The East Coast isn't too bad of a place.

I'll let the picture below explain it. The rollerskiing in Lake Placid was some of the best I have ever experienced. Thanks to Ben's family for hosting us for dinner, and Colin's family for letting us stay with them on travel days!

 

5. How to tackle a Vermonster.
(I'm a little amazed at how disgusting I did not feel after eating all that ice cream. And cookies. And brownies. And candy.)

The complete list of everything involved in what we devoured.

Pre-pig-out.

 6. Home will always be home.
 After camp, I got to spend an amazing week at home seeing my family, best friends, and Sam. It really made me feel that no matter what part of life I am in, or where I am living, Minnesota will always hold a big chunk of my heart, and will always be my true home.

"Skiing Happy"

(Most of) the fam out on a hike sporting BeFAST (duh)

 Holy moley, who would have thought summer flies by so quickly? Between training and work and moving into a new apartment, I've hardly had time to sit down and think, let alone write a blog post! So my apologies.  Let's see, what's been going on? Earlier this August I was lucky enough to have my whole family + Sam come out and visit. We did some hikes, had dinner at the Unser's (my host fam's) house, spent a day up at Redfish, and had quality fam time. It was awesome to see them and be able to show them around Ketchum. 


Training has been going well, last weekend a few of us bagged Decker Peak and were treated to some pretty gorgeous views of the Sawtooths. Major credit for me making it through the 6.5 hours goes to the Stanley Bakery for the delicious and very large pre-hike breakfast, as well as Matt for bringing a water purifier wand-thingy (I learned the hard way that a camelbak is basically a must-have when you live out West).

So.  Now for my super nerdy psychology rant/sidetrack. Last spring I took a class on Sports Psychology, and for my final paper I decided to research the relationship between emotions and performance.  For your sake I'll try to make this short, but BASICALLY what I found was that positive emotions broaden our attention and decrease our awareness of the possibility and consequences of failure.  This facilitates automatic processing in our brains, by reducing the strain on our working memory to complete sport behaviors (i.e. technique and skill execution).  Automatic processing is basically when rules and motions of a sport's actions become so mentally and physically ingrained that an athlete doesn't have to concentrate on doing them.  The ease of sport behavior then aides performance.

My brother Brendan and I at Redfish!

Negative emotions (anger, sadness, frustration, fear), on the other hand, narrow and shift the athlete's attention toward "irrelevant threats" such as thoughts, feelings, or personal concerns.  This change requires working memory capacity, which turns the athlete toward control processing, when each sport action has to be consciously thought-through in a step-by-step format.

Following so far? Okay. Great.

Many of you have probably heard of the term flow. (Not, not hair flow).  Flow is a mental and physical state associated with full enjoyment of an activity, because the challenges that the activity presents are completely balanced with an athlete's skills.  It's the perfect example of an athlete's positive emotions affecting their performance.  The happiness/relaxation/excited-ness felt before training or a competition reduces working memory load and therefore causes automatic processing to happen more easily.  The athlete feels completely absorbed and in what they're doing, and they enjoy it, because the skill comes easier to them.

It's important to also remember that while positive emotions aid performance in general, the perfect emotions for one athlete may not work for another.  The balance between emotions and performance can be measured on sort of a spectrum, called the Individualized Zone of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) model. Emotion form, content, context, intensity, and time can factor into an athlete's optimal states, but the ideal bottom-line balance of emotions to strive for are actually termed championship emotions: enthusiasm, zeal, and confidence.

Which I guess is the object of this nice little rant: your emotions can play a large part in both how you train and perform. Not just in affecting your attitude, but in actually affecting how you physically carry out the actions needed for whatever sport you are a part of; whether V1 skating in skiing, shooting a basketball, or performing a gymnastics routine. And if you figure out which emotions work for you, you can practice channeling and maintaining them around competition time.

Okay. All done. How COOL is that? It blows my mind how our brains can affect our performance so easily. And THAT is why sports psychology is one of my absolute favorite things ever. And also why being happy and relaxed while on the road and at home has become one of my biggest priorities.

So, stay happy everyone. :)

Here's the full paper if you're interested.

Oh! The next two weeks we are training at the USST camp in Lake Placid, NY! So that's what I'm up to now.  I'm super pumped to be around some amazing athletes, not only to be challenged but also learn from them. I'll let you know how it goes!

The view from the top of Decker Peak

Pretty darn happy that this guy came to Idaho

Hike down from Decker Peak, that's the famous Finger of Fate in the background.

Decker Peak!

Sloan, me, and Mary on a hike out of Redfish

Goat Lake, a lake up the mountains from Redfish. Pretty amazing view huh?