PART TWO: The Practice of Functional Movement Training

This article was originally published by Human 2.0. Everything that I write in relation to conditioning has been developed in conversation with the owners and coaches at this facility. Although the opinions expressed here are my own, I would like to acknowledge the supportive role that Human 2.0 has provided.

Over the last two decades, there has been excessive discussion about functional movement training (amusing parody here). The problem with the discussion is not that it’s excessive or sensational but that it obscures some of the emerging principles that define functional movement as a practice. While practices of function movement are rich and prosperous, the conceptual resources available to understand them are not. Using the conceptual tools I outline in Part One, I argue that functional movement practitioners should make aesthetics a defining aim of their practice.

We Don’t Care about Looks, We Care About Feeling Healthy

The current most accepted way of defining functional movement is “prehabilitation.” This is a tremendously empowering way to think about movement. I want to live in a world where people are not only encouraged to find movement-based vocations but are also imagined to require it. I want a world where movement is not considered a matter of choice but rather, a basic necessity. Better still, we need a world where movement-accessible infrastructures and institutions (architectural and social) are not enforced by law but curated with creativity and innovation. Prehabilitation is a very promising way to conceptualize movement but, as the defining aspect of functional movement practices, it is not without its limitations.

The more we learn about how a movement practice becomes successful, the more prehabilitation seems unfit for our raison d'être. For example, prehabilitation is difficult to imagine as a basis of lifestyle in the same way as performance is for athletes, or adventure is for mountaineers. It also does not work well as a collective endeavor, but seems to focus on the individual practitioner. The main problem with prehabilitation, however, is that it’s difficult to recognise as an effect on the body. In other words, there are very few ways to account for prehabilitation, as athlete do for performance, surfers do for “stoke,” or dancers can with style. Consider the first diagram that I explained in Part One of this blog. Is prehabilitation a performative, experiential or aesthetic kind of bodily effect?

It is almost impossible to answer this question. It is tempting to categorize prehabilitative effects as experiential because preventing injury and illness is ultimately about feeling good, but these are only secondary or corollary consequences of functional movement. Prehabilitation itself is not experienced. Prehabilitation also cannot be performative because it is not an output. The category of aesthetics is also not appropriate because the bio-physiological mechanism that manifest as “prehabilitation” are not themselves appreciated in an aesthetic register. There are no easy ways to make sense of prehabilitation itself as a kind of bodily effect.

But prehabilitation may not only be inadequate, it might also be limiting as the defining aim of functional movement. To understand how prehabilitation might undercut the larger aims of the functional movement practice, it is helpful to put both in historical context.

Who Put the Function in Functional Movement?

There are two aspects of functional movement’s history that are crucial for understanding why we don’t typically associate aesthetics with the practice. First, functional movement has explicitly and self-consciously developed in opposition to body building, which is prima facie about aesthetics. Second, it has implicitly and somewhat unconsciously developed in the shadow of kinesiology, which is committed to the biomechanical “atomization” (see Part One) of the body. I will briefly explain how both have shaped (and continue to shape) the practice of functional movement. In so doing, I am suggesting that we stop allowing these aspects of our practices history to shape the scope of our practice’s future.

Body Building:

To date, functional movement has not been able to decouple the practices that are at the core of body building from the way fitness is commonly understood and practiced. There are a variety of reasons for the resilience of body building as the default form of fitness but consider the following two.

First, there was at least a 50-year period when body building and fitness were both practically and conceptually synonymous. In that time, the tools, techniques and defining principles of body building were deployed in a variety of institutional settings, including the military and schools. Their purpose in these settings were never muscular hypertrophy but always fitness. Only in the last half of the 20th century did these two aims begin to dissimilate.

Second, body building both legitimizes and is legitimized by beauty and gender norms. Although voices speaking against the tyranny of slenderness are getting louder, it will take a long time to disassociate lean body composition with beauty and sexiness. Similarly, muscularity continues to be a predominate (albeit limited) way for men to both express and develop their sense of masculinity. In sum, there are circuits of social relations that extend beyond the realm of fitness that maintain body building’s prevalence.

As advocates of functional movement, we are right to criticize the narrowness and oppressiveness of norms that connect fitness, beauty and gender. However, the purpose of functional movement should not be to denounce these norms but to create new ones. We want norms that enhance the quality of life, and for a much broader range of potential practitioners. Our strong backlash against the kind of norms associated with body building and weight-loss exercising is obscuring more liberatory norms that movement practices can engender.

Kinesiology:

The second important aspect of functional movement’s history is its roots in kinesiology. With the advent of kinesiology, the methods for training the body stopped being determined by the specifics of the task and started being determined by biomechanics of the body. In other words, kinesiology atomizes the body into mechanical functions. The effects of this conceptual shift cannot be overstated, but there is one change that is particularly relevant for functional movement. We tend to think about the ability to move proficiently as a pyramid. At the base of the pyramid are the foundations of movement abilities, which allow an athlete to build more specialized abilities on top.

 

On one hand, functional movement rejects the pyramid model in so far as it actively resists the necessity to build the pyramid vertically. In a sense, the goal of functional movement is to create a very wide and stable foundation. On the other hand, functional movement only partially rejects the pyramid model. We still imagine that we are, in fact, building foundations. This makes it difficult to find ways to practice movement, just for the sake of it. That’s our slogan. That’s what we are about. We move because it’s a great way to live.

In sum, we are letting body building and kinesiology delineate the scope of our practice. Unless we stop defining functional movement as ¬not body building, and recognize that our practice can be much more than the handmaiden of kinesiology, then the practice will never amount to more than a type of workout. The key is to decide how functional movement can best effect the body. Although the practice will inevitably produce a mix of performative, experiential and aesthetic bodily effects, there must be ways to approach the practice with one or two types of effects in mind. My argument is that aesthetics should be the defining aim of functional movement training. We need to unapologetically strive to develop movement in an aesthetic register.

Prehabilitation is a Side-Effect of Movement Aesthetics. 

In Balance Class several Tuesdays past, the guy training beside me asked himself aloud how learning to handstand with good form was going to improve his cycling. We all laughed because it was near the end of session, and the handstands were becoming increasingly difficult to execute.

If I were a kinesiologists, I might answer him by explaining the benefits of core strength for cycling, or how learning to stabilize the spine will ultimately improve his performance. Then again, I might say that handstands won’t help, and recommend lower-body exercises. Both answers are probably correct, kinesiologically speaking; however, neither reflect the ideas that motivate functional movement. So, what are those ideas?

As a practitioner of functional movement, I want to tell my cyclist friend that learning to handstand with exceptional form is a way of becoming a more proficient mover. The exact biomechanical connection between handstands and cycling is irrelevant. What matters is that both are different forms of bodily movement. While it can be helpful to approach cycling as a means to effect the body’s capacity for endurance or speed, the best way to think about handstands is a means to effect bodily form. By training the body to hold a vertical posture upside down, you are becoming a proficient mover.

Why become a proficient mover? This is a question people need to answer for themselves. There are many ways to lead a meaningful life but, in my opinion, few provide the grace of a life devoted to movement.

PART ONE: Understanding Movement as Practice

This article was originally published by Human 2.0. Everything that I write in relation to conditioning has been developed in conversation with the owners and coaches at this facility. Although the opinions expressed here are my own, I would like to acknowledge the supportive role that Human 2.0 has provided.

If you are reading this blog, you are probably a student and/or teacher in one or several movement practices. Yoga, Pilates, football, functional movement, and so on; today, there are more forms (or disciplines) of movement practices available to the average city dweller than ever before. Taking-up a movement practice is a long-term (sometimes expensive) commitment, and a decision that will affect your physical, mental and social well-being. Indeed, a practice becomes part of a practitioner’s sense of personhood.

My relationship with movement is not only practical but also analytical. As a sociologist, I am interested in philosophical, historical, political, practical and scientific research/writing about movement. In Part One of this blog post, I will share with you a simple tool for thinking analytically about movement practices. The purpose of this tool is to help you understand the range of movement disciplines, the reasons that particular disciplines are organized the way they are, and how to orient yourself within your own movement practices.

In Part Two of the blog (coming soon!), I will use the tool to think about “functional movement.” Although this term has been around for at least two decades, it is often used in different, sometimes contradictory ways. Using this tool to sharpen my analytical understanding of functional movement has improved my practice. I am more motivated, I ask the coaches better questions, and my practice is more focused and deliberate.

One point of clarification: This tool is not for analyzing the actual movements of a practice but rather the practices themselves. For example, if we used the tool to think about yoga or Olympic Lifting, we would not be looking at downward dogs and power cleans. Instead, we would look at overarching principles, scope of effects, and direction of intent. The tool puts the practices in the spotlight, not their movements.

Tool for Understanding Movement Practices:

This tool is based on the work of eminent philosopher, Richard Shusterman. Shusterman writes about bodily practices in general rather than movement practices in particular (Shusterman, 2008, 2012). Although many of the bodily practices he considers are movement-based, his framework can also be used to analyze a variety of non-movement practices, such as body modification (ex. tattooing), dieting (ex. Weight Watchers), meditation (ex. Zen) and medicine (ex. recreational drugs). Following Shusterman, I am thinking about movement practices as a sub-category of bodily practices. This changes the type of questions we can and should be asking about movement practices.
Most importantly, we should think about movement practices in terms of bodily effects. How does a movement practice effect (or change) the body? What kind of bodily effects does a practice create? What is the scope of the effects? Is the practice intended to effect one’s own body, another person’s body, or both? To understand movement practices, think about their effect on the body.
The three diagrams below help you consider a movement practice in terms of bodily effects. The first allows you to categorize the type of effects a practice produces. The second identifies the scope of effects. And the third diagram asks if a practice is self-directed, other-directed or both.

Type of Bodily Effects

The three types of bodily effects are that practices aim to produce are 1) experiential, 2) aesthetic and 3) performative. These effect-types are not mutually exclusive.

Usually, one type of bodily effect is necessarily involves another. Even though most movement-based practices produce effects in all three categories, often one or a pair of effect-types best characterize a practice.

Experiential changes to the body:

Experiential movement practices effect the conscious, sensuous and endocrinous aspects of life. Meditation, Tai Chi or yoga are good examples of experiential practices. Although some people meditate or stretch in order to increase their ability to perform, and many people practice yoga to change the appearance of their body, these practices are generally understood as means for mindfulness, mood-alteration and composure.

Aesthetic changes to the body:

The purpose of aesthetics practices is to effect the appearance of the body. Body building is a perfect example of an aesthetic movement practice. Although expert-level body builders often develop both a deeper appreciation for the experiential aspects of the practice (ex. muscle pump), and a heightened ability to perform (ex. lifting heavy weights), the defining effects of body building are aesthetic rather than experiential or performative.

Performative changes to the body:

Performative movement practices effect the body’s capacity to perform. Most competitive sports exemplify practices that effect bodily performance. Olympic lifters, sprinters, Crossfitters and skiers are all trying to improve their bodily capacity for strength, speed, power, endurance and/or skill. There are many examples of sports that also produce experiential and aesthetic effects. Some would say that motorcycle racing and surfing are more experiential than performative, and figure skating and surfing (again) are arguably driven more by aesthetics. Still, in the world of competitive sports, the prevailing winds blow towards performance. At least on the surface of things.

Scope of Bodily Effects:

The scope of bodily effects is represented by a spectrum ranging from more (or less) holistic or atomistic.

As a means to effect bodily change, movement practices necessarily draw boundaries through or around the body or bodies they effect. Some practices imagine this boundary to be skin, and they effect changes only within the skin. Other practices imagine the body to extend beyond the skin, into the world. The body of a footballer, for example, includes helmets, pads, cleats and gloves. In human/animal sports, such as agility dog and horse racing, research shows that the best athletes have the ability to harmonize their body with that of their other-species teammate (Haraway, 2007). The wider the boundary around the body/bodies a practice is intended to effect, the more a practice can be called holistic.

In contrast, practices that effect the body by dividing it into constitutive parts are more atomistic. Body building provides a perfect example. To build muscle mass, the best approach is to divide the body into increasingly smaller parts. If hypertrophy is the goal, isolated exercises (ex. bicep curl) are usually more effective than compound movements (ex. squat). Similarly, training practices for running have traditionally been directed at the cardiovascular system, ignoring skill-development, proprioception, mobility, body awareness, etc. (for more holistic approaches training in running, cycling and swimming, see MacKenzie, 2012). Atomistic movement practices are ones that seemingly cannot be practiced without affecting the body as a collection of parts, systems or capacities.

Note: It is important not to equate atomistic practices with practices that are more specialized, and holistic practices with less specialization. For example, practitioners of Qigong are much more holistic in their training than mixed martial artists (MMA), even though MMA is much less specialized form of practice. Similarly, Crossfit, which “specializes in not specializing,” is arguably more atomistic in its approach to effecting the body than most sports. To be competitive in today’s Crossfit Games, an athlete does not have the time to train reflexes, develop problem solving skills, improve decision making, or be concerned with many experiential or aesthetic bodily effects.

Direction of Intended Effects:

Lastly, movement practices are intended to effect change in one’s own body, the body of others, or both.

All movement practices necessarily effect change in one’s own body but some explicitly intend to effect the body or bodies of others. Massage, for example, is usually practiced on another person’s body with the goal of releasing their muscle tension, increasing their blood flow, and stimulating the release of their endorphins and serotonin. Erotic practices, in contrast, are often about effecting someone else’s body while simultaneously effecting your own. Practitioners of MMA train their bodies to more efficiently affect their opponent’s body, either rendering them unconscious or causing them enough bodily pain to force submission. In some ways, this final way of categorizing movement practices is the easiest to understand. The direction of intent seems very clear. My own experiences in sport, however, have caused me to question the simplicity of the self / other / self-other categories.

As a ski coach, I found it more difficult to train athletes if I was not myself involved in some kind of training. Somehow, my ability to help others actively train their bodies improved when I was also actively training my own, in skiing or any other practice. Therapist have told me that their ability to help others heal requires that they vigilantly maintain their own bodies. The matter is complicated further if we account for the communicative function of movement practices. For example, most historical accounts of body building, which appears to be a self-directed practice, show how important both photographic portraits and pageants were to the evolution of the practice. In other words, the effect that body building has on its viewers is necessarily part of the practice.

I suspect that self-directed movement practices depend on the cultivation of other-directed skills and vice-versa. This could be the topic of another blog post.

Trying to Understand Functional Movement as Practice:

Generally speaking, the purpose of functional movement is “prehabilitation.” In Part Two of this blog, I ask if prehabilitation is best categorized as experiential, performative or aesthetic in terms of its effects on the body? I also inquire about the scope of functional fitness, on a spectrum from more/less holistic/atomistic? And finally, I ask if there are ways in which practitioners of functional movement (that have no interest in becoming trainers or instructors) can or should think about their practices as effecting the bodies of others?

If anything, this tool has helped me realized that things are not necessarily as they seem.

References:

Haraway, D. (2007). When Species Meet. Univ. of Minnesota Press.

MacKenzie, B. (2012). Power Speed ENDURANCE: A Skill-Based Appraoch to Endurance Training. Victory Belt Publishing.

Shusterman, R. (2009). Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics. Cambridge UP.

Shusterman, R. (2012). Thinking through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics. Cambridge UP.

Ski Like A Girl! #skilikeagirl

2015 Canada Games in Prince George, B.C: Myself and Alexandra Marta

I recently returned from the 2015 Canada Games in Prince George, BC. The experience was eye-opening and I’ll be writing about it more. In terms of coaching, the highlight was working with Cam Twible, former Ontario Women's Team coach. Over several years working exclusively with high-level female skiers, Cam has developed a somewhat unorthodox way of understanding the nature of high performance in ski racing. With the hopes that it goes viral like the Always ads, I’m calling Cam’s approach #skilikeagirl.

To be clear, Cam’s way of understanding high-performance does not only apply to skiers that identify as female. #Skilikeagirl is for everyone, regardless of gender. The name is fitting because #skilikeagirl emerged against a backdrop of assumptions about the nature of high-performance that help some athletes be successful but deter many others. Cam’s approach challenges many of these assumption in ways that enabled the Ontario Team ladies to be successful. The assumption include (but are not limited to):

1. working harder beats working smarter;
2. skiing is not a team sport;
3. its only possible/worthwhile to systematically reward the outcomes of athletic skill;
4. good technique is good skiing;
5. coaches know the theory of good skiing / athletes do their best to put it into practice;
6. performance in skiing is about risk-taking and maximizing speed at all costs;
7. and so on…

My focus in this article is not the assumptions that #skilikeagirl challenges but rather the new priorities that it defines.

A quick disclaimer before I begin: The ideas in this article are not Cam’s but my own. Or, more accurately, I am describing how I interpret Cam’s understanding of performance in ski racing. Taken individually, many of the ideas here are not new. Many coaches will recognize them. As an overall approach, however, I think #skilikeagirl represents a new or different way of understanding the nature of high performance. This blog post is an initial attempt to define and describe this approach.

Summary: #skiilikeagirl Is About Longevity

#Skilikeagirl is unorthodox in its emphasis on longevity. In other words, skiing in this paradigm becomes an endurance sport rather than a sprint or middle-distance race. This directive applies at a variety of levels, from the level of an individual’s technique, to the overall ethos (or guiding philosophy) of a club, team, province or national sport system.

At the level of technique, skiing like a girl means training for efficiency rather than peak power and/or speed. At the level of ethos, skiing like a girl is about recognizing that sport, and particularly skiing, is a war of attrition. To #skilikeagirl, strive for longevity, at every turn, every race and for every season.

Re-calibrating Theory & Practice

Recently, the USSA initiated a nation-wide re-calibration of their approach to slalom skiing. (If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend watching the presentation by Sasha Rearick, U.S. Men’s Head Coach, at the Alpine National Coaches Symposium at Copper Mountain on November 6th, 2014 where he explains the USSA’s approach to developing slalom skiers.) The most important aspect of the USSA re-calibration is the athletic model, which they call the “Slalom Pyramid” (Figure 1). Since #skilikeagirl is also a re-calibration, I have created a similar model, which I’m calling the “#Skilikeagirl Pyramid” (Figure 2). Cam has given me more information on ski racing than I can express in one blog post, but this model comes close to capturing his overall approach. Notice the differences and similarities between the two models.

A key similarity relates to a fundamental assumption about the nature of performance in Alpine Skiing. The top-level (red) blocks of each pyramid, which represent the physics of fast skiing, both tell a similar story: Fast skiing is not the outcome of “generating speed from turn-to-turn” or “accelerating;” it’s about losing as little speed as possible while turning around the gates.

In theory, it might be possible to increase velocity while turning (I understand that a loaded ski can build and release a small amount of energy) but, in practice, it is almost impossible to extract meaningful gains in velocity from a ski turn with any consistency. Performance in ski racing is not about building speed but rather, not losing momentum that comes from gravity.

A key difference between the two models, once again, relates to the divide between theoretically possible and the practically achievable. The USSA breaks down the physics of fast skiing into three blocks:

1. Centre of mass travels the shortest line;
2. Clean skis; and
3. Pressure in the Fall-line.

Without a doubt, a clean ski (#2) is faster and I have represented this in the #skilikeagirl model as “Minimum Friction.” The other two elements, however, might be misleading. Here’s why…

Practically speaking, the shortest line (#1) is definitely not always quickest. A variety of factors come into play, including the snow surface, the strength of the skier, the subsequent turns, etc. In almost every instance, it’s quicker to ski a rounder (i.e. longer) line at a higher average speed than it is to ski from gate-to-gate. The USSA model does not adequately emphasize the trade-off, which is at the root of many of the assumptions that Cam is trying to challenge.

The same applies to the third block at the top of the USSA’s SL Pyramid, namely “Pressure in the Fall-line” (#3). In my reading, this is another technique that might be fast in theory but, in practice, causes more harm than podium results. Cam gave me the following quiz (which Camp Fortune coaches should recognize):

Which of the two lines below are faster (the black lines are the carve marks of the outside ski), Line A or Line B?

Quiz: Which Line is Better?

Many coaches will answer that Line B is fastest because the racer appears to be “pressuring the outside ski earlier.” The problem is that Line B is a phantom – it does not exist. It’s a figment of the assumptions that have come to define high performance skiing. It is impossible to traverse the fall-line on the up-hill ski. To #skilikeagirl, skiers must cross the fall-line on the downhill ski; they can only switch to the uphill ski when it’s time to cross the fall-line in the other direction. When I discuss this with other coaches, they will often explain to me that pressuring the downhill ski at the bottom of the turn is like “putting on the brakes.” They are absolutely correct, but it’s an unavoidable aspect of the sport. Practically speaking, it is impossible to traverse across the fall-line without “braking,” or slowing down. Pretending otherwise is a god-trick. The game of ski racing is to slow down as little as possible. When coaches try for techniques that eliminate braking all-together, or even accelerate out of the turn, they are trying to play god, often to the detriment of their athletes.

Cam’s rule of thumb is to transition onto the new downhill ski at the rise line and not before (I told you that many of these ideas or not new). When athletes try to pressure the downhill ski much before the rise line, all kinds of bad things happen, which I’ll leave that for Cam to explain in the subsequent interview.

Side note: I learned this lesson while working with sit skiers. Just try to ask an experienced sit skier to pressure the top of the arc before they reach the rise line. They will laugh at you. Sit skiers also need to ski from one edge to the other. If they try to run a flat ski between turns, they get into trouble very quickly. The same applies to standing skiers, which I will also leave for Cam to explain.

The #skilikeagirl Pyramid:

Efficiency

Starting from the top of the pyramid (just below the physics of good skiing, which are in red), the first element of skiing like a girl is efficiency. Efficiency is a ratio of performance to total energy expended. On a turn-by-turn basis, skiing like a girl is not necessarily as fast as the orthodox approach to ski racing, which prioritizes speed/power. On the basis of an entire course, a season or even a career, the #skilikeagirl approach is always faster. Skiing like a girl is a balancing act between energy expenditure and performance gains.

To understand efficiency in ski racing, you need to channel your inner Harry Hogge, the NASCAR crew chief in the 1990 film Days of Thunder. The scene where Harry (Robert Duvall) and Cole (Tom Cruise) have a heart-to-heart about burning tires is particularly relevant.

Unlike NASCAR drivers, skiers are not burning up their tires too quickly but rather their lactic threshold. Going lactic effects a skier’s ability to move quickly and stay balanced just like burning tires effects a driver’s ability to control the car. Skiing efficiently is all about biomechanics. It’s about learning to move in ways that make greater use of the body’s passive system (bones, joint capsules, cartilage, fascia, tendons, ligament and the passive properties of the muscles) and less use of the body’s active system (muscular contraction). And it’s about distributing the loads of skiing more proportionately.

There are some obvious examples of inefficient skiing: repeatedly shifting the weight to the tails of the ski, shortening the leg, rapidly unloading a ski. These moves might be quicker for one or two turns but they severely compromises the athlete’s lactic threshold. When skiers go lactic (or just get tired), accidents happen. Over the course of a race, a season or a career, the skier that finds ways to move efficiently will always come out on top.

An essential part of skiing like a girl, then, is a long leg because it’s a more efficient way to resist the forces of a ski turn (uses more of the passive system). But there’s always a trade-off. With a longer leg, the ankle must do most of the suspension work, so boot setup becomes critically important. I will talk about this more in the next section but, generally, the boot cannot block the ankles range of motion. Recently, there have been murmurs among ski aficionados that very stiff boots are good because they directly transmit force to the tip of the ski. Again, this may be true for one or two turns, and on perfectly groomed terrain, but it violates the principles of #skilikeagirl. The cost of an overly stiff boot is that the knee and hip must do most of the suspension work, which is inefficient.

The last element of efficient skiing that I’m going to address is something that Cam states quite aphoristically: “The long term goal is to ski without technique.” To understand this in terms of efficiency, realize that techniques are learning tools, or neuromuscular cues, rather than “ways of skiing.” A skier that skis without technique is in a flow state. They don’t have technique, they have skills. I touched on this issue in an earlier post about timing. Pat Biggs commented that skiing cannot be purely about tactics; that proper technique is what separates the skiers that make it and the ones that stop progressing. I think we need to let go of this way of thinking about techniques.

Techniques are like training wheels. They are necessary for learning but, ultimately, the goal is to ski without them. Coaches should not be teaching ski techniques, they should be teaching skiing skills. Actually, we should throw away the concept of teaching altogether because it implies a transfer of knowledge, from the coach to the athlete. Really, a coach is trying to enable athletes to cultivate skiing skills of their own. There are more and less effective and efficient ways to ski but it’s important that athletes come to understand them in an embodied way (as "knowing how"), rather than as theoretical doctrines ("knowing that"). Techniques are tools for enabling embodied learning; they are not sets of instructions that must be known before good skiing is possible. A great deal of efficiency is lost when skiers try to adopt ways of skiing that are prescribed, often in the guise of “technique.” By reconceptualising techniques as training wheels rather than expert ways of skiing, we can help skiers become more efficient.

Skills as an Ecosystem (rather than as sensorimotor capacity)

The second is related to the nature of skill. Traditionally, skills are thought of as sensorimotor capacity, which is somehow located within the skiers themselves. This way of thinking was best characterised in the, “I know Kung Fu” scene from the movie, The Matrix. We somehow imagine that skiers are loaded into ski programs and come out “knowing ski racing.”
Based on my discussions with Cam, I think he locates skill, not within the athlete, but somewhere between the skier, their equipment, support team (including coaches) and their training activities. This is a networked or distributed way of thinking about skill. I like the ecosystem analogy because it helps me think of skills as a community of living organisms that, in conjunction with nonliving components, interact as a system in ways that allow the community (the skills) to flourish or stagnate. I have many examples of skills as an ecosystem. Decision training is a good way to think about skills as an ecosystem. So is prioritizing external cures rather than verbal feedback. Watch this video of Rodney Mullen explaining how he invented the flat-land Ollie in skateboarding if you are still struggling to understand the 'skill as ecosystem' concept. In this blog post, I can only write about one so I’m choosing boot setup.

Bootsetup

For both males and females, boot setup should never be a matter of “set it and forget it.” Coaches and athletes should be continuously considering setup of the boots as an integral part of skiing. This is particularly true for girls because their lower body alignment can continuously change from age 13 to 19. Furthermore, ski boots seem to be designed around men’s bodies. The lasts (or shells) might be slightly modified for female skiers but these modifications are usually an afterthought. Until boot manufacturers start designing a female-specific boot, from the ground up, female skiers will have to learn to adapt boots to their bodies.

There are two schools of thought for boot setup that I’m going to highlight here. The first is to use sole canting as a corrective adjustment and the second is to use it as an adaptive adjustment. In the first, which is the traditional approach, the goal of sole canting is “to bring the knee into better alignment in relation to the working edge by shimming the bindings or grinding the boot’s sole to the desired corrective angle” (CSCF, 2001, “Boot Fitting Fundamentals”). Mat Distephano (the author of the article I just cited) recommends that canting be done only after cuff alignment but, from my experience, many boot technicians and coaches are beginning with sole canting and adjusting the cuff afterwards. For women, this often means the boots are canted positively (or tilted outwards) in order to compensate for their higher Q angles, which bring their knees inside of their ankles and hips. This is, I suspect, a misapplications of Distephano’s instructions.

Cam’s approach is to make all adjustments in an adaptive manner, including sole canting. The first step, then, is to align the cuff. If the cuff cannot be moved far enough to match a skier’s lower leg angles, then he starts canting the boot. In the end, the goal is to have both skis flat on the ground when the athlete is in their neutral athletic stance. That said, boot setup should be done on the hill and not in a lab. Ultimately, it’s about enabling the athlete to cultivate skiing skills. It may not be possible to have a perfect alignment but trying is part of the process.

Cam always reinforces that the athlete must be involved with boot setup, every step of the process. The athletes need to understand the changes that are being made, and how it effects their skiing, so they become agents of their own athletic destiny. Coaches should not expect the athletes to completely understand the science of boot setup. Instead, their job is to give the athletes enough information to take charge of their own development. Often this means explaining the basics of boot setup and how it (in theory) effects their skiing.

Here’s an example: “I noticed that your outside ski begins to shimmer when you tip it over on hard surfaces. The upper portion of the ski boot (the “cuff”) may need to be realigned. Can we try adjusting it in order to get rid of that shimmer?” Once you have them inside, in the shells of their boots, take a picture of their setup before you make the adjustments. Show the athlete the picture and explain your analysis. “As I expected, the inside of your calf is touching the top of your boot. We need to adjust the boot so that your leg is closer to the middle of the boot.” Then, show them how the boot can be adjusted. Do the adjustment with the athlete watching, take another picture, and show the athlete. It’s all about empowering the athlete to understand their own equipment.

In the same way that we expect U14 skiers to start learning the basics of ski tuning, we need to start teaching the basics of boot fitting to developing athletes. This can start at U10 by teaching the proper way to put on ski boots, something Cam is continuously doing. If we want skiers to be able to evaluate boot setup, they must already be tightening their buckles exactly the same way each time they ski, in order to establish a baseline. The bottom buckles should not be too tight. The top buckles need to be as tight as possible without deforming the natural shape and flex of the boot. They probably won’t need to do much boot adjustments until they get into a stiffer boot, which can be as early as U14 or as late as U18.

Safe & Accountable Sport System

The base of the #skilikeagirl pyramid is a doozie. No way can I explain it in one blog post. In Canada, the creation of the sport system was more political than most of us working within it understand. Sometimes it seems as though it was created haphazardly but it was actually more purposefully orchestrated than we think. The problem is that it was not created with the aim of enabling athletic development but rather legitimizing one particular way of understanding athletic development. Many of the system-level issues that we encounter on a day-to-day basis, the seemingly unorganized aspects of the sport system, are actually the effects of a system that is designed to establish a very particular epistemological stronghold on sport. The accountability of the sport system is not directed at the athletes but to the power-knowledge that it serves to reproduce (sorry for getting too sociological there). We cannot design a new sport system from the top down (nor should we) but we must start changing the one we have from the inside out.

For example, we must stop building into our sport system mechanisms for deselecting development-level athletes. Skiing is a war of attrition; it will deselect enough athletes without our help. We must also dismantle the existing selection-based development-level teams (relics of the past) and replace them with mechanism that give more athletes more opportunities to stay in the sport. A sport system that is safe and accountable is not structured to meet the needs of a few athletes (that will likely progress, regardless of the sport system); nor should it be a mechanism for advancing the careers of a few coaches. Unfortunately, the people that control the structure of our sport system at the development level are often parents and coaches of athletes that were relatively successful. If we leave them in charge, we’ll never make the changes necessary to help the athletes that were not successful and who have left the sport. Our sport system must be more accountable to the athletes (all of them), with an emphasis on their personal and collective safety. Since I suspect that most of my readers are coaches, I will focus on something that coaches can do to improve accountability. This might be slightly controversial but it’s close to my heart:

We need to stop relying on charisma as a tool to produce performance.

For most coaches, it does not take long to realize that a quick and relatively easy way to improve the performance of a skier is to get into their heads. This is particularly easy, and seemingly harmless, with really young athletes. In some ways, coaches that start their careers coaching young children are being primed to learn the “black arts” of coaching. From my first years coaching in Nancy Greene, I remember turning a group of 6, 7 and 8 year olds into the second coming of the Crazy Canuks. I taught them to be fearless. No harm done, right? Many of the kids are still involved with ski racing as coaches or even athletes and I like thinking that I helped ignite their passion for the sport.

As coaches move up the ranks and start coaching older athletes, they might continue to rely on their personality to help the athletes win races. The CSCF call this “soft” coaching skills. At U12 and even U14, the affective approach to coaching is extremely effective. Skiers at this age can easily win simply by trying harder and taking more risks then their competitors. I’m guilty of this. When I first started coaching this age group, I compensated for my lack of knowledge about athletic pedagogy with a charismatic coaching style. “My athletes may not be the best skiers,” I thought, “but they will win because I’ll teach them how to be real racers.”

Many coaches who have high numbers of successful development-level athletes are doing so by leveraging affective coaching tools more than enabling them to cultivate skiing skills. It’s an easy cheat. Relative age is not only a physiological phenomenon but also relates to the emotional vulnerability of the athletes. Young skiers are highly impressionable and we are kidding ourselves if we don’t think this can be exploited to the benefit of a coach’s career. This is happening right below our noses and most of the time we understand it as a coach that just cares about the success of the athletes.

At U14, U16 and FIS, the mind games we (coaches) can play start to become more insidious. We tell athletes that success comes from hard work and dedication, which is a way of using shame to push athletes to train harder and risk more. We reward athletes that respond well to our own coaching styles and we ignore the ones that need different kinds of support. We ask them to set goals and then use their goals to hold them ransom. In my opinion, this is when the charismatic approach to coaching starts to become problematic. Often, with perfectly honourable intentions, coaches get so far into their athletes heads that its not even the athletes that are racing. This season, for example, I had an athlete tell me she let me down because she DNF’d. Why do our athletes feel accountable to us when we are in fact accountable to them?

Part of our job, I think, should be to actively stay out of our athletes’ heads. As coaches, we are already primed to be affective leaders. Instead of wielding that kind of power to win at the game of sport, we need to transform it into empowerment, and try to enable our skiers to play the sport-game on their own terms. This is much more difficult to do than it is to imagine but its absolutely crucial.

In memory of the old-school, “get in your head” style of coach, let’s watch this tribute to the most charismatic coach of our generation, Sensei John Kreese of Cobra Kai Karate. Goodbye John. Your era has come to an end.

Conclusion:

In Canada, there has been lots of press about ski coaches recently. Internationally, there have been similar news stories about leaders in the world of competitive Yoga. Bikram Choudhury faces six lawsuits of sexual assault and rape.

Photo from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marina-chetner/its-yoga-competition-time_b_4887700.html

In his book Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga, Ben Lorr (2012) summarizes something he learns while training to be a competitive yoga superstar. I think this lessons neatly summarizes the #skilikeagirl approach, so I will give Lorr the last words:

“The first thing to remember whenever you see someone do the incredible — and this includes incredible suffering— is they have been working at it for a very, very long time and they started from a place very, very close to you. It is also, I think, to swear vigilance to the other side of the coin: the critical memory that no matter what heights of accomplishment you ascend, you are precisely not a freakish superhuman, that your normality is what made it all possible, that you are equipped with a body capable of failure and brain driven toward hubris and mistake. That true balance means exactly 50 percent of the time, less is more. That we all have a fulcrum point in our lives we need to identify and study. Negotiating that line is the true edge. The men and women who go over it are lost to us. They may burn bright for a moment, they may amass riches and attract our envies, but theirs is the brightness of the supernova, the flaring right before the collapse, and their trajectory is written as sure as any star into the cold self-absorbed energy of a black hole.”

- Benjamin Lorr (2012). Hell-Bent, p. 280.

Reply to Pat Biggs About Timing in Training

This post is a reply to Pat's comment on an earlier post about timing in ski training. To summarize, I argued that timing effects training in the following three ways:

1. Athletes train like they race, or it raises the intensity of training.
2. Coaches give less verbal feedback and change courses when it suits the development-needs of the athletes
3. It orients coaches towards their jobs as experts in ski racing pedagogy rather than experts in ski technique.

Pat's reply (if I may paraphrase) is that we have already swung too far towards the race-oriented way of developing athletes and that coaches need to be better at teaching skiing technique. Timing does not help with this problem and it might make it worse. Pat used the analogy of building a race car. Timing may help build race cars that win at development-level races (U10 - U16) but the cars that go on to compete at Formula One (FIS races) have a better technical base to build upon.

This is my reply:

The analogy of car racing is very rich. If the skier is like a race car, than her feet must be the tires, her legs the suspension, heart the engine, and her brain is the driver? Is that right?

No matter how you imagine the car/skier metaphor, the skier’s body is represented by the car and the skier’s brain is represented by the driver. It’s the sportive equivalent to the “brain in the vat”. Now, I know that I promised to keep this blog about sport and less about academics but we need to actively resist mind/body dualisms wherever they appear, including sport training. There are a variety of complex reasons for this, all of which relate to the fallacy that “we are our brains.” (Watch this video here if you want to understand how philosophers of consciousness can inform coaching practices: http://bigthink.com/videos/you-are-not-your-brain-2). For this discussion about timers in ski training, what matters most is that skiers are not imagined as brains in bodies but as real, actual, embodied living people.

That means that their development as ski racers are not like drivers in cars that get progressively faster if we (coaches) design them correctly (as you have described them) and they are also not like trees or other imagined organisms (like the LTAD describes them). Skiers (and all athletes) are more like, well, people, that are located within vast networks that are made of their biographies and those biographies are located within vast networks called history. When coaches look at skiers, they are seeing the sum total of an actual life, born into an actual world, slaloming down an actual ski hill – nothing more but also (and crucially) nothing less.

A common mistake that many sport-people make is to imagine their own sport as infinitely more complex than most other sports. Common targets of over-simplification are sprinting and weight-lifting. Its easy for skiers to think of these two sports as merely running fast and lifting heavy stuff, especially in comparison to skiing, which involves side-cuts, multi-axial pressures, high speeds, etc. For high-level sprinters and lifters, however, the stride or the clean-and-jerk are every bit as intricate and complex as the GS or SL turn. The truth of the matter is that all sports are highly complex art forms that takes years of training and developing skills. Cart racers, by the way, will definitely object to your statement that their sport is all tactics and no technique. This is you over-simplifying an extremely complex sport. This mistake is an expression of common misconceptions about the nature of sport.

The complexity of a sport is not necessarily something that an athlete must overcome but rather is something that she can use to her advantage. Basically, she can transform the sum total of her life (biography and historically created circumstances) into tools for being the best, or she is unable to fashion her biography and circumstances into athletic success. Think of the many rags-to-riches stories in sport (see the movie Manny, for example); there is some truth the story that athletes achieve success precisely because they came from destitute. Fortunately, this does not mean that a sport system should systematically disadvantage a proportion of its population in order to produce outstanding athletes (even though, that's what many sport systems do, like the NFL for example). There are better ways to artificially impose the type of constraints that lead to athletic success. The trick to good training, in my opinion, is providing the athletes with the right amount of constraints and the right amount of opportunities (or freedoms).

Our human (all too human) tendency will always be to lean towards the side of too many constraints because we are driven to understand irreducible phenomena (such as sport) in reductionist terms (such as models, theories, analogies, etc.).

To counter act this tendency, we need tools that bring the "irreducible-ness" of athletic skill into view. My argument is that a timer is one such tool.

A coach that sets up a course and the timer and lets the athletes try to improve without much intervention is a coach that trusts the athletes to figure out the game of ski racing in their own terms. A timer creates a good balance between constraints and opportunities. I am sure that this will not immediately produce technically correct skiing but it will engage the skiers to figure out the problem on their own. Some skiers might get frustrated, so the coach give them some advice that will improve their times. Its more important to allow athletes to become curious about their sport than to prevent them from skiing incorrectly.

Another tool that orients the athletes and also the coaches towards skiing in this problem-solving mode is “desegregation.” This means actively working to integrate disabled and nondisabled sport while simultaneously resisting their assimilation. You wrote at the beginning of your response, “good blog, especially for cases like para where there is no proven technique that is best.” My argument is that all skiing is like para where there is no proven technique that works best. That’s why integrating para and non-para sports (not just mainstreaming the paras) will ultimately help the non-para athletes as much as the paras. The moment we behave as though skiing (or running, or driving, and so on...) is no longer a mystery to us is the moment we stop doing sport and start doing something else – the athletic equivalent to painting by numbers, perhaps. Integrating paras and non-paras keeps coaches humble.

The knee-jerk reaction to my argument is to fear that coaches are no longer needed. You write, “a really good coach will do more for a kid than timing any day of the week.” In no way am I suggesting that coaches and coaching knowledges are redundant or unnecessary but I do think coaching is overly ego driven (maybe that is why we are so fearful of timers!). This is not necessarily the fault of coaches; our sport system rewards ego-driven coaching. Coaches that progress from the club level to regional teams and to provincial teams do so on the basis of their results (and by convincing people that they ultimately have the answers). The worst coaching I have ever done is when I thought that I was being evaluated based on the results of my athletes, and when I thought I did not have much left to learn about skiing.

In my opinion, the best metric for evaluating the effectiveness of a club-level coach is based on the sustained involvement of their athletes with sport. Who are the coaches that inspired athletes to stay in the sport even when they are not getting good results and are ultimately being deselected? Who coached the athletes that are commuting back from college to coach on weekends even when their salaries don't cover their commuting costs? Who are the coaches that inspired passion for sport? Those are the coaches that put their athletes before their own egos.

Pat - I know that you agree with most of my arguments here. I only just started getting to know you and I can already tell that you are exceptionally humble and generous. But, you must admit, the analogy of coaching as building cars is anything but humble. Coaches are not Gods (or even automotive engineers). We have much less control over the success of our athletes than we often care to admit. This is why its so important to imagine our athletes as lives that are being lived. Our job as coaches is not to build athletes but to allow athletes to twine their own lives into the game of skiing in ways that will bring them success.

When it comes to reductionist models of athletic expertise and the egos that sustain them, timing is definitely not a cure-all prophylactic. It might only be a drop in the bucket. The more drops in the bucket, however, the closer we get to the tipping point where sport is understood less as an outcome and more as a process. That's the goal.

Towards a Philosophy of Course Setting

INTRODUCTION

Many disagreements between ski coaches boil down to disagreements about course setting. Course-setting is viewed by many coaches as a central aspect of the practice. Jean Leduc recently told me that he wishes his daughter’s coaches lost their capacity for speech, and gained the ability to set magnificent courses. This is perhaps too extreme but I agree with the general idea. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a course set is worth a thousand verbal cues, drills, demos, explanations, pre-race pep-talks, and videos. The art of ski coaching comes to a point in course-setting. To some extent, everything else is secondary.

There are a minority of coaches that view course-setting as much less important than other skills, such as giving well-timed feedback, verbal instruction, understanding ski technique, demonstrating skills, and “getting in the athlete’s head.” A course is a course is a course, they say. I suspect that coaches who downplay the importance of setting haven’t had the opportunity to develop the craft. Or, they are still holding onto the false belief that coaches are more like witch-doctors priests psychiatrists than game-room designers. Pace John Wooden.

Either way, I hope this blog post shows how course-setting is both crucially important and highly complex. I want to inspire coaches to be excited about course-setting. If you are presently content to let a more experienced coach set, I encourage you to start demanding access to the drill. As a friend of mine always says, “everybody ropes, everybody rides.”

WHAT IS A PHILOSOPHY OF COURSE SETTING (a POCS); WHY DO WE NEED ONE

The coaching community needs a “philosophy of course setting” (POCS) because I don’t think we have adequate understanding of its importance. That is, we know that course-setting is important but we don’t really understand why or how. The purpose of a POCS, then, is to flush-out this understanding. To specify why course setting is paramount in ski coaching, and how coaches are coaching when they simply set a course.

A good POCS should also provide a lexicon, or a point of reference, to understand the mechanics of course setting. It should help settle disputes related to course-setting. And it should give coaches a sense of what they are doing when they set a course, and provide a way to evaluate their own course-setting practices, and improve upon them. A good POCS should not be overly prescriptive, and should be open to interpretation.

A good POCS should also be relevant in both training and competition contexts. A POCS is probably more consequential for training because it’s not necessary to follow course-setting regulations, which are presently acting as a quasi (or surrogate) POCS. What is a good training course, if not a legal one? I think that knee-jerk responses to this question will be a circular response. Something like, “a good training course is one that helps the athletes meet their training objectives.” Or, “it depends on the goals of the training session.” These are inadequate responses; we need a POCS so we can understand the function of course setting in and of its self, regardless of a training session’s focus.

KEY TERMS

Before I describe my proposed POCS, I need to define two key ters: "movement" and "technique". My understanding of movement is similar to the dictionary definition but my usage is almost synonymous with “body.” The brilliance of many movement practices (such as skiing) is that the body is always understood as a verb (a body that bodies). That is, coaches and (even more so) trainers speak about bodily form or position in terms of movement or muscular cues. For a trainer, standing straight is not a geometrical quality but a bio-mechanical one. Standing straight is a series of movement cues (usually, “squeeze your shoulder-blades together,” “tuck in your chin," "clench your butt," "spread the floor with your feet”). For ski coaches, body position is also about movement. For example, I have stopped talking about upper body position and started talking about upper body discipline. Since skiers are standing on a moving platform, they have to be continuously moving their hands in order maintain balance, but they appear to keep their hands in one place.

Second, the term technique refers to movements that have been consciously or unconsciously habituated, identified, learned, patterned and repeated. Techniques are movements imbued with meaning, purpose, history and consequence. Standing is a technique that for many of us has unconsciously been learned. As more of us are standing less, and sitting more, a number of very detailed manuals about “How to Stand” have attempted to articulate a technique for standing (my favourites are Chapter 6 of Katie Bowman’s Move Your DNA, Chapter 1 of Kelly Starett’s Becoming a Supple Leopard, and almost all of Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's Putting Movement into Your Life). If you practice the techniques for standing outlined in these books, you can begin crafting an art of standing (WARNING, if you read these books, you may cultivate a passion for standing with discipline, poise and grace. You might even begin standing more often, just for the pleasure of standing. Its weird.).

Techniques can both enable and limit movement. Once a skier learns the snow plow, it’s easy for them to learn wedge turns; but, once they know wedge turns, its more difficult for them to learn carving. Or, put another way, good carving is partly a consequence of unlearning the wedge turn.

THIS IS MY POCS:

My philosophy of course setting is this: The purpose of a course is to enable skiers to ski outside of themselves. In other words, the goal of the course setter is to allow skiing movements to dictate ski techniques, rather than the other way around. The skier’s own movement becomes their coach, showing them techniques that they are not otherwise able to perform.

EXAMPLES THAT EXPLAIN MY POCS:

1. The reason we like rhythmical courses is because rhythmic ski movements enable good technique. The athletes ski better when they are moving with tempo, cadence, pulse, or fluidity because these types of movements are conducive to good ski technique.
2. Rhythm is just one example. In DH and SG, where there is less metronomic rhythm than in GS or SL, doubles or triples also tend to be conducive of good speed technique. They slow the skier down, enabling them to “free-fall”.
3. Free-skiing (or skiing without a course) also provides a good example. Terrain and snow conditions call upon skiers to move in particular ways, and that movement precipitates techniques. Everyone skis differently in powder than they do on bullet-proof corduroy, or hard-packed moguls. In powder, skiers move on the backs of their skis, and push-pull against the snow, like a surfer on a wave. After a heavy snowfall, a ski hill is like a music hall filled with the sound of Piano Sonata No. 2. Bullet-proof corduroy, in contrast, calls upon experienced skiers to test the limits of lean angle and play with the inertia of tight radius turns. For me, carving on corduroy is like dancing to funk music. Moguls turn skiers into human shock absorbers. I’m not sure how to describe mogul skiing in terms of music. Techno? Metal? Course setting is about drawing out particular styles of movement, in the same way as snow conditions, terrain features and music.
4. Race care drivers that say, "I'm controlling what is out of control" are actually talking about the feeling of control coming from the trajectory of their car, rather than from their own decision making. This is the feeling you are tyring to create with course-setting.

COURSE SETTING LEXICON

Its not enough to say that a course can be hard or easy, tight or open, off-set or straight. Course sets can vary infinitely, which is one reason why the practice is so important. Before we discuss the implications of my proposed POCS (which is when things might get controversial), let’s review some basic aspects of course setting. A course set can vary along the following dimension:

Off-set and distance:

The radius of a turn is determined by off-set and distance. Off-set refers to the distance from turning pole to turning pole along the horizontal axis, where “distance” refers to the distance from turning pole to turning pole on the vertical axis. A course setter can adjust both these dimensions of the course.

Terrain:

Terrain can be steep or flat, undulating or consistent. It can follow the fall-line or the fall-line can be “falling-away” from the direction of the hill. Sometimes, consistently steep pitches are easier than moderate pitches with lots of variation.

Flow:

Generally, a course with good flow is a course that gets progressively straighter. A course without flow will interrupt the speed of the skier and force them to decelerate. In some ways, the art of good course setting is about finding innovative ways to create flow. A very experienced course setter can bring skiers from a very straight course into an offset course without interrupting flow.

Cues:

Cues are crucially important for creating flow. The purpose of cues is to help skiers adapt with changes in the course and the terrain. Its important not to think about cues as visual markers only, they are also kinetic markers. Although cues are often perceived visually, they are also often felt. This is how courses help skiers ski outside of themselves.

There are at least four different types of cues: combination gates, terrain changes, direction changes and training aids. The first two are self-explanatory. By direction changes, I mean overall direction of travel. If the skiers are slaloming towards the north-east, and you change their direction to the north, you are creating a cue. On our race hill at Camp Fortune, there are two very important cues at the transition from Upper Canadian into The Chute. Not only does the terrain get steeper (cue #1) but the hill changes direction (cue #2). Training aids refer to all the different tools that coaches use to create cues on training courses, such as brushies, dye, hand signals, verbal cues, etc.

Variation:

Variation means changes in offset and terrain. Variation can both interrupt or create flow. In GS, SG and DH, variation helps to create flow. In SL, variation more often interrupts flow. The way to use variation to create flow is to cue the changes appropriately.

IMPLICATIONS (or time for some controversy)

If we take my POCS seriously, than a number of implications will follow. This is where my POCS gets more controversial.

1. Courses are not only tests; instead, they play an important role in the skiers development. A ski racer becomes a ski racer in a course. There are ways to set that enable this transformation to happen more easily. If you always set courses as tests, you are slowing down the development of your skiers.
2. Generally, courses should be a little easier. If you set a course, and the skiing in that course hurts your eyes, you should reset that course. A course is only too easy if it’s boring. And if the course is border-line too easy, than setup timing and enjoy the show. Timing on a fast/fun course is a fast-track to Creative Variation. For development level athletes, its almost impossible to set too easy because everyone needs to work on just going faster.
3. Don’t set on a hill that your skiers would not be comfortable to tuck, from top to bottom. This is particularly important for younger ages. If the kids are not comfortable skiing as fast as they can outside of the course, you cannot expect them to perform in the course.
4. Introduce variation incrementally. I was once a huge proponent of variation for the sake of variation. Now, I still think that variation is ultimately the goal but it needs to be added very deliberately and incrementally. Here are some example:
   
   Example #1: Once the skiers are comfortable in a slalom that is 10m from every turning pole to turning pole, switch to 8m, 11m, 8m, 11m, 8m, 11m, and so on (tock, tock-tock, tock, tock-tock, tock, tock-tock…).
   
   Example #2: Set simple rhythm patters, such as three turns of metronomic , then a hairpin, three turns, hairpin, three turns, hairpin… (tock, tock, tock, tock-tock, tock, tock, tock, tock-tock…).
5. Teach your athletes about nasty surprise gates (variation without cues) by setting a rhythmical, easy, flowing course into a flow stopper. Tell them about it in advance, have them inspect, let them solve the problem.
6. Set easy courses (less variation) on challenging terrain and more challenging courses (more variation) on easier terrain. Don’t combine easy and challenging terrain in one set until far along in their progression. As I said, introduce variation incrementally.
7. Set courses to match your technical objectives. This is crucially important. We don't expect students to learn geography while they are writing their geography tests. Don’t spend the morning working on cadence only to set a course in the afternoon that has none. The purpose, again, of course setting to let the movements teach technique. More than anything, this takes time, consistency and sustained focus. Ask yourself if your setting practices are more disruptive than they are helpful for your athletes’ technical progression.
8. Training sessions should centre on one type of variation at a time. Its ok to use the “hard instruction first” principle but don’t start with race regulation slalom. Start with very specific types of variation and move towards the kind of variation the athletes will see in competition settings.

MAYBE THIS IDEA IS OLD

In closing, I’ll insert a section from the ICR that gives qualitative descriptions of slalom courses and best-practices for setting. In my opinion, this reads like a coaching job description. Enjoy:

SLALOM:
802.1 General Characteristics of the Course
802.1.2 The ideal slalom course, taking into consideration the drop and the gradient specified above, must include a series of turns designed to allow the competitors to combine speed with neat execution and precision of turns.
802.1.3 The Slalom should permit the rapid completion of all turns. The course should not require acrobatics incompatible with normal ski technique. It should be a technically clever composition of figures suited to the terrain, linked by single and multiple gates, allowing a fluent run, but testing the widest variety of ski technique, including changes of direction with very different radii. Gates should never be set only down the fall-line, but so that some full turns are required, interspersed with traverses.
803.4 Setting
In setting Slalom the following principles should be observed:
803.4.1 Avoidance of monotonous series of standardised combinations of gates.
803.4.2 Gates, which impose too sudden sharp braking on competitors, should be avoided, as they spoil the fluency of the run without increasing the difficulties a modern Slalom should have.
803.4.3 It is advisable before difficult combinations of gates to set at least one gate which allows the competitor to ski through the difficult combination under control.
803.4.4 It is not advisable to set difficult gate passages either right at the beginning or end of the course. The last gates should be rather fast, so that the competitor passes the finish at a good speed.
803.4.5 Where possible the last gate should not be too close to the finish. It should direct competitors towards the middle part of the finish. If the width of the slope necessitates it, the last gate can be common to both courses, provided the prescribed alternation of blue and red gates is maintained.

Laughing at Ourselves

I was referee at our last slalom race at Mont Cascades, QC. My job was very easy because the ROC at Cascades is top notch and the course sets were also excellent. After the first run, we had one controversial DSQ. I will try to get video of the incident but for now an explanation and a diagram will (have to) suffice.

The athlete's line is in red, the "normal line" in grey, the imaginary lines that must be crossed in single-pole slolom are dashed, and the imaginary line that I marked as not crossed is traced in green.

The athlete in question fell inside on the gate before a hairpin (or "vertical combination"). He got up and skied the hairpin as though it was an "in pin" (which means entering the hairpin below the control gate). I marked him down as missing the gate before the hairpin because, in my view, he was in violation of rule 804.3, which applies to single-pole slalom. I have highlighted the important part of the rule in yellow:

P 90 in the ICR

To explain, single pole slalom rules require the skier to cross an imaginary line from turning pole to turning pole. The wording of this rule makes it seem as though there is only one "normal" race line, which in this case did not include skiing the hairpin as an "in pin".

In the end, the jury decided that a "normal" race line varies from one run to the next. Since this racer fell, his normal race line became the in-pin line, even though he would not have skied this under normal circumstances. After a very convincing argument from the coach, we decided that the skier was not at fault and so he was no longer be DSQ'd.

Laughing Officials

I have attended countless protests, usually as the coach protesting, less often as the referee. Most of the time, protests are stressful. Sunday's protest could have also been stressful because it was particularly complex set of circumstance with rules that are unclear. What exactly is a "normal race line" and can there be multiple "normal race lines"? Despite the possibility of confusion and stress, everyone remained in good humour. Looking back on it now, I think the reason for this is an unspoken acknowledgement of the arbitrariness of things that brought us together. Here we are, three people that are otherwise friends, facing off in a room behind closed doors, debating the normalcy of a ski race line. We never did so explicitly, but I think we were laughing at ourselves.

Laughing Athletes

Coaching this season, laughter has been a reoccurring area of concern. I am coaching a group of girls that not only like to ski but also like to laugh, sometimes uncontrollably. Generally, I have nothing against laughing but, from the coach's perspective, it can be frustratingly counter-productive when it happens all the time.

Lately, there has been much less "out of control" laughter. Everyone is in good humour but the athletes are making extremely productive use of their training time, the coaches are working together to provide high-quality training environments, and the parents are supporting the athletes and coaches every step of the way.

It's Funny!

There is something ridiculous about sport, something that keeps me coming back. I'm thinking about the far-reaching, global networks that have evolved over time, all based around made-up games and arbitrary rules. So much passion and energy is devoted to these activities, and people's livelihoods depend on them, in very real ways. But they are just games.

I think when we are very serious about improving the roles we play in sport (as athletes, coaches, officials, parent/organizers, researchers, etc.), than we are on the right-side of the joke. We contribute to the joke by weaving our biographies into the joke, which has been going on for centuries. We can laugh at the joke because we are part of it.

When we become so serious about the roles we play that we lose sight of the arbitrariness of it all, and the privilege it is to be given a part, than "the joke is on us." The moment we lose the ability to laugh at ourselves is also the moment we become "the butt of the joke." Its like the spotlight comes on and reveals to the crowd that are pant's are on backwards.

Similarly, if we are laughing all the time and not taking our roles seriously, than the joke is also on us. Athletes or coaches that don't play their roles to their best of their abilities are ruining the whole production, but the show still goes on. In this case, the spotlight comes on a reveals that you forgot to put on your costume and you are wearing no pants at all.

Eating at Mont Blanc

Preparing food instead of picking from the caf is way more work but its always worth it.

Charlotte

Kirsten

Nadia

Maddy

Ju

Blake

How do timing systems effect training for U10-U16 skiers?

The Holy Grail of ski training, at least for this lowly club-level ski coach, is portable, quick, easy, wireless timing (a chronometer). Since 1995, when I first began coaching, I have only ever dreamed of having regular access to a wireless timing system (like a Brower). Very rarely, my club-team would have an opportunity to train with a regional or provincial team, and they set one up. Last Saturday, I trained for the first time with a system that I can access for the remainder of the season. Words cannot express the warm-fuzzy I was feeling. I even snapped a photo.

Brower Timing System

Why do clubs not prioritize timing for training? Is it just a matter of cost and logistics or are there more deep-rooted philosophical aversions to timing at the club level? My feeling is that costs/logistics alone cannot explain the slow uptake of timing among clubs, but that’s a topic for another post. Here, I want to discuss the immediate and most notable changes in training that timing seemed to engender when we used it last Saturday.

Effect #1:

The first effect is unsurprising: All the athletes trained like they race. They were pushing out of the start, tucking for the finish, and making sure they finished each run as quickly as possible. In his book, Beyond Training, fitness guru, Ben Greenfield, makes a strong case against medium-high intensity training (call it, "training at 75%"). His argument is that this type of training is most physically strenuous (leading to injuries) without the gains of either extended periods of low-intensity training or very short periods of high intensity training.

Club-level programming forces us to do most of our training at 75%. A typical training day is a 3.5 hour morning of freeski exercises (probably a 65% intensity level) followed by a 2.0 hour afternoon of gates (probably at 85%). These types of number will result in consistent improvements, but at what costs? Athletes are giving up their entire weekends to skiing and still finding it necessary to do one or two evenings of training during the week, or a regular Friday session, to stay competitive. If I was a 14-year-old, I would find today's training requirements to be over-demanding. Balancing school, family, social life and skiing is not just difficult, it might be impossible.

With timing, we can do shorter blocks in gates because the intensity is higher (2 hours total, including multiple sets, call it 4-8 runs). And the intensity at which we do freeski training can also come down to 35%-45% (by using flatter terrain and spending more time mastering specific, individual skills). I'm not suggesting that we can start re-inventing the standard Club-level program structure; instead, we can give ourselves some breathing room in the existing structure. Increase the intensity at which you train in gates by regularly timing each run.

The effect that timing has on intensity is obvious. But, I think that timing has effects on ski training outside the scope of raising intensity levels.

Effect #2:

Timing also effected our coaching style: we gave less verbal feedback and changed the course more frequently. Let me explain:

Since it was our first time using a chronometer, we were pre-occupied with making sure it worked. Mostly, we had one coach at the start and the other at the finish. The coach at the start gave little-to-no technical instruction or feedback to the athletes, even if they asked; he was there primarily for safety considerations and for assigning each athlete a number (for the timing system).

The coach at the bottom (which was most often, me) also gave very little feedback other than the athlete’s time. Based on the run I observed, I would guess how much they could probably improve their time and I would simply instruct them to go faster. Something like this:

“Juliette. You got a time of 32.24. Try to finish your next run in the 31s.”

Usually, the athlete would go back up and improve their time. These athletes are skiing faster, independently. But the timing system not only causes us (coaches) to give less technical feedback and instruction, it also changed the way we assessed the training environment.

Instead of accessing the course based on the visible deterioration of the track, or the amount for time remaining in our hill-space, or a perceived decrease in the level of the athlete’s enthusiasm, we changed the course based on how much more the athletes could easily learn from that particular set (or how much they could immediately improve their time). After about three runs, the athletes times began to plateau. They might be able to shave off a tenth of a second here or there but, generally, they stopped improving their times on the third run, so that's when we set a new course. We set three different courses in our two-hour block.

Later in the season, or when these skiers are no longer development-level athletes (U18/FIS), they can start trying to shave-off tenths-of-a-second but, for right now, and at development-levels more generally (U16 and under), the focus is on more glaring (maybe “fundamental”) technical issues. With timing, the skiers are addressing these issues in three runs or less.

Effect #3:

The third (and last) significant effect is probably the most important and it's closely related to the first two. It is also probably related to the slow uptake of timing in club-level training. It has to do with what we know, or more precisely, what we think can be known about the right way to ski.

This is the current model: Coaches know what fast/good skiing looks like. Coaches observe their skiers and notice when/where skiers diverge from the fastest/right way. Coaches communicate to athlete the necessary changes (“plant your pole earlier,” “stop leaning back,” “turn above the gate” etc.). Athletes do their best to ski as their coaches prescribe.

Timekeeping changes this model.

With timing, coaches no longer need to know what fast/good skiing looks like beforehand; instead, they need to know how skiers have become faster/better in the past. As the athletes improve, coaches are also learning about fast skiing.

Alexandra, for example, improved her times by skiing much rounder for left-footed turns. Alexandra did not notice that she was making the change; she knew that she needed to run a cleaner ski because she could feel the skidded turns were running slower. It's amazing what athletes feel when they know they are being timed.

The athletes (including Alex) will eventually encounter technical deficiencies that they can’t easily (in three runs) overcome. Most likely, the athlete will know what the deficiency is but, if not, video comparison and consulting with the coach will probably allow them to identify it. The coach can advise on how to address the problem in free-skiing, without timing. When the athlete feels comfortable with the changes, they try it again in a course, with timing. The fastest or best way to ski remains unknown but is instead always in the process of development. Instead of D&C (Detection & Correction), the interactions between coaches and athletes should be described as R&D (Research & Development). Athlete-centred coaching means that athletes are the lead researchers and coaches are merely lab assistants. This is how it should be, even for U10s!

It may seem as though I’m splitting hairs but the difference between the two models is substantial. I learned this in disabled skiing. For para skiers, the D&C model simply does not work. There is no way that coaches could know, a priori, what the fastest/best way for Adam Hall to ski (seven World Cup wins; three World Cup “overalls”; one Paralympic gold medal). Or how to model a ski run that involves two skiers, like Jon Santacana and his guide. These skiers are not doing compromised versions of able-body skiing, they are reinventing the sport on their own terms, so watch and learn.

Crucially important, the same applies in nondisabled contexts! Did Bode, Ligety or even Hirscher find their speed because they had coaches that prescribed the fastest/best way, or did they find it through trial and error, shaving off tenths-of-a-second here and there? If coaches are being honest with ourselves, we must admit that skiing is not our expertise but rather skiing pedagogy. Skiers ski; coaches coach. Skiers ski better when coaches try keep clear demarcations between knowing how to coach and knowing how to ski.

Conclusion:"The Revolution Will Not Be Supervised"

Hanna Rosin recently wrote an article in Reader's Digest, "The Revolution Will Not Be Supervised" (2014). (It also appears in The Atlantic, titled "The Overprotected Kid"). Rosin is arguing for less parental control of children's play. She writes,

"Researchers have started pushing back against parental control. But the real cultural shift has to come from parents. We can no more create the perfect environment for our children than we can create perfect children. To believe otherwise is a delusion, and a harmful one; remind yourself of that every time the panic rises."

Her title reminds me of Pierre Ruel's mantra for development-level skiing: "From start to finish, as fast as possible, without falling, and without supervision." Many people are confused about the "without supervision" part of his motto. Is club-level reluctance to invest in timing systems for training similar to parental reluctance to allow unsupervised play? Are coaches that disapprove of timing in training for U10s-U16s too concerned about technically imperfect skiing? What exactly are we afraid of?