With the season drawing to a close, it is, for every racer, a time of reckoning in which you look back and evaluate what kind of season you had: one to be proud of or one to reflect back on with disappointment and perhaps regret. One of the primary criteria that racers use to judge [...]
Note: This article is an encore representation of a topic that never gets old. It’s hard to believe, but there is only about a month of the race season left. After many days of training and racing, the end is in sight. At this late point in the season, you will have fallen into one [...]
Having just read the title of my new article, You may be thinking: “Has Dr. Jim finally lost it? What does sleep have to do with ski racing?” Let me explain. Have you ever tried to sleep? You lie in bed and tell yourself that you have to sleep and you try, try, try to [...]
My family just returned from Ski Week (otherwise known as Winter Break for nonskiers) up in Tahoe where our two daughters (9 and 7) are members of the Sugar Bowl Ski Team. As many of you may know, California is suffering through a fourth straight year of drought. The temperatures were well above freezing at [...]
I came across a great video of Marcel Hirscher at age 14 competing in the Topolino Games (a world juvenile championships). Do you see the makings of a superstar at that age? I'm not sure I do.
I just returned from the men’s Eastern Cups at Stowe last week. I have to say how impressed I was by the quality of skiing. From bib 1 to 117, there was not a bad skier there. I spoke to a number of the racers during the two days and I sensed one emotion quite [...]
Mikaela has certainly put herself between a rock and a hard place. Let’s start with the rock, which is the expectations she has created from her remarkable successes she has had during her short, though illustrious, career. Mikaela has, over the years, built a veritable Mt. Everest of expectations for herself by so dominating slalom [...]
You want to see an aggressive mindset and intensity? Watch the first 10 seconds of this video of Lindsey's World Cup SG victory (scroll down). Notice the pole clicking, breathing, constant movement, pole-strap-adjustment "twitch", and attacking out of the start to the first gate.
Taylor family at the 2014 Sugar Bowl Tiki Race Back in 2011, I wrote an article titled “Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Ski Racers, in which I described my internal conflict about whether I wanted my two daughters (then ages 5 and 3, now 9 and 7) to become [...]
One of the first questions that I ask racers and coaches I work with is: Should you race like you train or train like you race? By far, the most frequent response is: You should race like you train. This answer seems perfectly reasonable if you think about it. When you train, you’re relaxed, feel [...]