Psychology of Ski Racing TV interview
I was recently interviewed by fellow Burke Mtn. Academy alum Brenda Buglione for her Vail-based TV show SnowMotion.
3
02, 2015
2
02, 2015
In a Slump? Don’t Press the Panic Button
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 [...]
27
01, 2015
The Burden of Expectation: Another Lesson from Mikaela
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 [...]
20
01, 2015
Sliding Down That Slippery Slope Toward Ski Racing
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 [...]
12
01, 2015
Race Like You Train or Train Like You Race?
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 [...]
8
01, 2015
Today Show Segment on the Recent Deaths of 2 Ski Racers
If you haven't already seen it, watch this Today Show segment about the recent deaths of 2 young ski racers, Ronnie Berlack and Bryce Astle. Powerful, touching, inspiring, painful...Get ready to cry.
7
01, 2015
In Tragedy, Putting Ski Racing in Perspective
We in the ski racing community take our sport pretty darned seriously. We are driven by our passion for ski racing and our profound desire to help young racers achieve their goals. But sometimes that seriousness can shift from a healthy commitment to a loss of perspective. For example, this past weekend, I saw 8 [...]
15
12, 2014
5 Reasons Ski Racers Don’t Do Mental Training
Over the many years that I’ve been working in the field of sport psychology, I have championed the benefits of mental training for our sport to thousands of ski racers. This work has ranged from talks to junior programs to ongoing consulting with individual athletes and teams. As many of you know from my dozens [...]
8
12, 2014
Battle the Course, Not Yourself
Ski racing has become a combat sport in which you’re armored from head to toe and carrying weapons (razor sharp ski edges as swords and pointy ski poles for spears) to do battle against the course, terrain, snow conditions, and weather. You are also doing battle against the other racers in the field. Unfortunately, too [...]
10
11, 2014
Mindset is an Essential Piece of the “Fast Skiing” Puzzle
As I have noted in past articles, Mikaela is a veritable fount of lessons on how to succeed as a ski racer (regardless of how you define success). In my last post, which I actually began writing before Mikaela’s Soelden victory (her first World Cup GS win), she demonstrated so beautifully what can happen when [...]