Things Overheard at Boot Camp

Lane McLaughlin, PSIA-NW Tech Team

Winter 2003

When my health club advertised a ski conditioning class last fall, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for me to jump in and get the kind of physical conditioning I’ve always wanted to help me with my ski training. And so it was, but like all good things, they must come to an end and sure enough I found myself at the end of the season wondering how I could continue. Lucky for me our coach had something special in mind for us if we were brave enough to enlist – Boot Camp; good old fashioned military style training, tailored of course for us civilians who are usually only at war with the traffic, deadlines, vending machines, remote controls lost in sofa cushions, etc.

You see, our ski conditioning coach was an elite US/NATO commando who understands motivation, personal training, the capacity of the human body, mind, and spirit and who has created a program that takes civilian athletes of any caliber and helps them raise their own personal bar. Good old push-ups, sit-ups, sprints, hill running, stretching, and a variety of other basic training are as high-tech as this program gets. It’s not the complexity of the exercise; it’s the intensity that makes this so effective. And as the mind gets its conditioning, it becomes the tool by which the athlete allows the body to receive its conditioning.

If you were to recon some of our missions, you’d overhear from our drill sergeant some of the following marching orders that turn ordinary yuppies into elite Boot Camp machines:

“These are just your arms!”

Oh the irony! They may be “just my arms” that I’m holding up, turning small circles, lifting slowly, or holding straight with fists held tight. But why then do my shoulders burn so badly? Screaming to be dropped, to quit, and to end the tension and discomfort.

It just goes to show that even simple can be effective. High-priced machines, club memberships, and personal trainers are worthless to you if you’re not mentally strong enough to even push through the burn you get holding your arms out straight for a couple of minutes.

Can you relate the lessons learned in this mission to your ski training? “These are just your wedge turns!” Simple can be effective – you can do as much for your ski training by balancing, turning, edging, and managing pressures in slow speed wedge turns as you can in high speed GS turns if you are willing to find your limits in skill, walk on that fine line of failure, focus on what needs to be done to succeed, and then move through that point successfully.

“Pain is weakness leaving the body!”

 Our civilian lifestyle certainly has blurred the lines between “pain” and “discomfort”. Injuries induce pain, and that is a serious message from the body to the mind to stop. However, in the course of challenging our physical limits, we are likely to experience discomfort in our lungs and muscles and too often a defense mechanism in our mind kicks in and terminates our effort. If we can sharpen the spirit and mind need to distinguish between real and perceived pain we can put our body in a zone for improved conditioning rather than maintenance of our existing limits.

Ski training has the very same point of challenge and a corresponding fight or flight response. Would you agree that most skiers ski to a particular level of effort (reflect on Ron Kipp’s talk at fall seminar last year)?

I need to improve my one legged skiing to improve my overall skiing but it is “painful” to ski so out of balance. I need to challenge myself to tighten my arc in a GS course to improve my overall skiing but the extra forces against my body make it “hard” to balance over the outside ski. I need to teach a ski subject to my peers to expand my knowledge base but I don’t want to look “stupid” in front of them. Do these challenges really pose any serious threat or harm to our well-being? Push through perceived pain and you’ll grow stronger.

“If you have to throw up, do it off to the side and continue the exercise!”

At Boot Camp, once your mind is an enabler, you just may find where your limits are and – gaaack – everyone may know what you had for lunch. And that’s OK if you’re willing to be objective about your limits – I have my own limit, it can change from day to day, it can be affected by factors outside my control, I need to back-off and recover but I don’t need to quit, and I don’t need to disrupt my teammates.

How many times have you seen in a group ski lesson/clinic where the discomfort of the trial and error process for some participants gets them so frustrated that they just shut down or, even worse, try to make their problems the whole group’s problem. I certainly don’t want ski coaches to be insensitive or unobservant to the dangers associated with fear or injuries our participants may have, but short of real danger, can we just tell those obsessed with vanity and the unwillingness to ski “ugly” while learning to just “throw up off to the side and continue the exercise”?

“We’re almost through with the warm up!”

Boot Camp workouts are an hour and a half, yet at any given time, even with ten minutes to go, you may hear our commander yell out that “we’re almost through with the warm up”. This interesting trick on the mind just goes to show how often we size up our challenge, pace ourselves, and often lose focus or intensity and coast toward the finish. My mind is telling me I’ve worked hard; I only have ten minutes to go, what the heck, I’ll just pat myself on the back and cool down. This cue from the commander is a great reminder to stay focused – the clock should not dictate the level of effort. Each task and moment in time should be valued equally and the mind and body trained to get the most out of every activity until we truly shut it down.

Just remember that it’s not practice that makes perfect, it’s perfect practice that makes perfect. Too often in ski training I see participants lose that level of focus and effort that is necessary to make practice time effective. In our teaching model, the instructor is very visible and active as a leader earlier in the lesson time, and the student becomes more in charge of their learning later in the lesson as they are let loose to practice. Too often, once students are given the reigns to the practice time, they customize the practice to comfort themselves rather than to challenge themselves for new results (review the evolution laid out in the previous paragraphs). This trick by our coach is his subtle way to remind us of the purpose, the goal, and his role as leader from start to finish.

“Attack this exercise!”

If you haven’t quit on me yet, then you just may have enough left in you to raise the bar another notch and actually attack the exercise. Beyond getting through the mission, going through the motions, and taking up space, can you summon up the will and desire to go beyond balancing against the challenge and to actually conquer it. Can a jog become a sprint, can a hop become a leap, and can 10 reps become 15? In a military sense, an attack is something that is well planned, executed with force, and with an unrelenting pace that leaves the opponent reeling.

Heading toward a new ski season, establish your mini and major ski goals as the exercise and prepare yourself for the attack. Don’t “guess” whether or not you’ll take your Level II exam this year. Don’t “show up” for a DCL tryout. Don’t “sort-of-maybe” try working in your children’s learning program. The lessons learned from Boot Camp suggest that you use simple methods to routinely test and train your limits, to push a little more and a little longer, prepare for the challenge, and to be unrelenting to the end of the mission. At this level of effort of commitment there is no shame, excuse, or regret and usually a very satisfying outcome.

“Good job today people!”

The battlefield is becoming littered with casualties of doubt and we stand here as winners. You have overcome obstacles of the mind to extend the limits of the body. Take a moment to feed the spirit because you’re going to have to look forward to doing it all over again the next time we meet.