I always feel a certain kind of nervousness when I begin a summer training camp. As I take my first turns on snow in quite some time, I’m especially wary of how they’re going to feel. Am I going to remember to ski? Is everything going to feel awkward and different? Will I forget the timing of being in gates?
This uncertainty is usually met with some mental games as I feel out the first runs, turns and gates. In the past if I’ve felt ‘bad’ or unnatural, I start to panic and wonder how I’ll ever get to the level I was at at the end of the previous season.
Self doubt is a tricky thing. As soon as you give it fire, it’s all you can think about. This is certainly not productive, so I made a conscious effort this year to give myself time at the beginning of camp to ease in slowly and not be so critical of how I was feeling.
On our 36 hour travel day to Ushuaia, I started watching the Netflix documentary Break Point, which follows the best tennis players in the world and takes viewers behind the scenes of high pressure matches, tournaments and the internal struggles each player is dealing with. It was amazing to me to hear that even the top ranked tennis players in the world (in an incredibly mentally rigorous sport) questioned their ability to play and their right to even be at the tournaments, much less in contention to win. This was surprising, but also reassuring for me to hear. It’s easy to think that the best at something, anything, don’t doubt themselves, but it’s a good wake up call to realize that self doubt is normal and okay, and then work to move past it.
Luckily for me, my progression back on snow was relatively easy! We took the first day slow after arriving at 11 pm the previous night and started with just free-skiing. On the second day, we were meant to train gs, but I told myself I would just free-ski another day if I needed. Of course as soon as I saw the course, I was tempted to jump into gates and told myself ‘okay, take a run, see how it feels, and if it feels terrible you can keep freeskiing.’ Fortunately, I felt great right away, (which usually isn’t the case for me) and we had an awesome day of training. I’m super thankful that I made the effort to ski in mammoth two weeks ago, as I think that made a big difference. But I think also giving myself the option to not execute right away took off some of the stress and allowed me to trust my instincts more.
We then had four amazing days of GS training on perfect winter snow on fun and challenging hill. Everyone agreed that it was probably the best GS training in the world right now. Lucky us :)
Here are some photos!
Love it and miss you!