The Mind Of A Ski Jumper, Part 1
As part of this blog I want to share some stories about my ski jumping to help others learn that there is far more to ski jumping than just technique. I guess you could say I know, from looking back at the past, that my mind has been against me since before I took the first jump. I hope to help other jumpers avoid the same problems that I have had to deal with and that I still deal with all the time. I truly hope none of the kids out there right now have to deal with what I've went through. Yes, the nickname is Crash, for a reason, a very good reason. So far no trips to the hospital, but WAY to many black and blue marks as a result and a few very close calls. I guess you could say I make Eddie the Eagle look like a professional.
For me, my biggest problem with ski jumping started long before I had ever seen a pair of snow skis in person. Yes, it may sound crazy, but it is very true. Things that happen as small kids can influence you the rest of your life. They can influence you in ways that are not directly related to what had happened earlier in life. It's uncovering and eliminating these mental blocks that can go a long way to making your life as a ski jumper much easier, more enjoyable and far more rewarding.
As I was growing up in northwest Ohio my family wasn't much of an outdoor family and we never did much in the way of traveling. Being in the flat country of northwest Ohio if you wanted to do anything adventuresome you had to travel to be able to do it. Heck the nearest ski area was almost 80 miles, one way from home. Instead my brother, sister and myself ended up on the local area swim team. My brother swam pretty much most of his childhood years. I swam until I was 14, and then gave it up, not out of dislike for it, but because I was fed up with being treated like crap from the other kids on the team. I pretty much was everybodies punching bag. The last year that I swam I would only stayed for half the practice and then headed for the locker room and on upstairs to play pool on the pool table until it was time to go home. I did that so I wouldn't have to deal with the kids in the locker room after practice was over. My mind was already in protection mode/trying to keep me from the pain the other kids were dishing out. The worst insult to injury was the fact that I was quite a good swimmer. I had/have many team and pool records in my name and way too many ribbons and medals to go with the records.
In northwest Ohio the outdoor motto pretty much was "If you want to get into something in the outdoors, you get yourself into it, teach yourself how to do, and do it by yourself. If you don't like that, then stay home and sit on your butt." I pretty much knew by not having much in the way of friends through school that I had no other choice but to get myself into anything that I wanted to do, and I would also have to do it by myself as well. After getting into skiing back in 1995, I saw very few people from my neck of the woods ever out on the slopes. After getting into whitewater(WW) kayaking in 1999, I found that there was no one that did any WW kayaking that lived around me. Like I said, I pretty much lived in an indoor environment.
Once I got into skiing, I picked it up quite quickly. The only thing that held me back was lack of terrain, and not anything else. I could ski pretty much anything within the first few weeks. By the end of the first season, I was bored stiff of skiing. On the old "straight" skis, not on the new shape skis, I would turn around, face uphill and ski all the way down to the bottom facing uphill, carving as I went along. That's how boring skiing got for me, I had to do something to spice it up somehow. Granted before I got into skiing I had already wanted to get into ski jumping. The lack of facilities held me back from getting involved while I lived in Ohio.
When I got into WW kayaking, I was very much on my own. I didn't know of anyone within 1.5 hours of me that was involved in the sport. I managed to go on and watch a video and I taught myself how to roll the kayak and went to progress very quickly from there. The nearest whitewater to where I lived was 6 hours of solo driving each way. Another words, I ran whitewater on the weekends only. By the end of the first season, I had a 30 year veteran paddler willing to take me down Upper Gauley in West Virginia. It's one of the classic runs kinda like jumping one of the large jumps at any Olympic venue. Very rarely does someone run Upper Gauley in their first season. The only thing that stopped me was not hooking up with him. It was mostly a personality problem. I'm 'typically' the kind of person that waits until someone offers, I don't go out and ask.
In 2001 I got into ski jumping. Ever since, it has been nothing but one stumbling block upon another. Pretty much in the past three years I have made no improvement whatsoever. I've had to look back and ask myself what the deal is. I've never had any trouble picking up anything new at all until I got into ski jumping. What was it, I kept asking myself, until the reality set in. The reality is the nature of the SPORT. Yes, the competitive environment. The torment/pain that I went through while swimming has caused my mind to try to keep from succeeding, in a competitive environment, at anything I do in the future. Hence, why I've had all the trouble with ski jumping. Even though I pretty much never compete, my mind still knows that the environment exists and that the sport is about one thing and one thing only, competition.
See the real secret, as I pointed out in my first post to the blog, is that the sport of ski jumping is ALL mental. Yes, 100% mental, 0% physical. If your mind is against you, your body won't be able to get into the nice aerodynamic position that it needs to be in. The mind won't allow it to. It will trick you every way it possibly can to keep you from being able to do what you need to do. Once the mind has been taken care of, getting the body out over the skis, jumping on time, or putting in a telemark landing, etc., will become dramatically easier. I hear top level coaches in all sports talk about using visualization. I see them using it in interviews shown during the Olympics all the time. Visualization is great. You need to remember though that all the visualization that you do won't help any if the mind is fighting the body. The mind will still win, and it will keep you from doing what you need to do. You have to take care of the mind first. Again, ski jumping is 100% mental, 0% physical. Later this winter I will detail a method I found out about almost a year ago that shows much promise in taking care of breaking down the mental blocks that you might be experiencing.
In Part II of this series, coming up later on, how watching ski jumping hurt my ski jumping progress in the beginning.
Until next time
Keep the ski tips up,
Crash
For me, my biggest problem with ski jumping started long before I had ever seen a pair of snow skis in person. Yes, it may sound crazy, but it is very true. Things that happen as small kids can influence you the rest of your life. They can influence you in ways that are not directly related to what had happened earlier in life. It's uncovering and eliminating these mental blocks that can go a long way to making your life as a ski jumper much easier, more enjoyable and far more rewarding.
As I was growing up in northwest Ohio my family wasn't much of an outdoor family and we never did much in the way of traveling. Being in the flat country of northwest Ohio if you wanted to do anything adventuresome you had to travel to be able to do it. Heck the nearest ski area was almost 80 miles, one way from home. Instead my brother, sister and myself ended up on the local area swim team. My brother swam pretty much most of his childhood years. I swam until I was 14, and then gave it up, not out of dislike for it, but because I was fed up with being treated like crap from the other kids on the team. I pretty much was everybodies punching bag. The last year that I swam I would only stayed for half the practice and then headed for the locker room and on upstairs to play pool on the pool table until it was time to go home. I did that so I wouldn't have to deal with the kids in the locker room after practice was over. My mind was already in protection mode/trying to keep me from the pain the other kids were dishing out. The worst insult to injury was the fact that I was quite a good swimmer. I had/have many team and pool records in my name and way too many ribbons and medals to go with the records.
In northwest Ohio the outdoor motto pretty much was "If you want to get into something in the outdoors, you get yourself into it, teach yourself how to do, and do it by yourself. If you don't like that, then stay home and sit on your butt." I pretty much knew by not having much in the way of friends through school that I had no other choice but to get myself into anything that I wanted to do, and I would also have to do it by myself as well. After getting into skiing back in 1995, I saw very few people from my neck of the woods ever out on the slopes. After getting into whitewater(WW) kayaking in 1999, I found that there was no one that did any WW kayaking that lived around me. Like I said, I pretty much lived in an indoor environment.
Once I got into skiing, I picked it up quite quickly. The only thing that held me back was lack of terrain, and not anything else. I could ski pretty much anything within the first few weeks. By the end of the first season, I was bored stiff of skiing. On the old "straight" skis, not on the new shape skis, I would turn around, face uphill and ski all the way down to the bottom facing uphill, carving as I went along. That's how boring skiing got for me, I had to do something to spice it up somehow. Granted before I got into skiing I had already wanted to get into ski jumping. The lack of facilities held me back from getting involved while I lived in Ohio.
When I got into WW kayaking, I was very much on my own. I didn't know of anyone within 1.5 hours of me that was involved in the sport. I managed to go on and watch a video and I taught myself how to roll the kayak and went to progress very quickly from there. The nearest whitewater to where I lived was 6 hours of solo driving each way. Another words, I ran whitewater on the weekends only. By the end of the first season, I had a 30 year veteran paddler willing to take me down Upper Gauley in West Virginia. It's one of the classic runs kinda like jumping one of the large jumps at any Olympic venue. Very rarely does someone run Upper Gauley in their first season. The only thing that stopped me was not hooking up with him. It was mostly a personality problem. I'm 'typically' the kind of person that waits until someone offers, I don't go out and ask.
In 2001 I got into ski jumping. Ever since, it has been nothing but one stumbling block upon another. Pretty much in the past three years I have made no improvement whatsoever. I've had to look back and ask myself what the deal is. I've never had any trouble picking up anything new at all until I got into ski jumping. What was it, I kept asking myself, until the reality set in. The reality is the nature of the SPORT. Yes, the competitive environment. The torment/pain that I went through while swimming has caused my mind to try to keep from succeeding, in a competitive environment, at anything I do in the future. Hence, why I've had all the trouble with ski jumping. Even though I pretty much never compete, my mind still knows that the environment exists and that the sport is about one thing and one thing only, competition.
See the real secret, as I pointed out in my first post to the blog, is that the sport of ski jumping is ALL mental. Yes, 100% mental, 0% physical. If your mind is against you, your body won't be able to get into the nice aerodynamic position that it needs to be in. The mind won't allow it to. It will trick you every way it possibly can to keep you from being able to do what you need to do. Once the mind has been taken care of, getting the body out over the skis, jumping on time, or putting in a telemark landing, etc., will become dramatically easier. I hear top level coaches in all sports talk about using visualization. I see them using it in interviews shown during the Olympics all the time. Visualization is great. You need to remember though that all the visualization that you do won't help any if the mind is fighting the body. The mind will still win, and it will keep you from doing what you need to do. You have to take care of the mind first. Again, ski jumping is 100% mental, 0% physical. Later this winter I will detail a method I found out about almost a year ago that shows much promise in taking care of breaking down the mental blocks that you might be experiencing.
In Part II of this series, coming up later on, how watching ski jumping hurt my ski jumping progress in the beginning.
Until next time
Keep the ski tips up,
Crash
posted by Ryan Crawford at 11:12 PM
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