Myth #3 Debunked: Part 3

Another easy way to identify a barrier is by looking for the 180 reversals.  This has occured to me on several occasions in both directions, positive and negative.  The 180 reversal is where all of sudden you notice a dramatic change in your performance.  It may take several days before you realize that it has occured but it will be such a big change, 180 degree kind of change, that you will not be able to deny that it has occured.  Let me give two scenarios that will show what I'm talking about.

 

Back when I first started ski jumping I developed a mental barrier to jumping skis.  My mind wanted to keep me off jumping skis.  You can read more about it in Mind Of A Ski Jumper: Part 2(see link at the top).  My mind formed up this barrier and it just kept on holding me back.  I truly had developed both a conscious and subconscious barrier to going to jumping skis.  The mind took everything one step further.  Cannonball was the only person that had really been ever saying anything to me about going to jumping skis.  He was the only person I ever crashed around.  I didn't crash when anyone else was around, just when Cannonball was around.  The mind was simply trying to make me think that I couldn't jump on jumping skis at the same time it was trying to make Cannonball think I shouldn't jump on jumping skis.

 

When I finally made the switch to jumping skis midway through the second winter the mind flared up kicking and screaming because I had put on the jumping skis.  After 6+ months without a crash I could't stand a jump on the 10 meter jump at Lebanon to save my soul.  I didn't realize at the time what the problem was, that took several more years before I finally understood what had actually happened.

 

The 180 reversal came the first evening I jumped the 25 with jumping skis.  I had already tried jumping on the 10 for five, six, seven days, with essentially no luck at all.  The very second I went to the 25, the crashless streak returned.  I couldn't crash while jumping the 25 no matter how much I would have wanted to.  It took me four years to finally understand that it was the mind/jumping skis that had caused my problem on the 10.

 

This was a positive break from the mental barrier.  The negative break came about a week later.

 

I still hadn't had a "real" crash in seven months.  I was jumping on the 48 in Lake Placid.  It was my fifth day on jumping skis, about a week after I finally jumped the 25 on jumping skis for the first time.  The first four jumps went okay, definitely not pretty jumps by any means, but I hadn't crashed any of them.  The fifth jump finally ate my shorts.  I ended up having a crash down at the transition.  I ended up leaning too far back just above the transition and the skis split and I went right between them.   It's been crash city ever since.  This is now almost four years later and I still pretty much crash once every seven jumps whenever I'm jumping in a jump suit on the 50 here in Lebanon.  The mind is still fighting me, now just for different reasons than why it had been fighting me before.

 

Another simple 180 reversal is when you have been having consistent improvement and then all of a sudden you find yourself not improving anymore, or worse, you start doing worse than what you had been doing.  Anytime you see a major reversal in your jumping this can be deemed as a 180 reversal.  180 reversals like this don't occur without a reason.  To overcome them, you need to first identify that a 180 reversal has occured, then you need to figure out why it occured.  Those two things must happen before you can neutralize the memory and overcome the grip that the memory has on your jumping.

 

Tomorrow I will look at Little Gimmees.  This is yet another way of knowing that you are suffering from a mental barrier.

 

Until next time

Keep the ski tips up,

Crash