Myth #3 Debunked: Part 4

Little Gimmees are a term that I have come up with thanks to watching what has happened to my ski jumping and other peoples ski jumping over the past six years.  By my definition Little Gimmees are when you have run into a rut and you just can't seem to improve any at all.  After going through an extend period of this rut, frustration settles in.  You get so down on yourself that you are almost ready to give up.  Next thing you know your performance improves just enough to send you back up the tressel again.  This may go on for several jumps before it will settle itself down and return you back to your normal, rutted routine once again.

 

Little Gimmees are all about suckering your mind into continuing.  You are so ready give up and throw in the towel.  Their is no reason to keep on coming back out to only get the same miserable results.  Why bother, you ask?  Then you find yourself doing better than you have ever did before.

 

This is how the mind tricks you into continuing to participate while continuing to resist permanent improvement.

 

Some examples are in order:

Back during the summer of 2002, Mind Of A Ski Jumper Part 4(see link above), I jumped a summer of torture.  My mind just wouldn't let me stand a jump all summer long.  It was crash heaven from the start of the summer to the end of the summer.  I crashed all the jumps I took on the 25 that summer and crashed around 70-75% of the jumps I took off the telebump that summer.  I was on the verge of quitting jumping by the time winter arrived.  I decided at the end of summer to give it two or three days at the start of the winter to see if things were going to change.  If they didn't I was going to quit jumping, I was tired of crashing all the time.  Sure enough I got a little gimmee.  The beginning of the winter started off smooth for the first several days.  I didn't have any crashes.  Then the crashes came back with gusto once I had decided to keep on jumping.

 

Early February 2003 I had only been jumping, two to three days a week, if not just one day a week.  The rest of the week I was recovering from the crashes I was taking.  The right side of my lower body was black and blue all the time.  My tailbone was so sore I could hardly sit during all of late January-mid February.  I knew my mind was fighting to keep me from jumping the 50 meter hills.  I was always fighting back.  It finally came down to what I had been used to being the end of the 50 meter jump season in Lebanon.  In the previous two years, it was split down the center whether the 50 would be jumpable in March or not.  I knew that I always went back home to Ohio during Presidents Day week and the following week everybody was typically gone to Junior Olympics.  By the time early February came around the clock was ticking down fast for me getting off the 50 during the 2003 winter.

 

Valentines Weekend I pretty much made up my mind that if I didn't jump the 50 over the winter I wasn't going to jump at all during the following summer.  I wasn't going to go through the torture again.  I knew I had, what I figured to be, only one week to get off the 50.  I also knew my mind was fighting its hardest to make sure I didn't jump the 50.

 

I was jumping in Newport on Monday evening.  My plan was to test out the dirty little jumping demon and jump until he sent me to the ground.  I also had the full intention of going up to Lebanon and jumping the 50 on Tuesday evening.  I knew that anytime I even thought about jumping the 50, I started crashing BIG time, no matter what hill I was jumping on.  I took the first jump that evening and didn't crash, took the second jump and ditto.  I knew something was wrong.  It was way too obvious, the mind wasn't acting like it always had been.  After the third successful crash in a row I knew the battle was over.  Another little gimmee had occured.

 

Another example comes from one of the other adults I jump with.  He has now been jumping for ten years.  He started jumping in his late thirties.  He has never really caught on to the technique yet.  He pretty much only jumps on the weekends.  He doesn't do any summer jumping at all.  He tried it a couple of times and didn't like it so he's never came back out since then.  His performance has never really improved in the six years I've been jumping with him.  He does have a tendency though to get these tiny little improvements that keep on egging him to stick with the sport.  They come when he most needs them, right when he is about to throwing the towel and quit jumping.  It seems like each year he gets more and more frustrated at his lack of improvement.  Each year he gets a nice day of jumping at Mud Meet, the final meet of the season.  This always seems to bring him back out the following winter to jump again.

 

The little gimmees are dirty, sneaky, little tricks that the mind plays with you when you are stuck in a serious rut.  This is the time more than any other that you need to switch gears, get off the jump and start neutralizing the memories that are causing your rut in the first place.  How does the old saying go, "If you want to keep getting the same results, then keep doing the same thing."

 

Watch what you say come tomorrow, I'll be watching.

 

Until next time

Keep the ski tips up,

Crash

 

Update:  I wrote most of this series a couple of weeks ago, and modified this past weekend.  Another update that I will make today is a prediction.  This one about the upcoming Large Hill Competition at Torino.  Janne Ahonen will not win the large hill comp.

 

Again, when the mind is against you for a particular reason it remains against you for that reason, until you take care of the problem that is causing the reaction that you are seeing.  Janne has won how many jump meets in the past ten years?  He has competed in 4 Olympics and has not won a gold medal as of yet.  It's pretty obvious that his mind is keeping him from winning in the Olympics.  His chances of winning on the large hill are pretty slim.

 

Crash