What are you doing with your summer?

My plan is to spend it frolicking! (Okay, probably not.)

Sorry for the formatting issue, I've re-posted this one several times, but for some reason it won't make space between the paragraphs...

 Okay, so the next question is: what are you going to do with your summer?  I started thinking about it and working on it in plenty of time, but I did kind of put all my eggs in one basket. I didn't want to apply for a job at another ski school and then have to turn someone down.

When I didn't get the job in Portillo, I was sad. I struggled a lot with what it meant. I'm not sure why I didn't get hired. I do respect the decision, of course, and I'm so excited for my friend Andrew and Cindy who will be there teaching this summer. I'd love to be with them, but I'm just as stoked for them as I would be to go with.

The repercussions of what it meant not to get the job hung around me a little longer than I expected. I struggled with what it meant, I worried about what it would mean in my future.

I resigned myself to ski locally and head to Portillo to train in August, and then, my back country partner got hurt. Yeah, there's lots of people to ski with, but this is the person I trust who is free to go get some quick training laps in and who doesn't mind if I'm slow. (Well, I'm sure he minds, but he tolerates it fairly well.)

So I started looking at working overseas again. But I have this wishy-washy feeling about it, and no time to feel that way. I looked at several of the schools and while I'd love to work for many of them, my goal for being on snow this summer was to get great training in, and I want to do a good job for whatever ski school I work for. I know that there are some situations that would challenge my ability to keep my morale high and work hard, and so I have chosen not to take the offer at that ski school, which I'm pretty sure I will regret.

And I may or may not have been pining for some time with my boys. In the sun. In the summer. What was I thinking, endless winter? Yeah, LOTS of people do it. But four months without Ethan and Bodhi and flip flops? Without a trip to the beach anywhere in there? Could I handle it? What if I committed to it and then I was really sad, and the boys were really sad, and...

I think I felt safe with the idea of Portillo because its small, a little tiny isolated community, and I like that idea. I like the idea of being somewhere insular and working hard and training hard. I don't know, I've been thinking about it so much that I had prepared myself for it. When I started thinking about what it would be like to live in Queenstown, I got scared, worried, unsure.

But that's my job, right? I need to get my butt on snow and get to work! Regardless of being scared. Geeze, Kate, for real?

So then I started thinking, what if there's another way to do this? I talked with my good friends who have really been lovely mentors for me, and we talked about other options... traveling just to train, if I can save the money. Or traveling with clients and staying to train. I have three clients who are interested in skiing with me in the South this year, and two more maybes, and the possibility of coaching for a camp. So should I do that?

Should I stay here and head south with those clients? What if they don't materialize? Then will I forfeit my training this summer?

Is all this hemming and hawing keeping me from having a job of ANY kind?

A few days ago, I made a DECISION. And then I got an email and had to rethink that decision. Its all so mutable.

I think because of that, and the injury of my friend, and the fact that I'm broke again, and we are moving out of the Ponds, this beautiful apartment that we can't afford, and back into the tiny cookhouse again, and and and...

The result is that I'm sad, frustrated, and not eating well. I went on a MASSIVE sugar binge (well, not massive like it used to be, I'm still off the Red Bull), but I went the opposite way I was heading. I had a hugely productive, positive three days and then I hit bottom for about three. And I've been climbing out ever since. I did manage, in the midst of all that, to take two long walks, play on the slack line, get some work done and book a bunch of massage, so it could be worse. I know things have shifted to some extent because even though I was feeling rock bottom, I was still productive and still able to make some positive choice.

My point is, it happens. While it was happening, I was watching, and I knew I had some control, but not the kind of control I wanted to have. (This is the subject of another blog post, called Fly Wheel, coming soon!).

And so, using those Flywheel techniques, which are still active, even when things are hard, I slowly started turning things around.

I knocked out another three projects that needed doing that I've been meaning to get done for two years again tonight, I'm getting closer to finishing up other lingering obligations and writing assignments from this year so that I can climb out of this hole and be living in the NOW.

I guess that when you live in a tiny boat, its easy to swamp it, and my financial boat is tiny, tippy and funky. Sometimes, I float along side it because its upside down. But its growing, and I'm getting faster at righting it.

The thing that keeps me sane in all of this is knowing that starting new, with nothing, in a new place takes time. I am kind of looking at myself like a business, it takes three years to break even. Last year, I had to borrow money from my mom. This year, I didn't.

This year, I have more ski clients and more massage clients, next year will be even better if I keep working hard and doing a good job for my clients. I know I can do it. I know I can. Meanwhile, I'm lucky to have picked up some cleaning work, so back to scrubbing floors we go, but hey, its a paycheck while everything else gets sorted out. 

Bump Skiing Videos

Okay, you asked for it! Here are my favorite You Tube videos to watch when I'm thinking about bump skiing, and I usually watch them while I'm doing dryland mogul practice on the Bosu Ball. Ive had a couple of requests to put up that dryland drill (which is really quite simple), so I'll get that up as soon as possible.

SO Much has been going on, we are 35 days from the Rocky Mountain Assesment Trials, so I'm deep in training (yay!) and sore like you wouldn't believe. I fell asleep on the couch last night while reading to the kids at about 7:45 and didn't wake up till 9, when they had built a fort on the floor behind the couch and were attempting to sleep in it for the night.

My little sister had done an epic bike ride yesterday, too, and so the boys were amazing, they were making us tea and covering us with blankets while I was reading. Such sweethearts!!

Enjoy and train hard!!

Busy bouncing, please hold...

I'm dying to write a blog post, but I've just figured out a really cool bump skiing dryland workout with a bosu ball and two chairs, so instead, I'm watching JGS 4 on continuous loop while my boys "ski" around the living room and over the furniture and I work on this CORE stuff that feels sooooo goood... Rocky Mountain Assessment Trials in 37 Days!

A Great Coaching Cue for Hip Dumping, Twisting and Leveleing of the hip in Skiing

We flipped on the video camera while Liat, Alisa and I were having a conversation about how a day on the snow practicing a coaching cue for hip movements really helped me understand how to move my hips more precisely and more efficiently in the turn.

Rick Vetromille, lead trainer at Aspen Mountain gave me this very interesting coaching cue to try to get my hips to move into the turn without twisting. Remember, this is a coaching cue, a concept to think about while you are practicing.

When you are skiing, it is very difficult to feel the pelvis moving, because your proprioceptive awareness around the hip joint is quite low. Many of us struggle with dumping, setting, tracking of the hip (if you do, you've probably heard those words and gotten that feedback), bracing, hiking, over-lifting, or twisting of the hip.

We tend to be good at moving it, just with large, imprecise movements. Since the hip can be the heaviest part of our body (hello, ladies...) its a really important piece to move with precision.

Keep in mind that the lower you get over the snow, you path you take to move back across with have a bit of a "sine wave" to it. But the intention, the concept, the coaching cue, is the same.

This helps tremendously with dumping of the hip, hips tracking with the skis, one hip coming around in one turn, an inability to level the hip, a contrived hip leveling (through lifting) and all kinds of other hip issues.

If this coaching cue works for you, go practice the drills and see how it might affect your accuracy in your lateral or tipping movements in your more dynamic turns!

(By the way, if the coaching cue works well for you, try it in all the turns, pull it through all your skiing: Wedge, Wedge Christie, Open Parallel, Short Turns, Medium Radius Dynamic and so on)

The discussion about counter, being over the outside ski, and all that can flow from here is also interesting, but lets focus on the hip position in the conversation that follows. That's the main point.