Thanks to Brian for sending me this incredible video... its just unreal. I sat here with my mouth open and tears running down my face. Get back up! Its not over till its OVER!
Showing posts with label Inspiration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inspiration. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Friday, March 19, 2010
And then all promptly fell apart.
Here's another thing I love about sport. Once you touch it, it disappears. You have to chase down this elusive feeling that you visited briefly, trying to get your body to do whatever it was doing when you were skiing behind someone whose skiing makes sense to you to get it back.
I had a chairlift ride with Vance the other day, another incredible Aspen Mountain Pro, and I was chatting with him. He asked me how things were going with my trainer passport, and I told him that I wasn't sure about this one type of turn. I'd been able to do it skiing behind Kurt, and then I'd had it strongly for the rest of the morning, and on and off after lunch, and then just a little the next morning, and by lunch of the second day, it was gone.
I said to him, "I don't know, I guess I just need to get out there and chase Kurt down Copper again and feel it all come together."
Vance looked at me. "No you don't." He said. "You had it for two days, right?"
"Yeah, on and off..."
"Then its in there. You've felt it enough. You know what you are not doing, you know what it felt like to do it right. Go figure it out yourself."
I thought about this for a second. He's absolutely right of course.
"Thank you. I guess I just needed someone to tell me that I know how to do it."
"Whatever," he said, "I don't know if you know how to do it or not, or even what it is. But if you did "it" for two days, you know how to do whatever it is. The answer is inside of you already. Just quit whining and get out there and ski it till you figure it out."
Awesome. So I did, I went skiing, thinking about what I'd done before, and what the ski was or was not feeling like now, and suddenly, it was back. Only this time, it wasn't Kurt's turn, it was my version of Kurts turn. It was my understanding of the turn that I want to execute. And while I know it has a long way to go, it felt good to find the cues and ask myself to put them together, trusting that the turn would work even without a safety in front of me proving it all the way down the hill.
I had a chairlift ride with Vance the other day, another incredible Aspen Mountain Pro, and I was chatting with him. He asked me how things were going with my trainer passport, and I told him that I wasn't sure about this one type of turn. I'd been able to do it skiing behind Kurt, and then I'd had it strongly for the rest of the morning, and on and off after lunch, and then just a little the next morning, and by lunch of the second day, it was gone.
I said to him, "I don't know, I guess I just need to get out there and chase Kurt down Copper again and feel it all come together."
Vance looked at me. "No you don't." He said. "You had it for two days, right?"
"Yeah, on and off..."
"Then its in there. You've felt it enough. You know what you are not doing, you know what it felt like to do it right. Go figure it out yourself."
I thought about this for a second. He's absolutely right of course.
"Thank you. I guess I just needed someone to tell me that I know how to do it."
"Whatever," he said, "I don't know if you know how to do it or not, or even what it is. But if you did "it" for two days, you know how to do whatever it is. The answer is inside of you already. Just quit whining and get out there and ski it till you figure it out."
Awesome. So I did, I went skiing, thinking about what I'd done before, and what the ski was or was not feeling like now, and suddenly, it was back. Only this time, it wasn't Kurt's turn, it was my version of Kurts turn. It was my understanding of the turn that I want to execute. And while I know it has a long way to go, it felt good to find the cues and ask myself to put them together, trusting that the turn would work even without a safety in front of me proving it all the way down the hill.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
You Can't Do What You Want By Doing Something Else by Bruce Eckel
(excerpt) ... There are lots of people who wanted to do one thing but then got "practical" and did something else "first." The idea was that they'd be successful and sock away money doing the practical thing, and after that they could go back to the thing they loved. Bronson was sure that, among the hundreds of people that he interviewed, someone would actually have been successful with this strategy. It sounds so reasonable, after all.
But he encountered exactly zero people who pulled it off.
For the rest of this post, click HERE.
But he encountered exactly zero people who pulled it off.
For the rest of this post, click HERE.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Never give up on your dream! DJ Gregory inspires.
My coach Michael Hickey sent me this. It is absolutely inspiring, and so very timely. I found myself, as I was watching it, identifying with this man, DJ Gregory, so very much, and at the same time, realizing just how easy I have it.
I know that if I don't loose sight of my goal, if I stay committed, if I put all of my energy toward it, I will be a viable candidate at the tryouts in 1090 days. (Whether or not i make it through the first ski cut or to the teaching segment or onto the team is another question...). My question all year long has been, but at what cost?
Right now, my body is in a lot of pain. My finances are really hurting. My family is in a tight spot with the scary move coming up.
But I watch this video and I think, these are obstacles on the path that are there to train me into a stronger, more compassionate, more committed person. I can do it. And each trial is there to serve a purpose in my life, to teach me to be better, better organized, a better friend, a better mom, a better coach, a better teacher, a better partner, a better skier, better in the back country, better with a map, better at facing challenges, better at meeting obligations, better at living with transparency, consistency, integrity and humility.
Thanks for sending it, Michael!
I know that if I don't loose sight of my goal, if I stay committed, if I put all of my energy toward it, I will be a viable candidate at the tryouts in 1090 days. (Whether or not i make it through the first ski cut or to the teaching segment or onto the team is another question...). My question all year long has been, but at what cost?
Right now, my body is in a lot of pain. My finances are really hurting. My family is in a tight spot with the scary move coming up.
But I watch this video and I think, these are obstacles on the path that are there to train me into a stronger, more compassionate, more committed person. I can do it. And each trial is there to serve a purpose in my life, to teach me to be better, better organized, a better friend, a better mom, a better coach, a better teacher, a better partner, a better skier, better in the back country, better with a map, better at facing challenges, better at meeting obligations, better at living with transparency, consistency, integrity and humility.
Thanks for sending it, Michael!
Monday, August 4, 2008
Bill Briggs T-Shirt is here!
Sometimes, fantastic things happen. Mr. Bill Briggs, the first man to do "big mountain skiing" in the US, first skied the Grand Teton in 1971, the year I was born. His story is incredible, and is recounted beautifully in the movie "Steep". One of the things I loved the most about it was when he said, "This isn't something I wanted to do for me and then be done. This is something, I thought, everyone should be doing!... It's too much fun to pass up."The story is incredible. Because of the eye opening education I've been receiving on the history of skiing, especially steep and big mountain skiing, I realized that I am beholden to these amazing pioneers who broke trail before me and just want to share their experience.
I borrow from these guys all the time when i am out training: Maurice Herzog and his friends on the Annapurna expedition looked across ridges of peaks, and would go out several days, summiting over and over, just looking for the peak they wanted to climb. When I am tired hiking up the "M" trail, I think to myself, this is a hiccup on a bump on the road to the town months before Annapurna. Suck it up, see the ridge as your canvas, open your mind and your heart and don't be afraid to look across a whole mountain range, and find a way through it, knowing you are strong enough.
When I think of Bill Briggs, climbing the Grand, and being left at the last, steepest pitch unexpectedly, and climbing on, alone, never being daunted, or if he did, reminding himself of his goal, and making it, summiting, skiing. Alone. And then the photographs the next day to prove he'd been there. I think of hiking by myself, I think of skinning behind someone who is strong and won't stop, and I think, I have this in me. I can dig deep and find some of that, I can borrow it from Bill. I can be enough all by myself, hold onto my dreams, and continue moving toward them, even when I feel alone.Today, I am mailing Mr. Briggs his t-shirt with grateful thanks. Check out the hard head store and get your own!
Do you have a favorite hero in Alpinism? Email me at katehowe at mac dot com (and please tell me who they are and why you love them, as my education is still, and will always be, a work in progress here...) and I'll ask them if I can make THEM into a HardHead t-shirt!
ALSO available in a woman's fitted ringer t! (TOO CUTE!)
Monday, July 7, 2008
Alison Gannett: Extreme Skier of DOOOM and Superwoman of Planet Saving!
WOW, have you been to THIS website?? This woman is a Patagonia Ambassador and a pretty amazing person!! Check her out!
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Victories are everywhere
I have the enormous good fortune to have a new neighbor. Her name is Amanda. She and her husband, David, and their two beautiful children moved here from Atlanta to re imagine their lives.
Today, I was privileged to walk with Amanda while she worked the toxins of her old life out of her system and decided to begin becoming the person she truly is inside. She hiked, on her very first hike, all the way to the fire road on the Kirk Hill ridge. She is strong, beautiful, creative, and choosing to live her life in a way that will bring beauty into her kids lives.
I am absolutely astounded to be present while she chooses to be alive in this moment. Thank you for sharing with me, Amanda!!
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Other Insane Women Exist
Check out this blog, this chick ROCKS. She's smart, insane, funny, and as addicted to training as you and I are!!
140.6 miles: An Ironman Training Journal
A girl who likens herself to a Water Buffalo (both in body type and disposition) trains for Ironman triathlons, attempts to become a gogo dancer in Manhattan, and generally tries to this life with the Blazeman spirit. You're invited along for the journey!
140.6 miles: An Ironman Training Journal
A girl who likens herself to a Water Buffalo (both in body type and disposition) trains for Ironman triathlons, attempts to become a gogo dancer in Manhattan, and generally tries to this life with the Blazeman spirit. You're invited along for the journey!
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Thursday, December 14, 2006: ONE and a half years ago this was me.
Here is a blog post from one and a half years ago. I came across it looking for a photo of Tom from when we moved here, and thought, its really important to share the fact that I was overweight and unsure of myself ONLY one and a half years ago. That the struggle back to fitness took years and years. That AFTER this post, in January, I gave up on ever making it back to fitness. Then I started teaching at Bridger a month later, and my life turned around.
I failed to see that this period was NOT a demand: you will now be a victim of your mom body, but that it was a beautiful, natural time when my body accommodated the miracle of the two children that it grew, then nurtured. So eager to get back to feeling like an independent, healthy person, I was impatient with myself to get there. This article was my first step.
This year, I made a commitment that I would race in every Nordic race held at Bohart Ranch, an awesome cross country facility here in Bozeman. My idea was to do the 3k classic (in groomed tracks) and just to finish.
After having ballooned an awesome 80 pounds with my pregnancies, I have, for the last three years, been slowly whittling my weight back down to some semblance of personage I can recognize in the mirror.
Lets rewind a tad. A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away in a land called Truckee, lived a girl named Sue. This Sue was like a sparkplug on redbull. For fun and entertainment, she worked on the back country ski patrol, where, every weekend, she would climb this huge peak and ski down it twice in a day on her teli skis.
This insane bundle of never ending endorphine loving energy would also call me up at nine o’clock at night and say “Hey, wanna go for a ski?”
“Um, Sue, it’s night time.” And I am sitting on the couch eating lasagna and watching a movie with my boyfriend…
“I know, get your headlamp. I’m almost at your house, I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Crap. So I would, much to Tom’s amusement, haul my ever spreading tush off my mother’s couch in the cabin in the woods where we lived, and get my gear on. Then I’d slip and slide my way out to Sue’s car and load my crap in and off we’d go.
Now this part is important: I love Sue. I look up to Sue. I want Sue to want to hang out with me. Therefore it is important that Sue believe I am up for insane crap like this. So I smiled and pretended to be an adrenaline junkie as we strapped on our skis on a full moon night on some fire road out in the Sierras.
We’d take off, my mom’s dog (who was staying with us) galumphing happily along, my headlamp unnecessary lots of times. The night was silent, the moonlight incredible, the snow soft and shushing under my skis. We’d start out together, getting the oil flowing in the joints, chat a bit and then slowly hit our strides. Sue, though a good three feet shorter than me (just kidding, but MAN it seems unfair) is more than three times as fast as I am, no matter how thin or strong I am. She is also a bit like the Energizer bunny. Yes, she keeps going and going and going…
She’d glide away in the moonlight and then return fifteen minutes later, checking in on me, and then take off again. In this way she taught me to love to ski by myself, that my own accolades are enough for me, and that I can do it. I have to do it at my pace, and practice will eventually put me in the middle of the pack, but I can do it.
When we first moved here, I couldn’t get Sue out of my head. I started hiking again, on about 15 or 20 of the over 260 trails in the Bozeman Area, and for a while there, I was hiking about 30 miles a week. I had to start with one. It was hard, slow, and I was out of shape. In a month, I could make it to the fire road at the top of Kirk hill.
A week later, my hiking buddies, Virginia and Liat and I all decided to find out where the fire road went. Five hours later, we emerged three canyons over and called Tom for a pick up. Two weeks later, we doubled that distance without much effort.
So last weekend, I figured, if I can hike 11 miles in a go, I can ski about 2! I got to the race, and found out that there wasn’t enough snow for a classic track, so I would be skating. Now, um, I suck at skating. All my Nordic experience is either in tracks, cutting tracks, or following in Sue’s tracks. And skate skis are VERY different than my little classic skis. Anyhow. Too late now. I pulled on my racing jersey and watched all the seven and eight year olds strip down into their bright red Swix racing suits and warm up. These kids (the BSF Nordic Racing team) kick some serious booty. They are fast, sleek, confident and have great form. I, on the other hand, fell over on my way to the outhouse.
Another alarming realization was that the 1 and 3k were for the kids, and I would need to be in the 5 or 10k. Okay. So now I am in the 5k, skating on classic skis, my giant wobbly mom’s butt jiggling along behind me.
The entire MSU Nordic team lined up on the line. There were about five other women over college age racing, most in the 10k, all in racing suits, all but one about 10% body fat. I lined up anyway. Sue would. She doesn’t care how big her butt is. She just wants to ski.
The race official yelled “Okay, don’t get lost.” Suddenly, I panicked. Wasn’t the course marked? Was the 10k two laps or one? Was the 5k a different course? Ahhhh! Too late “On your mark, Three, Two, One, GO!” Everyone blasted off the line in a beautiful example of skate efficiency. I polled my way behind them, and after the first thirty feet, was a good five feet behind. I kept going anyway. Sue would.
Long story short, it was a beautiful day. It was great to be out on the snow. And it was good that Sue had taught me it was okay to ski on my own, because after about 2 minutes, I couldn’t see a single living soul.
Eventually, I came across some spectators who were watching the 10kers head back toward the lodge, and I asked if I was on the right track. “Keep goin!” they yelled, and waived encouragingly at me. They probably would have thought I was just out for a ski if it wasn’t for the dead giveaway of the tiny racing jersey stretched over my non-racing body.
“Great, thanks!” I called, and continued on up the hill. After about 20 minutes, the 10kers lapped me. It was great, it gave me a chance to have a little Sue-like company, try to emulate their stride (as I had slowed down with no one pushing me and wasn’t really trying to skate anymore, just sort of doing a fast, sloppy classic to get around), and I got to say hi to my neighbor, Wess, who was doing the 10k.
I finished. And that was really the point. They were pulling up the marker flags as I finally rounded the last bend. The entire field had lined up at the finish line because that’s where they were going to hold the raffle, and as I came into view, people started to cheer. I couldn’t believe it. They called out “Good job!” “Almost there!” “Keep going!” and “Yeah!!” and I put a little speed on it and finished the race, about 20 minutes behind the last 10ker.
:
Name Distance Class Gender Time Place
Gretchen Sellegren 5 J1 F 0:19:41 1
Jenny Kauffman 5 J1 F 0:19:48 2http://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Jenna Hjalmarsson 5 J1 F 0:20:14 3
Maggie Hickman 5 J2 F 0:20:20 1
Reesa Pierce 5 J2 F 0:20:36 2
Johanna Rydell 5 J2 F 0:21:03 3
Kara Baldwin 5 J2 F DNF 4
Nikki Kimball 5 M1 F 0:16:16 1
Kate Howe 5 M1 F 0:46:39 2
Grethe-Lise Hagensen 5 M2 F 0:16:14 1
Shaun Dunnegan 5 M2 F 0:20:50 2
Brigitte Morris 5 M2 F 0:29:02 3
Kristin Wimberg 5 M3 F 0:21:43 1
Jamie Woelk 5 OJ F 0:15:43 1
Korie Steitz 5 OJ F 0:16:33 2
Claire Rennie 5 S F 0:15:42 1
Mandy Bowden 5 S F 0:15:44 2
Rachel Goldstein 5 S F 0:16:51 4
Frasier Opel 5 S F 0:16:55 5
Karoline Teien 5 S F 0:17:38 6
Maggie Casey 5 S F 0:17:39 7
Kelan Ramey 5 S F 0:18:27 8
Kalen Stanfill 5 S F 0:18:28 9
Becca Kurdnic 5 S F 0:19:12 10
Laura Tuttle 5 S F 0:20:08 11
Allie Phillips 5 S F 0:20:24 12
Ashley Kirchhoff 5 S F 0:23:25 13
Tanner Wiegand 5 J2 M 0:16:44 1
Akeo Maifeld-Carucci 5 J3 M 0:16:46 2
Jack Harris 5 S M 0:15:16 1
Jay Rutherford 5 S M 0:19:20 2
I drank my Gatorade, and stayed for the raffle, where I won a pair of Ear Bags (ingenious little ear warmers), and felt good going home, knowing I had done what I set out to do. I had entered, and completed, my first Nordic race. And on the way home, I thought, I am so glad I had a Sue. And now I can be a Sue for someone else. And they can be a Sue for someone else. And eventually, we will all be off the couch, and out in the deep snow in the moonlight, enjoying the cold air and endorphins and the excitement of being out and doing while the rest of the world is missing it.
Happy Trails,
Kate
I failed to see that this period was NOT a demand: you will now be a victim of your mom body, but that it was a beautiful, natural time when my body accommodated the miracle of the two children that it grew, then nurtured. So eager to get back to feeling like an independent, healthy person, I was impatient with myself to get there. This article was my first step.
After having ballooned an awesome 80 pounds with my pregnancies, I have, for the last three years, been slowly whittling my weight back down to some semblance of personage I can recognize in the mirror.
Lets rewind a tad. A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away in a land called Truckee, lived a girl named Sue. This Sue was like a sparkplug on redbull. For fun and entertainment, she worked on the back country ski patrol, where, every weekend, she would climb this huge peak and ski down it twice in a day on her teli skis.
This insane bundle of never ending endorphine loving energy would also call me up at nine o’clock at night and say “Hey, wanna go for a ski?”
“Um, Sue, it’s night time.” And I am sitting on the couch eating lasagna and watching a movie with my boyfriend…
“I know, get your headlamp. I’m almost at your house, I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Crap. So I would, much to Tom’s amusement, haul my ever spreading tush off my mother’s couch in the cabin in the woods where we lived, and get my gear on. Then I’d slip and slide my way out to Sue’s car and load my crap in and off we’d go.
Now this part is important: I love Sue. I look up to Sue. I want Sue to want to hang out with me. Therefore it is important that Sue believe I am up for insane crap like this. So I smiled and pretended to be an adrenaline junkie as we strapped on our skis on a full moon night on some fire road out in the Sierras.
She’d glide away in the moonlight and then return fifteen minutes later, checking in on me, and then take off again. In this way she taught me to love to ski by myself, that my own accolades are enough for me, and that I can do it. I have to do it at my pace, and practice will eventually put me in the middle of the pack, but I can do it.
When we first moved here, I couldn’t get Sue out of my head. I started hiking again, on about 15 or 20 of the over 260 trails in the Bozeman Area, and for a while there, I was hiking about 30 miles a week. I had to start with one. It was hard, slow, and I was out of shape. In a month, I could make it to the fire road at the top of Kirk hill.
A week later, my hiking buddies, Virginia and Liat and I all decided to find out where the fire road went. Five hours later, we emerged three canyons over and called Tom for a pick up. Two weeks later, we doubled that distance without much effort.
So last weekend, I figured, if I can hike 11 miles in a go, I can ski about 2! I got to the race, and found out that there wasn’t enough snow for a classic track, so I would be skating. Now, um, I suck at skating. All my Nordic experience is either in tracks, cutting tracks, or following in Sue’s tracks. And skate skis are VERY different than my little classic skis. Anyhow. Too late now. I pulled on my racing jersey and watched all the seven and eight year olds strip down into their bright red Swix racing suits and warm up. These kids (the BSF Nordic Racing team) kick some serious booty. They are fast, sleek, confident and have great form. I, on the other hand, fell over on my way to the outhouse.
Another alarming realization was that the 1 and 3k were for the kids, and I would need to be in the 5 or 10k. Okay. So now I am in the 5k, skating on classic skis, my giant wobbly mom’s butt jiggling along behind me.
The race official yelled “Okay, don’t get lost.” Suddenly, I panicked. Wasn’t the course marked? Was the 10k two laps or one? Was the 5k a different course? Ahhhh! Too late “On your mark, Three, Two, One, GO!” Everyone blasted off the line in a beautiful example of skate efficiency. I polled my way behind them, and after the first thirty feet, was a good five feet behind. I kept going anyway. Sue would.
Long story short, it was a beautiful day. It was great to be out on the snow. And it was good that Sue had taught me it was okay to ski on my own, because after about 2 minutes, I couldn’t see a single living soul.
Eventually, I came across some spectators who were watching the 10kers head back toward the lodge, and I asked if I was on the right track. “Keep goin!” they yelled, and waived encouragingly at me. They probably would have thought I was just out for a ski if it wasn’t for the dead giveaway of the tiny racing jersey stretched over my non-racing body.
“Great, thanks!” I called, and continued on up the hill. After about 20 minutes, the 10kers lapped me. It was great, it gave me a chance to have a little Sue-like company, try to emulate their stride (as I had slowed down with no one pushing me and wasn’t really trying to skate anymore, just sort of doing a fast, sloppy classic to get around), and I got to say hi to my neighbor, Wess, who was doing the 10k.
I finished. And that was really the point. They were pulling up the marker flags as I finally rounded the last bend. The entire field had lined up at the finish line because that’s where they were going to hold the raffle, and as I came into view, people started to cheer. I couldn’t believe it. They called out “Good job!” “Almost there!” “Keep going!” and “Yeah!!” and I put a little speed on it and finished the race, about 20 minutes behind the last 10ker.
:
Name Distance Class Gender Time Place
Gretchen Sellegren 5 J1 F 0:19:41 1
Jenny Kauffman 5 J1 F 0:19:48 2http://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Jenna Hjalmarsson 5 J1 F 0:20:14 3
Maggie Hickman 5 J2 F 0:20:20 1
Reesa Pierce 5 J2 F 0:20:36 2
Johanna Rydell 5 J2 F 0:21:03 3
Kara Baldwin 5 J2 F DNF 4
Nikki Kimball 5 M1 F 0:16:16 1
Kate Howe 5 M1 F 0:46:39 2
Grethe-Lise Hagensen 5 M2 F 0:16:14 1
Shaun Dunnegan 5 M2 F 0:20:50 2
Brigitte Morris 5 M2 F 0:29:02 3
Kristin Wimberg 5 M3 F 0:21:43 1
Jamie Woelk 5 OJ F 0:15:43 1
Korie Steitz 5 OJ F 0:16:33 2
Claire Rennie 5 S F 0:15:42 1
Mandy Bowden 5 S F 0:15:44 2
Rachel Goldstein 5 S F 0:16:51 4
Frasier Opel 5 S F 0:16:55 5
Karoline Teien 5 S F 0:17:38 6
Maggie Casey 5 S F 0:17:39 7
Kelan Ramey 5 S F 0:18:27 8
Kalen Stanfill 5 S F 0:18:28 9
Becca Kurdnic 5 S F 0:19:12 10
Laura Tuttle 5 S F 0:20:08 11
Allie Phillips 5 S F 0:20:24 12
Ashley Kirchhoff 5 S F 0:23:25 13
Tanner Wiegand 5 J2 M 0:16:44 1
Akeo Maifeld-Carucci 5 J3 M 0:16:46 2
Jack Harris 5 S M 0:15:16 1
Jay Rutherford 5 S M 0:19:20 2
I drank my Gatorade, and stayed for the raffle, where I won a pair of Ear Bags (ingenious little ear warmers), and felt good going home, knowing I had done what I set out to do. I had entered, and completed, my first Nordic race. And on the way home, I thought, I am so glad I had a Sue. And now I can be a Sue for someone else. And they can be a Sue for someone else. And eventually, we will all be off the couch, and out in the deep snow in the moonlight, enjoying the cold air and endorphins and the excitement of being out and doing while the rest of the world is missing it.
Happy Trails,
Kate
Monday, June 23, 2008
The Rebirth of Tom
Here is living proof that no matter how hard life kicks you in the teeth you can become the person you want to be. Tom is climbing again!
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
The Battle of the Lazy
Here is an interesting human conundrum that so many people are going through now that ski season has come to a screeching halt: everyone thinks they are lazy.My friend Kurt thinks he is lazy. Never mind that he'll do four laps up some 3500 vertical before noon and then go ride his bike to Yoga class. He can't get his paperwork done.
I think I am lazy. Never mind that I'll plow through a pile of paperwork, run a ton of errands and clean my house, I'm lazy.
I've been getting a bunch of emails from people with post ski season let down, and I think its especially difficult this year, with everyone gearing up and up and up to the tryouts, and then having this intense tryout situation be the last day of the season, its like running 100 miles an hour into a brick wall.
So this is kind of a two fold discussion: first of all, lets address the laziness.
There is this terrific quote: Nothing is ever so difficult as when it is done reluctantly.
And this is certainly true. I watched it tonight while Ethan was trying to write his book report. I saw myself do it when I stood, staring, at the epic pile of clean laundry that needs to be put away. I watched my sister stare at the pile of tax paperwork she needs to do, and go work on something else instead.We all have fear of tackling the big thing. We can all justify putting it off for one more day, one afternoon. Sometimes, I think this can actually be a healthy choice. Another friend of mine is incapable of play until she has crossed everything off her list. And guess what? Something gets added to the list every day, so there isn't a whole lot of play that happens.
Here's another good quote: What we do with our days is what we do with our lives.
So I guess we are searching, once again, for balance.
I think that post ski season, first, we all need to be a little loving to ourselves. We all worked really hard this year! Everyone was fit and strong, everyone was dedicated to exams and tryouts. Everyone went through an emotional ringer that was totally exhausting.
I think two weeks of decompression are in order here! What does that mean for you? Two weeks on the couch watching South Park? Two weeks with some moderate exercise and a lot of family time? Two weeks of solitude after a social season?
Give yourself a break for a bit. Its okay to decompress and be "lazy".
HOWEVER, as we are searching for balance, I'd suggest dipping your toe into the pool of accomplishment once a day, just to test the waters and see how you are feeling.
You'll have up days and down days, days in which the decisions you are making in your life will make sense, and days in which you will feel a bit lost.
Today was a mixed bag for me, I inexplicably slept until noon. This is not something I do! Bodhi was watching Power Rangers on YouTube on my computer, and I fell back to sleep, thinking I'd get a 15 minute nap. Three hours later, I woke up.Now, I expect this, and am okay with it, if I've been busting my butt for weeks and need to recharge, or "catch up" on sleep. But random massive amounts of sleep after I've been sitting around on my butt for two weeks, hmm, that made me upset. I woke up thinking of myself as "lazy". I was angry, and cranky at myself for wasting time, not accomplishing stuff, and setting myself up to sleep late tomorrow as well.
Because of this negative criticism of myself, I set myself up to have a crappy, unproductive day. And my bad attitude rubbed off on Bodhi, as well, who picked up on my negative energy and whined, cried and moved like an anchor through molasses all day long.
How, then, to look for balance? How do I not fall down this hole?
First, I think, is forgiveness. Tolerance and forgiveness. Perhaps, my body needed to sleep, and I was unaware of it. Perhaps, I had plenty of sleep, but today, I just slept more for no reason. Do you need to solve the root problem in order to let it go? I don't think so. For whatever reason, I slept late.
When I give my performance talk, I talk a lot about things you can control and things you can't control. Can I control the fact that I slept late? No. It already happened. Can I control what I do about that going forward? You bet! I can let it inform the rest of my day, or I can look for some love in my heart and some patience for myself, let the past go and look for something positive in the next moment of my day.
This is a huge challenge sometimes, as we love to hold on to negative feelings. For some reason, humans are incredibly adept at criticism.
I have a little progression that I use to 1. Stop myself from unproductive negative criticism, 2. Get in a positive frame of mind, and 3. tackle the day in a way that salvages what is left, either in productivity, or, if that's not possible, at least in mood.
First, I think of something that Liat, my sister told me, that she learned in treatment: "This is not a catastrophe. The sinking of the Titanic was a catastrophe."
Right. Put it in perspective. Whatever. You screwed up, something didn't go how you wanted it. Let it go. Find forgiveness in your heart, and lets move on.
Second. Find your bliss. Right now. Something I do with my coaching clients is have them "Be Here Now" doing a 5 senses meditation. It takes as long, or as short as you like, and it can put you in your body right now.
Cycle through your senses:
I see. But what do you truly see? I see the grey of the snow on the hills as it slowly fades down to gree, I see the electric green of the new buds on the trees, the darker green of the pine needles. I see my hands in front of me, they are dry, brown, and I see the veins in them.
I smell. Smell is a huge memory trigger. Smell can ground you to your intimate relationship with life faster than any other sense. I smell the pizza that Tom cooked earlier. I smell the overripe mango sitting next to me, the campfire smell still on my sweatshirt. If I opened the door, I'd smell wet pavement and cut grass.I taste. I taste the Fat Tire I am drinking! The taste is bitter and smooth at the same time, and feels different around my tongue. When you are out on snow, you can open your mouth and taste the mountain air, it tastes differently depending on where you are in the world. The air at Big Sky tastes differently than the air at Bridger Bowl.
I hear. I hear the music I am listening to, Govinda, a hypno trance Indian music, and behind that, I hear my kids talking in the bathtub, the sound of the water, I hear the fan in the other room, and the sound of the rain on the window. I hear the cat meowing.
I feel. I feel (and I am talking only about physical sensations right now, not emotional feelings. This is a taking stock of the present moment, being truly present, not analyzing how we are in this moment, just being in this moment.) I feel tense in my face, which I am now relaxing. I felt a knitted brow, which I just allowed to open, and suddenly, my face feels light. Go down your body taking stock.
Suddenly, I am here, I am present. Now, I can make a choice. Tune back into the critical voice that wants to beat me up for all the ways in which I feel I failed myself today, or make a choice to move forward into positivity. I don't know about you, but I'd rather get another shot at a great day.
If tuning into your body made you present, but isn't what brings you bliss, ask yourself over the next few weeks to find things that fill you with a sense of well being. You need things that are almost instant, things that take ten minutes, things that take an hour, and things that take all day.
My instant one is the sensation of the weather on my skin, all alone. So I take a moment and go outside, around the corner from my family, and feel the sunshine on my face. Or the rain. And I breathe in the air, and I feel myself filling up. Sometimes, depending on how tough the day is, this isn't enough for bliss, and I move on to my ten minute one. A chapter of a book in peace. Finding peace in a house full of boys can be challenging. Sometimes its hugging my boys and building a Lego ship with them for a few minutes. It depends on the day.
After I feel like I've touched something positive, I always feel more grounded, and less like things are or could be hopeless. The downward spiral has been checked. Now, I look at my choices: I can tackle the things I am "Supposed" to do, or I can do something that refills my emotional vessel. When we do things that disappoint us, it also depletes us.
I usually choose to do something short and constructive, so I feel like I can cross it off my list. Checking my email and responding to short questions is something I can do relatively quickly, and it makes me feel like I am on the ball. Email for others is a time trap, so make choices based on you and how you usually respond. Can you go online and pay two bills? Can you do your dishes? Ask yourself for a half hour of productivity.
Then, take your win! You got something done. OH, here is the critic again: yes, lots of people get stuff done. Yes, lots of people always have their dishes done and their laundry put away and their taxes paid. But we aren't talking about lots of people, we are talking about you doing something for you that was challenging. Say thanks, and say good job.
Now, you've gotten started. You have a choice: continue on the productivity path, or give yourself an hour or two of refill time: a hike, a run, a bike, playtime with kids, a book in the hammock... whatever it is that counterbalances the 'mistake" of the morning, and helps you feel that you are moving forward.
We all suffer from inertia. You can choose to literally get the ball rolling and then follow the path. Once you've started, its SOOO much easier to keep going! To keep laying in bed, to keep watching tv, to keep cleaning, to keep at the paperwork, to keep hiking up that steep hill...
Be patient with yourself. It takes practice to find balance. It will take a lifetime of practice. Ask yourself if the harsh criticism of the fact that you've gained weight (Wow, I got 18 emails after I posted that from other people who also have gained between 5 and 15 pounds after ski season ended!) is going to help solve the problem. Probably not. Getting proactive in a manageable way is at least moving in the right direction!
Here's a quick PS on this one... Lots of times, when we have a monumental task, like cleaning a house we've been ignoring or unpacking after being on the road forever, or handling bills and taxes, we think: First, I have to clean my house or workspace, then I have to get organized. Then, I have to tackle this entire thing all at once.
I think very few people have the 14 hours straight that they need to get all orgainzed and on the ball before they can tackle a big task. It is easier to work in a clean environment, that's true. But if your issue is that you have something that you need to do, and you can't seem to NOT procrastinate while you are heading towards it, give yourself a break. Just work the task at hand for a managable amount of time. Chances are that once you are in it, you'll be able to keep going. Chances are that you can focus if you ask yourself to, even if your workspace is a bit messier than you'd like.If its truly a catastrophe, take your paperwork to the coffee shop, and get'er dun!
So right now, I choose to let go of my excessive sleep, take wins for getting some errands done, even though I didn't tackle the big thing I needed to do, drink my beer, and go snuggle my kids. I have tomorrow. And the day after that. And those days will be good, and productive. And I look forward to them!
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Cindy Sez: A Burn Out Bummer
I got this comment a while back on the "Never let Go of Your Branch" post, and I thought it merited its own post... Thanks to everyone who has been commenting, I will catch up on my replies as quickly as I can now that I am back!
Most of the time, burn out isn't quite this spectacular. It comes on us slowly, and suddenly one day, we realize we just don't care anymore, and don't have the will or desire to change it, or even to understand what happened. Some brief thoughts on getting it back.
Hi Kate,
I met you at Academy this year and you came to the party that I helped throw on the last night. I stumbled upon you blog and I think it is great. As I have recently lost a little spirit with skiing, it is great to hear our story.Cheers and I would love to hear more about how you over come your sabotages tendency when you get close to the top.
Thanks,
Cindy
Hey, Cindy
Thanks so much! I loved the party by the way, it was a blast. I know what you mean about loosing spirit with skiing, it happens to all of us with almost everything we do. It happened to my mom with scrap booking, it happened to me with rock climbing, and with skating, and it is one of the things that can shake you out of your tree more than anything else.
As I think about this, I think about how frustrating it is to feel this way, just, disillusioned. Lost. Just not interested. (To me anyway.) It can feel like what used to be fun is now work, and maybe the best way to gauge how psyched you are to do it is, well, are you excited to get out of bed at 5am to do it?
If you are feeling flat, probably not. There are ways to get around this, but the first thing, I think, is to check and see if its worth it to you! For my mom, while she had really enjoyed scrap booking, (it had been a bit of an obsession with her), probably not. It wasn't really worth what it would take to push through her performance plateau and make some real breakthroughs. (You'd be surprised, there's ways you can do it, even for scrap booking... you can go to Scrap booking conventions, and three day all nighters with a bunch of other scrap bookers...) But for my mom, she had to just decide, you know, I used to love this, and I have kind of turned it into a job, an obligation to the family, and its just not fun anymore. So she took a break. She isn't sure how long that break will be, but, for now, she is collecting things she may make pages on one day, and just leaving it at that.
You are in a bit of a different situation, having chosen this as a career for you. But maybe not. My mom viewed something she had loved as a job that was no longer fun, maybe the same thing is happening to you.
We didn't really get a chance to talk about skiing and how you came to it and why you teach, and where you want to go with it, so I can't ponder your dilemma directly, but I do know that almost everyone goes through this, with almost everything they do, their marriage, their job, their hobby, their sport, whatever you spend too much time doing, it will, eventually, go flat.
I faced this problem with several of the climbers that trained at a really high level when I was coaching. When you train that hard, with goals that are that difficult to attain, sometimes it just ceases to be fun. And you wonder why you are there, why you are sacrificing the things you sacrifice to work out all day every day. What can you possibly hope to gain?
This goes right back to the "Never let go of your Branch" theory. This flatness, this wondering, this plateau, in desire (and usually performance), is the A-#1 thing that shakes people out of their tree.
I think the trick, here, is to decide if the amount of sacrifice you need to make to get to a place where you love it again, or the amount of belief you have to have in yourself to love what you are doing even when you don't seem to be improving, is worth it.
And that comes down to a different question for everyone. Ben Roberts and I were having a very interesting talk at the Progression Session at Mt. Hood last week (which I will post about soon, I promise), and we were talking about people's motivations. Why you are aspiring to what you are aspiring to.
A lot of times, people don't know. A lot of the people I skated with at the National level were skating because they wanted their parents to be proud of them. They didn't even like skating any more. A lot of them were skating for the fame and the endorsements. A very very few were doing it because they just really loved skating, and they really loved the hard work it took to get to the next level.
So if I were to give you some advice here, I guess I would say, step back and examine why you are in skiing, where you want to go, and why you want to go there. Then you might have some leading questions, that might point the way to weather it's worth it to plug ahead and push yourself, or whether doing that might make something you once loved even less attractive. This is a lot of introspective work, that can be really clouded by lots of different things.
I coached a climber who had the most amazing natural talent I've ever seen at 13. By all rights, he should be on the cover of Climbing magazine monthly. He should be the best climber in the world. He can't succeed because his parenting won't allow him to. His father wants him to win so badly that the boy can't be good enough no matter what he does. When he looses, his father wonders why the boy isn't good enough, and why the boy doesn't have a real job. The boy is doomed no matter what he does, the thing he loves and is talented at is tainted because his sense of self worth is tied to his father's pride in his own success. But he can never succeed, because no matter what he does, he can't be good enough.
This is a pretty extreme example, but I think, when we are looking at ourselves, and excavating the things that are stopping us from being a success or happy at what we have chosen to do, we need to look at outside factors, things that might be installed in us from childhood, as patterns of sabotage. They can be aiding and abetting in our flatness, when things get too intense.
Another thing to think about is learning, as you get to that elite level, to take joy in the minor successes. It is so hard to be psyched and get juiced about your progress when it comes in minute doses far apart. Here you are, after 10 years of teaching, after being a clinician, still working on your turn shape. Thrilling.
But somehow, it has to be. As the learning curve slows down and the progress plateaus, and the plateaus get longer and harder to endure, looking for something to light you on fire becomes a big challenge.
For me, its drills and training. I love to train. This is a bit abnormal, I know, and it is actually rooted in some less than healthy behavior from my childhood. Now that I have worked through that stuff, though, the desire to train has a new meaning for me, and it still gives me the boost that I love. I like to challenge myself with tasks, see where I fall short, train out the weakness, and try the challenge again.
Unfortunately, I am, as Rob pointed out this past weekend, impatient. I like to tackle and conquer, moving on to the next thing. I don't have a lot of patience for endless repetition of the same drill over and over. I like to think that if I have some modicum of success, I have mastered the drill, and I can move on. This kind of cocky attitude leaves holes in my skill set that I pay for later, having to drill out bad compensating habits that I have set up for myself with my impatience.
But when I feel like my interest is waning in something whose overall goal is important to me (no, I don't WANT to practice perfect freakin' wedge turns! good LORD, I want to go SKIING!), I think about what the discipline to get through the task means to my overall ability to reach my goal, and I get a little mini thrill from the fact that I am willing to buckle down and do what needs to be done. Rather than looking at the task itself, I take pride in my ability to be willing to go harder, further, longer, and more dedicated that I thought I could.
In this way, I sort of talk myself into being excited about whatever it is I am working on. I had this same issue with school figures in skating. I sucked at them. I don't have that kind of patience, 90 minutes tracing a pattern to within a quarter of an inch on the ice. I always ALWAYS wanted to move on to the next, more exciting pattern, execute it well enough, and move on again. But I had to learn that the win in that exercise came in executing it perfectly a dozen times in a row, week in and week out. To stay in the beginning set, and to own it in my sleep. No one cared if I had the ability to do a Gold set, I couldn't do it in competition, and to National standards, so it was meaningless. Especially if I couldn't even pull my Bronze set off.
Anyway, as you can tell, your comment got me to thinking about this, about the flatness that we all encounter when we are so single minded about something, the burn out factor, and needing to find something, anything to love about what you are doing again. I don't know if this helps or not, but here are a couple of questions that I ask myself, or my coaching clients, when they have hit a wall, and are just not that interested in forging ahead anymore.
First of all, do you want to get to the Olympics? (D-team, World Cup, PCA tour, climb V14, whatever?) If the answer is yes, then suck it up, this is part of what it takes to be a Champion. No one who lives eats and breathes their sport loves it 24-7. But your job, when you feel flat like this, is to find something, anything you love, and hold onto that with everything its worth, while you climb out of your hole.
If the answer is no, then hey, back off and enjoy yourself, you really don't need to go through this. It may not be worth it, and I mean that.
Then, I'd ask my clients to examine why they are on the track they are on, whatever it is. Why do you teach skiing? For real? Some people started becuse they wanted the free season pass. Some because of the prestige it gave them with their friends. Some because they'd die if they had to work in a cubicle. Some because they love teaching.
I don't know your answer, but if you are feeling disinterested in what you are doing, I'd start here. Why did I start this, and what has changed? Is there a different goal you can shoot for that can re-energize you for your sport? Did you start on the hill and end up in the office?
When I get disillusioned, a good brainstorming session often helps me get back on track. For me it usually means I am over training, and that I need to step away, have a little more fun, and reconnect with the part that gives me goosebumps and makes me smile.
Sometimes it just means pushing hard through a plateau, knowing that if I give just THAT much more, I will be able to punch through. But progress can be made, and it is up to you to find a way to celebrate your wins, find your joy, and put your head down and push through it when you need to.
Feel free to ponder this here on the blog, I think it is a pretty universal problem, and one I wouldn't mind puzzling out with you, because I think all of us can benefit from it!
Good luck, and hang in there.
xoxo
Kate
Hi Kate,
I met you at Academy this year and you came to the party that I helped throw on the last night. I stumbled upon you blog and I think it is great. As I have recently lost a little spirit with skiing, it is great to hear our story.Cheers and I would love to hear more about how you over come your sabotages tendency when you get close to the top.
Thanks,
Cindy
Hey, Cindy
Thanks so much! I loved the party by the way, it was a blast. I know what you mean about loosing spirit with skiing, it happens to all of us with almost everything we do. It happened to my mom with scrap booking, it happened to me with rock climbing, and with skating, and it is one of the things that can shake you out of your tree more than anything else.
As I think about this, I think about how frustrating it is to feel this way, just, disillusioned. Lost. Just not interested. (To me anyway.) It can feel like what used to be fun is now work, and maybe the best way to gauge how psyched you are to do it is, well, are you excited to get out of bed at 5am to do it?
If you are feeling flat, probably not. There are ways to get around this, but the first thing, I think, is to check and see if its worth it to you! For my mom, while she had really enjoyed scrap booking, (it had been a bit of an obsession with her), probably not. It wasn't really worth what it would take to push through her performance plateau and make some real breakthroughs. (You'd be surprised, there's ways you can do it, even for scrap booking... you can go to Scrap booking conventions, and three day all nighters with a bunch of other scrap bookers...) But for my mom, she had to just decide, you know, I used to love this, and I have kind of turned it into a job, an obligation to the family, and its just not fun anymore. So she took a break. She isn't sure how long that break will be, but, for now, she is collecting things she may make pages on one day, and just leaving it at that.
You are in a bit of a different situation, having chosen this as a career for you. But maybe not. My mom viewed something she had loved as a job that was no longer fun, maybe the same thing is happening to you.
We didn't really get a chance to talk about skiing and how you came to it and why you teach, and where you want to go with it, so I can't ponder your dilemma directly, but I do know that almost everyone goes through this, with almost everything they do, their marriage, their job, their hobby, their sport, whatever you spend too much time doing, it will, eventually, go flat.
I faced this problem with several of the climbers that trained at a really high level when I was coaching. When you train that hard, with goals that are that difficult to attain, sometimes it just ceases to be fun. And you wonder why you are there, why you are sacrificing the things you sacrifice to work out all day every day. What can you possibly hope to gain?
This goes right back to the "Never let go of your Branch" theory. This flatness, this wondering, this plateau, in desire (and usually performance), is the A-#1 thing that shakes people out of their tree.
I think the trick, here, is to decide if the amount of sacrifice you need to make to get to a place where you love it again, or the amount of belief you have to have in yourself to love what you are doing even when you don't seem to be improving, is worth it.
And that comes down to a different question for everyone. Ben Roberts and I were having a very interesting talk at the Progression Session at Mt. Hood last week (which I will post about soon, I promise), and we were talking about people's motivations. Why you are aspiring to what you are aspiring to.
A lot of times, people don't know. A lot of the people I skated with at the National level were skating because they wanted their parents to be proud of them. They didn't even like skating any more. A lot of them were skating for the fame and the endorsements. A very very few were doing it because they just really loved skating, and they really loved the hard work it took to get to the next level.
So if I were to give you some advice here, I guess I would say, step back and examine why you are in skiing, where you want to go, and why you want to go there. Then you might have some leading questions, that might point the way to weather it's worth it to plug ahead and push yourself, or whether doing that might make something you once loved even less attractive. This is a lot of introspective work, that can be really clouded by lots of different things.
I coached a climber who had the most amazing natural talent I've ever seen at 13. By all rights, he should be on the cover of Climbing magazine monthly. He should be the best climber in the world. He can't succeed because his parenting won't allow him to. His father wants him to win so badly that the boy can't be good enough no matter what he does. When he looses, his father wonders why the boy isn't good enough, and why the boy doesn't have a real job. The boy is doomed no matter what he does, the thing he loves and is talented at is tainted because his sense of self worth is tied to his father's pride in his own success. But he can never succeed, because no matter what he does, he can't be good enough.
This is a pretty extreme example, but I think, when we are looking at ourselves, and excavating the things that are stopping us from being a success or happy at what we have chosen to do, we need to look at outside factors, things that might be installed in us from childhood, as patterns of sabotage. They can be aiding and abetting in our flatness, when things get too intense.
Another thing to think about is learning, as you get to that elite level, to take joy in the minor successes. It is so hard to be psyched and get juiced about your progress when it comes in minute doses far apart. Here you are, after 10 years of teaching, after being a clinician, still working on your turn shape. Thrilling.
But somehow, it has to be. As the learning curve slows down and the progress plateaus, and the plateaus get longer and harder to endure, looking for something to light you on fire becomes a big challenge.
For me, its drills and training. I love to train. This is a bit abnormal, I know, and it is actually rooted in some less than healthy behavior from my childhood. Now that I have worked through that stuff, though, the desire to train has a new meaning for me, and it still gives me the boost that I love. I like to challenge myself with tasks, see where I fall short, train out the weakness, and try the challenge again.
Unfortunately, I am, as Rob pointed out this past weekend, impatient. I like to tackle and conquer, moving on to the next thing. I don't have a lot of patience for endless repetition of the same drill over and over. I like to think that if I have some modicum of success, I have mastered the drill, and I can move on. This kind of cocky attitude leaves holes in my skill set that I pay for later, having to drill out bad compensating habits that I have set up for myself with my impatience.
But when I feel like my interest is waning in something whose overall goal is important to me (no, I don't WANT to practice perfect freakin' wedge turns! good LORD, I want to go SKIING!), I think about what the discipline to get through the task means to my overall ability to reach my goal, and I get a little mini thrill from the fact that I am willing to buckle down and do what needs to be done. Rather than looking at the task itself, I take pride in my ability to be willing to go harder, further, longer, and more dedicated that I thought I could.
In this way, I sort of talk myself into being excited about whatever it is I am working on. I had this same issue with school figures in skating. I sucked at them. I don't have that kind of patience, 90 minutes tracing a pattern to within a quarter of an inch on the ice. I always ALWAYS wanted to move on to the next, more exciting pattern, execute it well enough, and move on again. But I had to learn that the win in that exercise came in executing it perfectly a dozen times in a row, week in and week out. To stay in the beginning set, and to own it in my sleep. No one cared if I had the ability to do a Gold set, I couldn't do it in competition, and to National standards, so it was meaningless. Especially if I couldn't even pull my Bronze set off.
Anyway, as you can tell, your comment got me to thinking about this, about the flatness that we all encounter when we are so single minded about something, the burn out factor, and needing to find something, anything to love about what you are doing again. I don't know if this helps or not, but here are a couple of questions that I ask myself, or my coaching clients, when they have hit a wall, and are just not that interested in forging ahead anymore.
First of all, do you want to get to the Olympics? (D-team, World Cup, PCA tour, climb V14, whatever?) If the answer is yes, then suck it up, this is part of what it takes to be a Champion. No one who lives eats and breathes their sport loves it 24-7. But your job, when you feel flat like this, is to find something, anything you love, and hold onto that with everything its worth, while you climb out of your hole.
If the answer is no, then hey, back off and enjoy yourself, you really don't need to go through this. It may not be worth it, and I mean that.
Then, I'd ask my clients to examine why they are on the track they are on, whatever it is. Why do you teach skiing? For real? Some people started becuse they wanted the free season pass. Some because of the prestige it gave them with their friends. Some because they'd die if they had to work in a cubicle. Some because they love teaching.
I don't know your answer, but if you are feeling disinterested in what you are doing, I'd start here. Why did I start this, and what has changed? Is there a different goal you can shoot for that can re-energize you for your sport? Did you start on the hill and end up in the office?
When I get disillusioned, a good brainstorming session often helps me get back on track. For me it usually means I am over training, and that I need to step away, have a little more fun, and reconnect with the part that gives me goosebumps and makes me smile.
Sometimes it just means pushing hard through a plateau, knowing that if I give just THAT much more, I will be able to punch through. But progress can be made, and it is up to you to find a way to celebrate your wins, find your joy, and put your head down and push through it when you need to.
Feel free to ponder this here on the blog, I think it is a pretty universal problem, and one I wouldn't mind puzzling out with you, because I think all of us can benefit from it!
Good luck, and hang in there.
xoxo
Kate
Monday, June 25, 2007
Never Let Go of Your Branch!
This is an excerpt from a book I am writing for my figure skating clients called "Champions in Training". Oddly enough, most of the stuff in this book I learned from years of coaching competitive rock climbers! Take the "Skating" part and trade it for the sport you love, or the job you want to succeed at, and give it a try.
All of us who have participated in a sport we loved have at one time wondered why and how the elite got to be that way. What makes Michelle Kwan so special? How is it that she skated so flawlessly from so young an age? And Tiger Woods? And Andre Aggasi? And Tony Hawk?
Some will say that it is genetics, and a propensity to do well in athletics certainly owes something to being born long lean and fast. But not everyone at the top of his or her game is naturally genetically gifted. In fact, in my experience as a coach it is those with the most natural ability who have the hardest time cracking the top 25%.
Why is that? Aren’t Champions born and not made? Isn’t the Olympic Village peopled with those who started skating before they could walk, were born to parents of Olympic prestige themselves, and who had nothing but the best coaching staff dedicated to their every move their entire lives? Not necessarily! Sometimes yes, but mostly, No.
Who wins, then? Who gets to be a champion? Let’s look.
Imagine this: that the triangle below represents everyone in the world who likes to ice skate.
What does it take to make it into the top 5%? Lets start at the bottom of the triangle with everyone. First, you have to like to skate. Then, you’ll probably take some lessons. If you do well and still enjoy it you might start competing. If you like competing, you probably want to win. Lets be honest, even if you DON’T like competing (and you’d be surprised how many people don’t) you probably still like the idea of being a famous well loved awesome ice skater who goes to the Olympics.
Making it from the group of people who compete (the top 50% of people who skate) into the group who does well enough to start training, who have Olympic dreams, who have desire to be the best is right around where I come in.
Stepping into the top30%, joining the group of “contenders”, or people who we can seriously consider as contenders takes something special. Most of us can guess what those things are, but let’s list them so that we know that it is hard work and not magic that gets us there.
• A love of skating
• Understanding that it takes work to improve
• A desire to improve
Lets stop right there. If I love to skate. And I understand that it takes work to get better, and I have a desire to get better, then… You have to learn to love to work!
• A love of the work that will make you better
• Determination to keep working when it gets hard
Have you noticed that I haven’t yet said “A will to win?” That’s because it takes a LOT more than a desire to win to become a champion. If I had to put “Will or Desire to Win” on the triangle above, I would have to put it down at the bottom with “Takes Skating Lessons”!
• Surround yourself with people who want you to succeed
• Get a coach you trust and listen to them
This list will get you into a more elite group. The big question is… how do you get out of this group and into success? The first guess is that the people who rise to the top of this group are naturally gifted.
Let me assure you that is not the case. I have trained people with more natural talent than anyone would know what to do with. I have trained people who had to work a hundred times harder to land a jump that came in a week to a peer. Its true that you need to have an ability to skate, and enough intuition and natural athleticism to master the moves, but what makes a champion?
Lets look at another triangle for the answer:
Here is my golden rule. It takes any combination of two of the above to succeed. That means: Timing (being in the right place at the right time, or more accurately, putting yourself in the right place at the right time) and Persistence are as likely to succeed as Timing and Talent, or Talent and Persistence. Talent alone won’t get you there. Being in the right place at the right time won’t get you there alone.
The top five percent are people who have remembered that, and are smart enough to hang their hat on persistence, keeping talent and timing in mind.
Imagine that all the competitors in the top 30% (All of whom are good enough to qualify for Senior Nationals. They all have triples. They all have put in the time, they all have spent a lot of money and made a lot of sacrifices.) are in a tree, hanging on to branches.
Let’s imagine that to make it to the top 5%, to be a real champion, all you have to do is hang on to your branch when the tree gets shaken.
What shakes the tree?
• Injury
• Failure
• Depression
• Loss of belief in yourself
You have been skating all your life. You and your family have made sacrifices. The last three competitions you have placed in the bottom 5 in the field. You examine your choices and… give up? Or hang on to your branch? What can you do here? Give up and never make the top five, or…
• Talk to your coach
• Make a new strategy
• Go back to basics
• Learn to reinvent yourself
• Hang on
And crack the top 5%. In my experience, everyone in the top 30% is talented to some degree. Everyone has an almost equal chance of becoming a champion, belonging to the top 5. The difference between the groups?
The only difference is that the people in the top 5% didn’t let go of their branch. They have a cantankerous desire to improve that makes them hang on, back up, and find another maze.
Want to be in the top 5? Never let go of your branch.
All of us who have participated in a sport we loved have at one time wondered why and how the elite got to be that way. What makes Michelle Kwan so special? How is it that she skated so flawlessly from so young an age? And Tiger Woods? And Andre Aggasi? And Tony Hawk?
Some will say that it is genetics, and a propensity to do well in athletics certainly owes something to being born long lean and fast. But not everyone at the top of his or her game is naturally genetically gifted. In fact, in my experience as a coach it is those with the most natural ability who have the hardest time cracking the top 25%.
Why is that? Aren’t Champions born and not made? Isn’t the Olympic Village peopled with those who started skating before they could walk, were born to parents of Olympic prestige themselves, and who had nothing but the best coaching staff dedicated to their every move their entire lives? Not necessarily! Sometimes yes, but mostly, No.
Who wins, then? Who gets to be a champion? Let’s look.
Imagine this: that the triangle below represents everyone in the world who likes to ice skate.
What does it take to make it into the top 5%? Lets start at the bottom of the triangle with everyone. First, you have to like to skate. Then, you’ll probably take some lessons. If you do well and still enjoy it you might start competing. If you like competing, you probably want to win. Lets be honest, even if you DON’T like competing (and you’d be surprised how many people don’t) you probably still like the idea of being a famous well loved awesome ice skater who goes to the Olympics.
Making it from the group of people who compete (the top 50% of people who skate) into the group who does well enough to start training, who have Olympic dreams, who have desire to be the best is right around where I come in.
Stepping into the top30%, joining the group of “contenders”, or people who we can seriously consider as contenders takes something special. Most of us can guess what those things are, but let’s list them so that we know that it is hard work and not magic that gets us there.
• A love of skating
• Understanding that it takes work to improve
• A desire to improve
Lets stop right there. If I love to skate. And I understand that it takes work to get better, and I have a desire to get better, then… You have to learn to love to work!
• A love of the work that will make you better
• Determination to keep working when it gets hard
Have you noticed that I haven’t yet said “A will to win?” That’s because it takes a LOT more than a desire to win to become a champion. If I had to put “Will or Desire to Win” on the triangle above, I would have to put it down at the bottom with “Takes Skating Lessons”!
• Surround yourself with people who want you to succeed
• Get a coach you trust and listen to them
This list will get you into a more elite group. The big question is… how do you get out of this group and into success? The first guess is that the people who rise to the top of this group are naturally gifted.
Let me assure you that is not the case. I have trained people with more natural talent than anyone would know what to do with. I have trained people who had to work a hundred times harder to land a jump that came in a week to a peer. Its true that you need to have an ability to skate, and enough intuition and natural athleticism to master the moves, but what makes a champion?
Lets look at another triangle for the answer:
Here is my golden rule. It takes any combination of two of the above to succeed. That means: Timing (being in the right place at the right time, or more accurately, putting yourself in the right place at the right time) and Persistence are as likely to succeed as Timing and Talent, or Talent and Persistence. Talent alone won’t get you there. Being in the right place at the right time won’t get you there alone.
The top five percent are people who have remembered that, and are smart enough to hang their hat on persistence, keeping talent and timing in mind.
Imagine that all the competitors in the top 30% (All of whom are good enough to qualify for Senior Nationals. They all have triples. They all have put in the time, they all have spent a lot of money and made a lot of sacrifices.) are in a tree, hanging on to branches.
Let’s imagine that to make it to the top 5%, to be a real champion, all you have to do is hang on to your branch when the tree gets shaken.
What shakes the tree?
• Injury
• Failure
• Depression
• Loss of belief in yourself
You have been skating all your life. You and your family have made sacrifices. The last three competitions you have placed in the bottom 5 in the field. You examine your choices and… give up? Or hang on to your branch? What can you do here? Give up and never make the top five, or…
• Talk to your coach
• Make a new strategy
• Go back to basics
• Learn to reinvent yourself
• Hang on
And crack the top 5%. In my experience, everyone in the top 30% is talented to some degree. Everyone has an almost equal chance of becoming a champion, belonging to the top 5. The difference between the groups?
The only difference is that the people in the top 5% didn’t let go of their branch. They have a cantankerous desire to improve that makes them hang on, back up, and find another maze.
Want to be in the top 5? Never let go of your branch.
Does this help me reach my goal?
There's a new Quotes That Help in the side bar, so this one is coming down. If you ever want to refer to it, scroll down to posts by Label, and click on "Deep Thoughts."
***
Every time I reach for food, make a choice about spending money, decide to work out or not to work out, I ask myself this question.
And I think the trick is to realize that your GOAL isn't singular. I am NOT going to reach my goal if my family isn't happy. I am NOT going to reach my goal if my kids aren't spending time with me. I am NOT going to reach my goal if I eat Costco Pizza.
So sometimes, I choose not to go to the gym. But I ask myself, "Is this going to help me reach my goal?" If the answer is, my husband needs an evening with me because my training is stressing our relationship, then yes, skipping the gym helps me reach my goal.
Someone asked me, "What if I don't know what my goal is?" If that's the case for you, try this one "Does this help me discover what my goal is?" That's a great one if you are stuck in your routine, and unhappy. Just ask, examine, and act.
Ask, examine, and act.
What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If something isn't working, and you are not happy, find ONE THING and change it. And ask yourself, "Does this help me reach (or find) my goal?" If its different, new and charges you, the answer is probably YES!
***
Every time I reach for food, make a choice about spending money, decide to work out or not to work out, I ask myself this question.
And I think the trick is to realize that your GOAL isn't singular. I am NOT going to reach my goal if my family isn't happy. I am NOT going to reach my goal if my kids aren't spending time with me. I am NOT going to reach my goal if I eat Costco Pizza.
So sometimes, I choose not to go to the gym. But I ask myself, "Is this going to help me reach my goal?" If the answer is, my husband needs an evening with me because my training is stressing our relationship, then yes, skipping the gym helps me reach my goal.
Someone asked me, "What if I don't know what my goal is?" If that's the case for you, try this one "Does this help me discover what my goal is?" That's a great one if you are stuck in your routine, and unhappy. Just ask, examine, and act.
Ask, examine, and act.
What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If something isn't working, and you are not happy, find ONE THING and change it. And ask yourself, "Does this help me reach (or find) my goal?" If its different, new and charges you, the answer is probably YES!
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Wildflower Bonanza
This, by the way, is a lovely and handy guide that I like to carry in my backpack, its all stuffed with field samples and notes of when and where I saw each flower.
A Field Guide to Wild Flowers of the Rocky Mountains by Carl Schreier. If you are here in Bozeman, they sell it at the Roundhouse, Northern Lights, and Barrel, the last time I looked. Otherwise,
A Field Guide to Wildflowers of the Rocky Mountains
Buy it at Amazon
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Reality Check: Food Deamons
This photo is from about 2 years ago, and I packed that extra 20lbs on when we moved to Montana. Alright. Now you know.
This is not something I really WANT the world to know, because I am ashamed of it. I hated my body, I hated how weak and slow and ugly I felt. I liked to tell everyone that when I got pregnant the first time, I was almost 15% body fat and training for an Ironman distance triathlon. But that doesn't really matter. It doesn't change how people SEE you now. You don't suddenly get a "hotness filter" that shows what you used to look like. You still just look, well, fat.
I had always assumed that I'd be great at being pregnant. That I'd stay thin and hike and do yoga and grow a perfect little basketball for a tummy. Then, I'd give birth, revel in my perfecly napping new baby, stroll lovingly with him in a stroller all day long sipping lattes, wearing flip flops (well, I lived in California) and wearing my size 0 jeans.
The only part I got right on that one was the flip flops! Now I need to say here that having kids has been an incredible adventure, and I am so glad we have them. I love those little grommets fiercely, they are confounding and difficult and highly entertaining all at the same time.
The hardest part for me was that I felt like I was walking around in an alien body. I'd see myself in the mirror and be SHOCKED. I'd delete photos of myself, thinking I was going to get back in shape any day. And I had lots of good starts, each of which helped me to loose 10lbs or so... but they'd fizzle out for some reason, usually relating to the fact that I wasn't able to strap my insane children down into any sort of jogging/biking/hiking device, they just aren't made that way. They are like me. They want to get out and be active.
And I am NOT blaming my kids here, but I gotta say, I felt thoroughly thwarted. The childcare at the gym was making them catch every cold in the world, babysitting is expensive, then I felt guilty for being away from them for something as selfish as exercise.
I was trapped in this new body that I created, and unable to affect change. I was redefined as "mom". I love to be that person, to be the mom, to cook and care and love and all the great stuff that goes with it. I just wished I could be fast and lean and hard and strong and nimble at the same time.
And then I ran into the man who would rescue me, change my life forever and help me take it back. Dave Evans. Snowsports supervisor at Bridger Bowl. I had just decided to go back to work the night before. We were low on funds, and one of our local moms had been asking me to coach figure skating. I finally agreed. Then I ran into Dave, while I was waiting for Ethan to come down the hill so I could put a snack in his pocket. I mentioned that I had taught BRIEFLY at Northstar in Tahoe, and he pounced on it. "We need alpine instructors!"
Uh, Dave, I am sorry, did I not tell you? No, no, I don't ski anymore, I haven't been on snow in six years, and on skis in over a decade, my last skis were 195 straight skis, I've never been on shaped skis... I am fat, out of shape, and I can't be a ski bum, that part of my life is over! I'm a mom now!
Needless to say, two weeks later, I had started part time, I was putting together a hiking/adventure program for the Ridge Athletic, I was beginning to work at Spire climbing center, and I was coaching figure skating. Wow!
Our little family got rocked hard by my schedule: up at 3:45 am and not home until 7:30 pm (because now I was staying to have beers after work finished up around 5...) New found Freedom!
Luckily for me, Tom told me "You obviously need to cut loose and be wild for a while. We'll be here when you calm down again." What an amazing man. What a selfless gift. It took about 5 weeks.
Anyhow, things are more balanced now, and I am feeling more like myself, in a body I am finally beginning to recognize. But that food thing... that evil binger still creeps up on me.
And I wanted to say that, because I think a lot of people think its easy to be thin and fit and energetic. I wanted to put out there that my relationship with food is a daily struggle, (I binged for the first time in a month the night before last, and I was just SO angry at myself. I work TOO hard to make a mistake like that.) But it, like finding balance in family and work and play is also a constant act of adjustment and forgiveness. Its a work in progress.
So here is what I do. There is an old Evian ad from the 80's that I love. It said simply "Every day is a new chance to feel healthy" and its true. But I like to change it to "Every moment is a new chance to recommit to doing something that makes you healthy".
So here are some of the mantras that keep me going when I don't want to go to the gym, when I want to eat five helpings of strawberry shortcake and an entire bag of smartfood.
Does this help me reach my goal?
Don't give up, you can start over NOW.
This is a new chance to begin. Now.
and my personal favorite (from an old No Fear ad)
Somewhere, someone is practicing harder than you are. And when you meet them in head to head competition, they will beat you.
That usually gets me off my ass and headed out into the world to get it done.
So those of you that are struggling, who ask me how I do it, who think they never could... there is a Dave Evans out there somewhere just waiting to help you make a decision that will give you your life and body back forever. Don't give up. Just be patient.
Friday, May 4, 2007
On Gratitude
I am a bit overwhelmed, and I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to everyone who is making this possible for me. Never in my many pursuits have I had a team of people pull so hard and willingly behind me, gathering me up and pushing me onward.
Ever since I made the decision to train to the D team, I have heard nothing but "Go for it!" "Let me help you!". I must admit, I am at a bit of a loss. I remember when I was skating taking the buss to the rink at the crack of dawn to get a patch session in. Standing next to my friends while they had their lessons, and then making them re-teach me what they had just learned. Sewing my skating dresses in my underwear so I could try them on and fix em.
There are two careers that my mom never wanted for me, one was that of an athlete, and the other was as an actress. Both are such tough roads, with such enormous competition, and with such huge possibility for failure. Unfortunately for mom, I pursued both of them rather vigorously. And here we are again.
But this time, something is different. The amazing Mike Hickey, a gold mine of skiing knowledge and passion for the sport, former D team member (1976) and race coach, has agreed to coach me. His colleague at Bridger Bowl, Kurt, is going to supplement the training and coaching. My sister, Liat, a nutritionist, has agreed to donate her time to my nutrition coaching. The Ridge Athletic Club is being incredibly supportive with sport specific programs, and is allowing me to run a hiking group this summer (now I can get paid to get my cardio in.)
I can't ski without gear, and honestly, Tom and I are flat broke right now, and lo and behold, Megan hands me her skis. And offers to train me. She handed me gear I desperately need and can't afford, and I can't wait to get out there and get my ass kicked by her when the season starts again.
Then there is my incredible husband. Tom comes home early and gets the kids ready for bed so I can get to the gym and get my strength training in. Weekends, the only time I'll really see him, he's watching the kids so I can hike for snow.
And speaking of my kids, I come home and they want to know how my workout was. They are practicing on the balance boards with me. Ethan is doing boot drills in the kitchen with me. "Mom, are you skiing in the kitchen?" "Yes..." "Can I ski with you? Can we go fast?" Look at those little 5 year old ankles flex...
And my older sister, who sent me a credit card. For emergencies. For training. So I can go to places like Snowbird when I don't have any money for gas or food. But she does much more than that. This woman tells me I can do it daily. She emails IMS from Germany (where she is working on the new Speed Racer film) and makes it a priority in her 18 hour day to tell me she is proud of me. This is the girl that used to throw me out of her room for having sticky fingers!!
My mom flew out from California to watch the kids so I could go to the Academy, and she ended up paying my way. After buying me all my backcountry gear, which I taught on all year and will be training on all summer.
This doesn't include the incredible notes of support from Nick McDonald, trainer extraordinare, and Rob Sogard, the coach of the team I dream of. Thank God I have people like Josh Spohler and Nick Herrin to tell me I suck and slap me down, all the while grinning and challenging me to try harder, because you need that too. They set the bar high.
All of this hit me kind of all at once, and here is where Shannon came in. We were at Snowbird, and I noticed that my face was leaking. I was an emotional wreck. I am used to having to fight and swim upstream so much, that all this help and support was downright strange and foreign. And Shannon said, Kate, what you are feeling is good, its called gratitude. Enjoy it. Allow it. So I did, I sat in the bathroom and cried for a bit, feeling what it felt like to have a huge group of people pull together to make your dream happen, and then we went out and ripped it up on the hill. So thanks for putting me back together and being the chick I can ski with...
So thank you. If I never made it further than this point, it has already been an amazing experience for me. And since we WILL be moving forward, I want to say thanks to everyone who hangs in there when its tough, not so fun, scary, and looks impossible. With your help, we just might get there!
In utter amazement,
Kate
Ever since I made the decision to train to the D team, I have heard nothing but "Go for it!" "Let me help you!". I must admit, I am at a bit of a loss. I remember when I was skating taking the buss to the rink at the crack of dawn to get a patch session in. Standing next to my friends while they had their lessons, and then making them re-teach me what they had just learned. Sewing my skating dresses in my underwear so I could try them on and fix em.
There are two careers that my mom never wanted for me, one was that of an athlete, and the other was as an actress. Both are such tough roads, with such enormous competition, and with such huge possibility for failure. Unfortunately for mom, I pursued both of them rather vigorously. And here we are again.
But this time, something is different. The amazing Mike Hickey, a gold mine of skiing knowledge and passion for the sport, former D team member (1976) and race coach, has agreed to coach me. His colleague at Bridger Bowl, Kurt, is going to supplement the training and coaching. My sister, Liat, a nutritionist, has agreed to donate her time to my nutrition coaching. The Ridge Athletic Club is being incredibly supportive with sport specific programs, and is allowing me to run a hiking group this summer (now I can get paid to get my cardio in.)
I can't ski without gear, and honestly, Tom and I are flat broke right now, and lo and behold, Megan hands me her skis. And offers to train me. She handed me gear I desperately need and can't afford, and I can't wait to get out there and get my ass kicked by her when the season starts again.
Then there is my incredible husband. Tom comes home early and gets the kids ready for bed so I can get to the gym and get my strength training in. Weekends, the only time I'll really see him, he's watching the kids so I can hike for snow.
And speaking of my kids, I come home and they want to know how my workout was. They are practicing on the balance boards with me. Ethan is doing boot drills in the kitchen with me. "Mom, are you skiing in the kitchen?" "Yes..." "Can I ski with you? Can we go fast?" Look at those little 5 year old ankles flex...
And my older sister, who sent me a credit card. For emergencies. For training. So I can go to places like Snowbird when I don't have any money for gas or food. But she does much more than that. This woman tells me I can do it daily. She emails IMS from Germany (where she is working on the new Speed Racer film) and makes it a priority in her 18 hour day to tell me she is proud of me. This is the girl that used to throw me out of her room for having sticky fingers!!
My mom flew out from California to watch the kids so I could go to the Academy, and she ended up paying my way. After buying me all my backcountry gear, which I taught on all year and will be training on all summer.
This doesn't include the incredible notes of support from Nick McDonald, trainer extraordinare, and Rob Sogard, the coach of the team I dream of. Thank God I have people like Josh Spohler and Nick Herrin to tell me I suck and slap me down, all the while grinning and challenging me to try harder, because you need that too. They set the bar high.
All of this hit me kind of all at once, and here is where Shannon came in. We were at Snowbird, and I noticed that my face was leaking. I was an emotional wreck. I am used to having to fight and swim upstream so much, that all this help and support was downright strange and foreign. And Shannon said, Kate, what you are feeling is good, its called gratitude. Enjoy it. Allow it. So I did, I sat in the bathroom and cried for a bit, feeling what it felt like to have a huge group of people pull together to make your dream happen, and then we went out and ripped it up on the hill. So thanks for putting me back together and being the chick I can ski with...
So thank you. If I never made it further than this point, it has already been an amazing experience for me. And since we WILL be moving forward, I want to say thanks to everyone who hangs in there when its tough, not so fun, scary, and looks impossible. With your help, we just might get there!
In utter amazement,
Kate
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