Ski Learning

A pupil sent me this self critical comment: "I was on the verge of calling the
airport and running away as I felt such a fool/failure."

This happened toward the end of an off-piste-training course. The whole point of the course was that it was for folk who were not expert off-piste skiers. During these courses, I spend the first half of the week helping pupils try out on piste some of the slightly different techniques that might be needed when we venture off piste.

These courses are not for folk who can already do it - they don't need me, all they need is a guide. So, it follows that everyone on the course is likely to be struggling a lot of the time - including me! No one on the course should expect it to be easy, and should expect all sorts of new experiences: or perhaps old experiencs to be revisited!

Expect to get scared. Expect to get more tired than on piste. Expect to be elated every now and again. Expect to have to keep working at it - just as you did when you first started. Indeed, it's a bit like starting all over again.

So the potential is there for all sorts of self criticism and this is what so much of my coaching is about - how to handle your self, how to handle defeat, how to handle disappointment, and how to keep hanging in there and coming back for more. How not to self critical - it doesn't help you.

Frank Dick, once upon a time Britain's top athletics coach used to say that you can achieve anything you want if you have three things in place.

1. You must want it.
2. You must believe it's at least possible.
3. You must persist

These things are interlinked of course, and you might need to want it really rather a lot. In the case of gold medal winners they often want it so much that everyone around them ends up suffering, so you may need to check out the "ecology" around your desire.

You will find your desire qualified to the point of being lost altogether if you really don't think that in the end you will find it possible - not easy; not achievable without lots of work and setbacks, but certainly possible, if you go about it the right way and pay your dues.

If you have those first two in place, the issue becomes one of working with your self to maintain your determination and stickability in the face of setbacks, disappointments, self-doubt and maybe even injury.

This is where your ability to control how you talk to your self becomes so crucial. The good news is that you can learn this too. You do not have to accept talking to your self negatively, even though for most of us this is our default mode. I believe that this is completely optional, but that because the way most of us were brought up it's hard to change.

When you're really young and you are surrounded by all those giant adults who seem to have a direct link to all knowledge, you are frequently reminded that you shouldn't think too much of yourself; you certainly should never be self congratulatory; you should never think you're any good; and you should always both demand and expect to perform everything perfectly. If you don't you're bad /inadequate / a fool, or worse.

What rubbish! What clap-trap! What a horrible way to get people to feel about themselves. It's just plain wrong.

I don't know where your skiing is, but wherever it is, that's where it is. There is no reason whatsoever why it should be anywhere else. You came to skiing at some point; you were taught by good bad or indifferent teachers, using good, indifferent or usually bad systems. You have spent a much too limited length of time being able to practice.

So there is no reason why you should be any better at skiing than you are. There is no reason why your rate of progress just now should be anything other than it is. Your level of skill, and speed of development is in no way related to that of anybody else, currently in your line of sight or not. Why should it be?

If somebody else is doing a bit better at the moment, so what? It doesn't make you a fool. If you were doing better just now than everyone else on the course, does that make them fools? Of course not.

What we're talking about here, is your internal dialogue; the things that you say to your self about yourself.

Whatever else you may think about this, you would have to agree that what you say to your self is entirely optional. No one makes you say anything at all, nor could they. So if you tell yourself you're a fool, or that you're hopeless, or (more significantly) "I can't do this", then you will soon find that what you are saying will come true.

There's no need for that - you can change what you habitually say to your self. It's very simple. It isn't easy, but it's perfectly learnable. You should learn how to do it, it will help you be happier, and a better skier.

Bob Valentine Trueman