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How Skiing in the Summer Helps to Step Your Game Up in the Winter

12 Jun 2013, Posted by Ski NASTC in Latest News

Think back to when was the last time you made turns.  May? April? March? Before then?!  Your body needs a fair amount of repetition to be able to perform movement patterns sub-consciously.  If you were in the midst of changing something in your skiing when the season ended, you can pretty much count on startin g from scratch again next season, unless you get on skis at least once during the summer season.  Have you heard the outliers theory that you need approximately 10,000 hours to become a master at a movement.  We are all masters of walking, because since they day we learned to walk we’ve logged in more than 10,000 hours and therefore we are all world class walkers.  Most of us are not shooting to be world class, we just wanna be good and have more fun, so 10,000 hours might not be our target number but the concept remains the same, you have to put in the time and practice if you want to be good at something.  However, if you practice the wrong movements, thenyou become really good at those wrong movements, which is why all athletes have coaches.  Someone to tell them they are on the right path and call out mistakes or inefficiencies when they see them being made.  You can be certain that the U.S Ski Team is not spending their summer boating or drinking cocktails in St. Thomas, they are in the gym making getting stronger and faster and most importantly they re-locate to the Southern Hemisphere to getting crucial training time before the season starts.  Summer is crucial training time, because once the snow starts to fly in the Northern  Hemisphere it’s too late, they need to be in prime form.  Same holds true for recreational skiers, wanting to improve their skiing, there is not enough time in the season to make changes stick and then reap the benefits from your hard work.  Summer time skiing reduces the time those muscle groups and neuro-muscular patterns we use in skiing have to “sit and collect dust,”  you reduce the time it takes to fire everything back up to optimal performance again, because your mental and muscular recall will be quicker.