An effective dry-land training program is based on well-known best practices which have historically built confidence into performance.
Your plan will outline goals with time-tables that chart progress over the months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds and hundredths of seconds between now and the moment you will approach your next starting wand!
Create a plan that will move you forward to achieving your goals by identifying weaknesses and strengths based on last season’s results.
Brainstorm as many Physical and Psychological challenges as you can imagine. Choose three, each, in order of importance. Select the ones that will challenge you both physically and psychologically at the same time.
As the weeks progress, try to separate the Physical from the Psychological and create separate activities that develop each a positive direction. Keep a journal of your daily and weekly progress. Write down new thoughts and feelings with details (be a good witness) around any breakthroughs you experience. Share your discoveries with team members and coaches.
For overall conditioning, choose sports which relate to alpine ski racing. Tennis has many similar elements, symmetry (left & right), vision, anticipation, movement, weight transfer, timing, aerobic and anaerobic.
Other choices could be ice skating, modern dance, tai chi, yoga which all emphasize balance, posture, movement, mindfulness and breathing, etc.
As the months progress, we will introduce more and more specific tasks that directly relate to that small subset of skills which prepare for racing.
Find and pursue activities that demonstrate flexibility, cardio and strength, (physical) while relaxing, focusing and centering the mind, (psychological).
Find an accountability partner with similar goals with whom you can work effectively. This is really the best way to succeed. It has to be fun!
Create and write down an attainable plan. You have plenty of time! Use it!
Show & tell us your plan. We’ll tell you what we think.
Stephen Colvin & Megan Satterthwaite