I would bet that skiing is not on most folk’s minds right now, but I wanted to take a moment to remind you that much involved w/skiing is still alive in the summer months.
One obvious thing deals with fitness levels. Strength and fitness is incredibly important in skiing (and in everyday life). Summer is a great time to bolster our fitness in many fun ways. Biking, hiking, in-line skating, field sports, water skiing and wakeboarding are but a few of our opportunities to be more fit and have a lot of good ole’ Montana fun!
With an understanding for this importance, USSA has devised an assessment tool for us to use to help measure our fitness. There are different elements of fitness that we use in all our sports and even in things like hunting when we walk/hike long distances sometimes on very steep terrain.
As skiers we use:
1) Endurance. Our day can be a long one and filled with many challenging runs. Endurance helps us to perform well at the end of the day also. It also affects us when we ski for many days in a row to be sure we are as strong after multiple days of training or racing.
2) Strength and Power: These are slightly different. Strength means being able to resist or lift heavy loads. Power recognizes that, but also measures your ability to do so quickly. As skiers we are challenged to resist our body weight often multiplied by turning and bumps and ruts. As racers we must do this quickly. For skiing performance we are most concerned about our leg strength and our “core” strength. The core is usually referring to those muscles in the stomach, sides and back. I like to think it also includes the many muscles that surround the hips also. All these muscles link your leg strength to your body. If they (your core) are weak when you try to move your body weight quickly (as in a turn) your body will collapse and have much difficulty in balancing through the turn and into the next turn.
3) Flexibility: Flexibility is important for a couple of things. If you are flexible it is less likely that you will injure yourself if you fall. As racers we also have to move into and out of very extreme positions that would be more difficult if we were not flexible.
The USSA assessment helps us to measure our abilities in these areas and can help us to understand where we can improve ourselves for better skiing performance.
This fall we will take an opportunity to begin this assessment process. Fitness is a process and it’s elements are accumulated over time. As youngsters we cannot expect to be as strong or powerful as a well-trained 28 year old world class athlete. We start this process in programs like ours, building each year to be stronger and stronger.
USSA Congress and Elite Performance Conference
Also happening at this time of the year is much of the planning process at a variety of levels of our sport. In May, I traveled to Park City Utah to be a part of the USSA Congress and Elite Performance Conference. They were separate events that were great to be a part of.
The Congress is a series of meetings that work to determine the policies and requirements of many of the aspects of our sport at the National level. Of course this affects us in our Northern Division, so it is important to attend and be a voice to represent our particular needs and wishes. The Congress is a 3 day event with committee meetings scheduled from morning to evening each day and many subjects are discussed from rules and requirements, to officials, schedules and pretty much every aspect of skiing and snowboarding competition in USSA.
The Elite Performance Conference is an educational conference scheduled over two days. It covers topics that are informative to clubs and coaches. This year the Conference included topics like club planning, event promotion, event production, and risk exposure. Topics more specific for coaches, included plans for long-term athlete development, and injury management information specific to concussions as well as other topics and discussions.
Northern Division Meetings:
The Northern Division Alpine Competition Committee, the Event Calendar Meeting and the Division General Meeting were held in Missoula at the end of May. Dick Collins is our representative to the ACC and Richard Kramer and Bill Kahle represented the Foundation at the General Meeting. I am pleased to report that I was elected as the Northern Division Vice-President. I am glad to be able to represent the Division and help with the work that needs to be done. The Calendaring process is a very dynamic one and is still very tentative at this point. It does look as though we will host 2 week-ends of racing at Whitefish in January as follows: (still tentative)
Jan 8, 9, 10: A-Jr. 3 Jr. Olympic Qualifier, 2 GS and 1 slalom; (ages 13-19)
Jan 16, 17: YSL as 2 GS races. (One each day) (Ages 14 and below)
Erin Tabish and Annie Jobe have been selected to attend the Western Region Jr. 3 Summer Camp at Mt. Hood.
This is quite an honor for these two. Annie and Erin were selected based on their results from last season and will join the best Jr. 3 athletes in the Western Region for an on-snow technical training camp in late July and early August.
We are beginning our own summer on-snow camp(s)
I am writing from Mt. Hood where we will conduct two training camps on snow for our program. We will stay at the Mt Hood Academy and join coaches and members from their team as well as teams from Mt Bachelor and the Lake Tahoe area. Summer skiing and the terrain available are a great opportunity to hone the technical skills of skiing.
I will be back in Whitefish in August and will look forward to organizing our team for Mountain Bike rides, hiking and other activities as we can for August and the fall months.
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