The "Can't"Column and the "Can"Column

Hello fellow slalomers. Just a quick check-in because the weather has been, and currently still is, G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S, and since this is Belgium, I do best to take advantage of it.

On a personal note, school in Brussels has been really enjoyable lately, and I've been adventuring out and exploring the city bit by bit as I have the chance. The city is incredibly dynamic, more so than most places I have been, filled with so many interesting people and places. It seems like most of the people I go to school with ended up in Brussels by accident, which is neat because I ended up in Belgium also quite by accident, and so it's a common thread between many of us, even though our backgrounds are all incredibly different. In one classroom with fourteen people, for example, I think we represent twelve different countries. Talking with a classmate at a house party Friday night, I asked him if he thought our school was a good representation of the population in Brussels, and he replied, "The thing about Brussels is that there is no typical profile." And based on what I've experienced, I am inclined to agree.

This multiculturalism pleases me very deeply; I learn something new about another culture almost every day. Skating has also helped me learn a lot about the world, surprisingly or not. Since beginning slalom, this is actually one of the aspects of my personality that has broadened the most. Traveling to different places to skate is great because you get to spend time with lots of amazing people, and then your experiences become deeply meaningful in a way that touring around and only doing typical tourist things will never deliver.

So, onto slalom practice, because without practice, there is no progress. :)

In a previous post, I mentioned how I used to practice hard instead of practicing smart. Well, in the interest of efficiency, I have done my best to adopt the latter habit. So I'd like to write about that as often as I can. One of my favorite, most effective habits that I'd like to share is believing in your ability to do something. It might sound like perfectly common sense, but I think people often put up mental blocks about certain tricks and therefore avoid working on them. For example, someone might practice heel wheeling quite readily, but not toe wheeling, because he or she perceives it as much harder and a trick he or she doesn't feel ready to do yet. While it can be true that the person is not yet ready for a particular trick (and please trust yourself, above all), sometimes this person simply needs a bit more confidence to make the leap from admiring someone else doing a beautiful slalom trick to doing the trick himself.

One example of this I can give you from my own experience is something that actually happened in yoga. One of the things I love most about yoga is that it is completely non-competitive. Everyone is inwardly focused in the class, which is in such contrast to my experiences in ballet class growing up. But anyway, there is one particular asana that we do towards the beginning of every class that I always had a lot of trouble doing equally well on both sides. Since I had never looked at anyone else's positioning in the class, I assumed that was probably normal and that everyone was much better on one side than the other. One day I set up my mat towards the back of the class, and I peeked at everyone in the during the exercise. To my surprise, everyone else could do it really well on both sides! I instantly pushed myself a bit harder and discovered that I could indeed reach further and do it better. So, the block was all in my mind, not my body. This lesson has since served me well in slalom.

So what I suggest is that you start taking the things in the "can't"column and put them in the "can"column. This is the mental list of tricks that you think of yourself as not being able to do and being able to do, respectively. And while there may be circumstantial evidence that you cannot do a certain trick and that you can do another, there is actually no physical proof. The truth is that you simply have not yet managed to do the tricks in your "can't"column.

So, the first thing you need to do is stop thinking that way. Don't think, "I can't do toe wheeling." Instead, think, "I haven't managed to do it yet." This opens up your mind to the possibility that you in fact, can, do toe wheeling, and that it's something you need to stumble upon and then subsequently perfect. After all, the first step towards success is believing you can achieve it.

When you have managed to somewhat succeed at a trick, there is the danger that you will know you are capable of it, but that it is not yet ready, and so you avoid doing it in freestyle. These are the tricks that are in between the "can't"column and the "can"column. Many slalomers have a slew of tricks that they are still working on in private, but that aren't ready for doing out in public, in competition or just showing off in the park. And it is true that you will have tricks that are not yet ready for competition, but that's not to say that you shouldn't do them in your freestyle runs. In fact, you need to do these tricks as much as possible in your fun freestyle in the park.

A couple reasons for doing this:

1) It gets you in the mindset that you do that trick now.
2) In your freestyle runs, you will be relaxed and having fun, and therefore are more likely to succeed at the trick.
3) Extra practice. :)

Of course, there is no substitute for controlled, slow technical practice on a slalom trick. But let's face it, that's not fun for everybody. By now you know that I love my controlled, slow technical practice, but I'm not going to blame you if you don't. Through trying a trick in your freestyle even though you don't think it's ready, it will also inspire you to focus on practicing that trick more so that it fits better into your slalom runs, and also so you don't look completely spastic doing it. :)

I have one more related tip to give you today. This came to me originally from Tim in a specific instance, but I think it's generally applicable to your slalom tricks.

The original situation was that Tim was helping me with my (flat) shift. Shift is a trick where the skater travels through the cones on one foot, changing direction as he or she goes between front and back using the air leg as a counterweight. You can see examples of it in men's battle finals everywhere performed on one toe or heel, especially as a last trick, but for some reason I am unable to find a great example. I'll post one another time, I guess.

Anyway, I was having trouble actually traveling down the line of cones, and Tim pointed down the line and said, "You have to really want to go that way."And of course, he was right. I had been practicing without keeping the overall goal of the trick in mind, which is to travel down the line of the cones. Once I had that in mind, my practice went much better.

Once again, it's perfectly logical, but I think sometimes we can get bogged down in all the details of a challenging move and end up forgetting the big picture. So when you're trying to turn your screws but end up getting stuck around one cone, remember that your objective is to move to the next one. When you are doing a footgun, your objective is to get as low to the ground as possible (without actually sitting on it).

These are all seemingly subtle changes to the way you think about your skating, but they will help you with your biases about your abilities or perceived lack thereof.

Okay, well I ended up writing more than I had originally anticipated, but there are still hours of sunshine left and I hope you're lucky enough to have the same weather.

As always, thanks for reading!
xoxoxo
meg