Hottie and I started skate skiing with a lesson many
years ago. Over the years, in addition
to lots of skiing, we have taken more lessons together and separately. At the end of one of those lessons my teacher
gave me a tip to make notes of the takeaways from the lesson and to reread them
the next time and every time before skiing.
Those tips seemed to be aimed at correcting my mistakes,
and to my naked eye were scattered all over the board. “Land on your little toe,” “Duck under the
clothesline,” “Acute angle at the ankle,” “Vertical zipper,”
My technique was to work on what I perceived to be my
biggest weakness at any given time.
Sometimes it was “Flat ski,” other times it was “Hold the
watermelon.”
Hottie pounced on Cramps like a cheetah and asked for
some pointers for going downhill. Cramps
went into teacher mode (his profession as well) and shared his knowledge. After Hottie turned around Cramps and I
continued on and he offered me a tip that I soaked in like a sponge.
When we caught up to McWoodie and B-Ryan, Cramps shared
more insights. The last hour and half
of our ski could be categorized as a fast moving lesson.
The miracle (for me) was that during that lesson from Cramps all of
the tidbits from prior lessons that seemed independent all suddenly
converged. The “Bobbing” motion that I
thought was for the push off turned out to be the same motion for stronger
poling with less effort required from my arms. The “Crunches” made skiing both faster and
easier.
Suddenly the “C-shape Crunches,” “Bobbing,” “Ankle
Angle,” “Drive the knee,” “Holding the watermelon,” and “Dinner Party” were
part of the same fluid motion. Doing the
whole motion correctly checked all the boxes.
I focused on my own movement and tried to drill the smooth motion into
muscle memory.
The next day McWoodie and I returned to the same trail
and spent two hours trying to transform what was an experience into a habit.
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