Have you ever asked yourself, “am I a performance skier?”

The probable answer that most skiers would say is

“No, not really, I am not a racer”.

However, when you are skiing, what do you ask of yourself in terms of performance? Here are some examples that we take for granted.

To ski . . . .

You will need to have the right equipment such as:

• skis attached  to your feet
• clothing to keep you at the right temperature etc.

You or someone else will have set some personal objectives:

• get to the next lift.
• ski down a particular route
• follow your friends
• keep up with your friends
• go faster or slower

To accomplish these you will need to be able to

• go up or down hill !!
• go around bends
• recognise the marked piste
• read and obey signs
• turn to avoid stationary objects
• turn to avoid moving objects
• slow down
• speed up
• ski on or in different snow types
• finally stop !!

If your objective offers you a high degree of challenge, you will also need to be in the right frame of mind.

Let’s reflect on this for a few moments . . . .

If you think back to your best run, not necessarily your most memorable, but the run where everything happened automatically without much thought, almost effortlessly, on cue just like you planned it.

I think most of you will agree that you probably met or exceeded all your objectives, your friends were congratulating you at the end, you were skiing like a dream . . . .

In your own world it was an AWESOME RUN.

In the racers world it could be that well earned victory, a result of many hours skill development, mental attitude and confidence. Just like your own, although not to the same degree.

In both cases the enjoyment, performance and satisfaction levels were very high.

Your enjoyment of the run was related to how satisfied you were with your level of performance relative to your normally expected skiing performance level.

So to enjoy skiing you need to have the right equipment, a realistic objective, and appropriate skills to achieve the objective and be in the right mental state to put it into action.

As mentioned earlier ski racers and other highly skilled skiers also need to address similar requirements to achieve success or enjoyment but at a different performance level.

Hopefully, by now I will have begun to convince you that, you and all other skiers are performance skiers.

Now consider this . . . .

When you are physically skiing you are constantly making decisions on where to go and how best to achieve it.

Your decisions are based in part on how successfully you achieved your previous objective. They are also based on your reactions to changes that are occurring around you, terrain changes, snow conditions, other skiers etc. These decisions are made at both conscious and sub-conscious levels.

You are therefore, constantly measuring your achievements against previously set objectives although they are being confirmed or updated all the time. Thus you are monitoring your performance level constantly while on the move.

So performance definitely matters! and we are all therefore performance based skiers.

If only we could have AWESOME RUNS all the time . . . .

Having recognised that our enjoyment of skiing is based on our ability to perform at a given level, it would be to our advantage to maintain or improve our skiing performance abilities and consistency.

This is where performance coaching plays a vital role. . . .

Performance Coaching is not only for the elite, it is for all those skiers who are serious enough, or passionate enough, about their enjoyment of their skiing at what ever level of performance.

All Midland Ski Club skiing courses on dry ski slopes, artificial snow slopes or in alpine ski resorts are geared to meet your objectives in a structured way to encourage you to improve your performance in an enjoyable, fun and rewarding way.

Other key aspects to your skiing could also be catered for within this structure such as strength, speed, fitness, confidence and motivation.

If you need our services come along to one of our sessions or contact any of our coaches, instructors or committee members detailed in this brochure.

Set a new personal AWESOME RUN standard next Ski Season with the MSC.