Where do you see most performance plateaus occur?

[cantunamunch]

To paraphrase someone else: it's all about embracing that you suck,

No problem. Done that.

and trying to suck at a higher level.

Why? I'm lazy. That all sounds like a lot of work for incremental improvements at best.

I suspect there is a real and valid gender difference here. (And yes, I mean gender, not sex.)

A major obstacle for men, as any woman will tell you, is an exaggerated pride-driven sense of competence. For us the "suck at a higher level"' shtick emphasizes a prerequisite humility.

Women, by contrast, tend to underestimate their abilities already, so the last thing they need is humility; they need validation.

I don't think that's a gender thing. Pragmatically, if I'm still going to suck after all that work and expense, why bother?

By the time I integrate enough micro-improvements into my skill set there will be a new generation of skis out and new turning schools and I will be unlearning what I already spent time and money working on. Happened with carving, happened with powder, happened with carving again.

That's the problem. If you actually do internalise that you're actually cr@p, then it's probably better to just let herself have the money for a bathroom makeover instead.

 

[Wilhelmson]

We have had season passes for about 10 years (wow getting old). I think i have progressed every year. For me, bad habits, time on snow, and lack of routine professional training are the limitations that i am aware of. But what are the unknown unknowns? Probably ankle mobility and back problems.

 

[mister moose]

By the time I integrate enough micro-improvements into my skill set there will be a new generation of skis out and new turning schools and I will be unlearning what I already spent time and money working on. Happened with carving, happened with powder, happened with carving again.

I think there's a difference between attaining skills and adapting those skills to changes in equipment. Example: Quiver skiers do that every time they switch skis.

And one other skill that reaps large rewards: Fitness. The stronger, the more flexible, the better balanced you are, the better you will be at all those micro improvements.

I know a number of very fit people that ski way better than they should based on total days on snow.
I don't know any overweight bumpers.
All the awesome skiers I have known put in huge days on hill.

 

[Wilhelmson]

When it comes to plateaus, they seem to be mostly temporary blockages in learning that are very frustrating to people to have up until that point made a lot of progress. The reality is, any learning that occurs over a reasonable time-frame will have these stalls.

Why does learning stall? A lot of reasons, but big ones include:
1) Mistaken belief system to unravel
2) Temporary Injury Issues
3) Temporary mental issues (stress etc.)
4) Exorcising an ingrained habit
5) Working through the gap between having been told what you have to do and understanding what you have to do

etc. Sometimes, when you're dealing with people who have never learned a skill that has plateaued like this (or it did but they've got rose-tinted memories about it), the frustration can be enough to quit trying to fix the issue, and what could be a blockage for a few weeks becomes one that lasts for months or years for no good reason. It's true, though, that the stress of this is enough for some people to say 'look, I have enough fun in my skiing - I don't need this'.

The important thing with this kind of plateau is you have to lean in to it as hard as you can because the pay off will probably be explosive when it eventually arrives. And if you hold on to that belief and attitude, it'll also minimise your stress about not making short-term progress.

This video is worth watching as one way of thinking about the process learning physical skills.

-

On the other hand, there do seem to be people in our industry hitting firmer thresholds. For most of our guests it is 'I can make it down all of the terrain types I care to ski safely' or 'I can keep up with the kids well enough'. I think that's reasonable given the time investment they are making in to the sport and I don't want to dig too much deeper in to it, except to say: we have to keep giving them something to aspire to. That means that once they can ski everything, they need to care more about trying to improve the how. 'I want to look like that coming down', etc.

For people in the instruction business, I think the most common place to top out is at the PSIA L2 level.

I believe the L2 standard is attainable to essentially anyone who is mentally and physically capable of holding down a ski instruction job as long as they are willing to make at least some preparation. It's attainable for anyone with one season under their belt if they have a strong pre-existing skillset in the sport and/or are willing to make a continuous and dedicated training effort.

The L3 level (at least in RM) tends to hold people up more, and the why of that is straightforward - skiing sodbuster or prima/pronto in the fall line is an athletically demanding activity. That doesn't mean you need to be in prime athletic shape to do it - you don't - but you lack athleticism you are going to have to make up for it with stronger technique so that you can make consistent, fall-line turns in big bumps in 35->40 degree double black bump terrain without making major errors, probably on a bad snow day. That is where the majority of candidates in PSIA-RM get stuck.

They get stuck on other things too, but that seems to suck people in the most. Why? Well, a lot of it is things mentioned really in the first part of this post, particularly the first and last points: a lot of people have a lot invested in belief systems about their skiing that aren't really accurate, and that makes them poor listeners: they hear feedback, but they don't really hear it.

Having trained people at all these levels and having done all of this myself recently, here's what I see as the biggest underlying belief system that causes the problem:

Everyone in this business thinks they're awesome and attaches a lot of ego to the way they ski. And that's cool, and your god-given right as a ski instructor. But the effect of that is that it makes pros in our industry believe they only have to make a 'few small tweaks' or 'a slight adjustment' to attain success. No. You need to tear out a whole section of your book and rewrite it. You can't tweak your movement pattern, you need to create a brand new one. Build an entirely new initiation to your turn, or an entirely new finish. Start at first principles again.

To paraphrase someone else: it's all about embracing that you suck, and trying to suck at a higher level. That's what elite skiing is built on, imo.

I took a half day lesson with an examiner. I thought i sucked at some of the drills but towards the end he said i came very close to passing l3 (that wasn't the purpose).

I didn't think i got much out of the lesson until a full year later i decided to play around and make as many turns as possible on a dusty green trail. All of a sudden my ankles rotating opened a whole new world. I still need to work on the darn hands

 

[Tony S]

The lack of a solid foundation creates imbalance and usually means a lack of control. Which is a personal choice as long as respect to others is practiced.

Where I sometimes feel a little pushback wanting to surface in this area is the guy who is constantly over-terraining himself - often in order to stay with the group - without sufficient self-awareness to understand that his skiing is not up to the job or to understand that he is at best holding the group back and at worst endangering himself and by extension his friends. (I'm not talking about a professional session here, obviously, where it's on the leader to make sure that no one in the group is over-terrained.) In other words, "respect to others" can take more subtle forms than strafing little kids or whatever.

 

[Tony S]

a full year later i decided to play around and make as many turns as possible on a dusty green trail

What's a dusty green trail?

 

[Wilhelmson]

What's a dusty green trail?

Sorry, i was laying on my back like Larry Bird used to do when he got old.

A trail with a soft dusting of fresh snow.

 

[slowrider]

Where I sometimes feel a little pushback wanting to surface in this area is the guy who is constantly over-terraining himself - often in order to stay with the group - without sufficient self-awareness to understand that his skiing is not up to the job or to understand that he is at best holding the group back and at worst endangering himself and by extension his friends. (I'm not talking about a professional session here, obviously, where it's on the leader to make sure that no one in the group is over-terrained.) In other words, "respect to others" can take more subtle forms than strafing little kids or whatever.

A man has to know his limitations.

 

[KingGrump]

obviously, where it's on the leader to make sure that no one in the group is over-terrained

Easy for you to say. Some skiers just don't get it when confronted with the truth. Paging @Lady_Salina
But hey, at least you know you got a buffer friend.

 

[KingGrump]

A man has to know his limitations.

Unfortunately, many don't.
The tag team of Mother Nature and Mr. Gravity are brutal teachers.

 

[Lorenzzo]

My perspective on plateaus comes from other sports in which I’ve been immersed, both from a coaching and student perspective. In those sports the ceiling generally comes from the limits of one’s awareness, either what one should be doing, what one is doing or some combination. Those factors apply to equipment, conditioning and technique. To break through that takes student ability, motivation and trust as we’ve invested in something else and/or our mental framework seems correct to us and we need to be sold on changes.

Transferring this to skiing, I try to improve every year. The improvements I make seem most connected to gaining and employing new insight.

 

[Lorenzzo]

What's a dusty green trail?

A trail designed by that famous trail designer, Dusty Green.

 

[Crank]

Where I sometimes feel a little pushback wanting to surface in this area is the guy who is constantly over-terraining himself - often in order to stay with the group - without sufficient self-awareness to understand that his skiing is not up to the job or to understand that he is at best holding the group back and at worst endangering himself and by extension his friends. (I'm not talking about a professional session here, obviously, where it's on the leader to make sure that no one in the group is over-terrained.) In other words, "respect to others" can take more subtle forms than strafing little kids or whatever.

Easier said than done. Not that I am that great a skier, however, back in the day I skied a lot of steep terrain and it got to the point where I had no idea if something was "hard" or not. Got into trouble a few times leading a pack and eventually got to the point where I would either decline to lead or announce a disclaimer at the outset.

Now that I'm in my 60s and ski fewer days I can scare myself pretty easily.

Performance plateaus are a fact of life. You can diligently work and practice at something and will still plateau. Eventually though, if you hang in there and work away you will level up. I see this with guitar players all the time. Some are content with the level they have reached and may stay there for years, but even those who consistently learn practice regularly hit plateaus where we can remain for a frustrating while.

And progress can take many paths (talking skiing again): It can be mental, choosing line, calming your mind and body, learning to relax on the steeps, or it can be technical...you know all those terms you guys throw around, yeah that stuff.

 

[LiquidFeet]

What do people reading in this thread think of George Leonard's idea below. He wrote a book (available online for free now) titled: Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long Term Fulfillment. He writes as an Aikido master but generalizes to other sports and more.

the Mastery Curve

Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurt of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which immediately preceded it.

To take the master's journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so - and this is the inexorable fact of the journey - you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. It's during these "plateaus" that the learning is going on. Your habitual system is being reprogrammed to the new task.

Why does learning take place in spurts? Why can't we make a steady upward progress on our way toward mastery? .... We have to keep practicing an unfamiliar movement (or thinking process) again and again until we "get it into muscle memory" or "program it into autopilot mode." When you start to learn a new skill, you do have to think about it, and you have to make an effort to replace old patterns of sensing, movement, and cognition with new. ... Eventually, you don't have to stop and think about what you're doing.

So how do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself. Rather than being frustrated while on the plateau, you learn to appreciate and enjoy it just as much as you do the upward surges.

Learn to love the plateau.

 

[Tony S]

What do people reading in this thread think of George Leonard's idea below. He wrote a book (available online for free now) titled: Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long Term Fulfillment. He writes as an Aikido master but generalizes to other sports and more.

the Mastery Curve

View attachment 143293





Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurt of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which immediately preceded it.

To take the master's journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so - and this is the inexorable fact of the journey - you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. It's during these "plateaus" that the learning is going on. Your habitual system is being reprogrammed to the new task.

Why does learning take place in spurts? Why can't we make a steady upward progress on our way toward mastery? .... We have to keep practicing an unfamiliar movement (or thnking process) again and again until we "get it into muscle memory" or "program it into autopilot mode." When you start to learn a new skill, you do have to think about it, and you have to make an effort to replace old patterns of sensing, movement, and cognition with new. ... Eventually, you don't have to stop and think about what you're doing.

So how do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself. Rather than being frustrated while on the plateau, you learn to appreciate and enjoy it just as much as you do the upward surges.

Learn to love the plateau.

One of the great things about skiing is that it's mostly "Type I" fun. I.e., it's fun to do while you're doing it, even on the plateau. I'm all about immediate gratification.

 

[Wilhelmson]

Ok in the over terrain but we might see a guy struggling in the moguls and say what a poor lost soul. In reality he was probably skiing blues all morning and got up the confidence to ski the moguls with his buddies. He only skis 5 days a year so when he gets out with his friends he isn't going to do drills on greens all weekend. Not optimal, but he wouldnt know what optimal is anyways. Who really does?

 

[Tony S]

Ok in the over terrain but we might see a guy struggling in the moguls and say what a poor lost soul. In reality he was probably skiing blues all morning and got up the confidence to ski the moguls with his buddies. He only skis 5 days a year so when he gets out with his friends he isn't going to do drills on greens all weekend. Not optimal, but he wouldnt know what optimal is anyways. Who really does?

Fair enough.

I'm talking about the same thing repeating over and over ad nauseam with the same people, not one-off situations.

 

[slowrider]

When the light bulb turns on.

 

[Nancy Hummel]

What do people reading in this thread think of George Leonard's idea below. He wrote a book (available online for free now) titled: Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long Term Fulfillment. He writes as an Aikido master but generalizes to other sports and more.

the Mastery Curve

View attachment 143293





Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurt of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which immediately preceded it.

To take the master's journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so - and this is the inexorable fact of the journey - you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. It's during these "plateaus" that the learning is going on. Your habitual system is being reprogrammed to the new task.

Why does learning take place in spurts? Why can't we make a steady upward progress on our way toward mastery? .... We have to keep practicing an unfamiliar movement (or thinking process) again and again until we "get it into muscle memory" or "program it into autopilot mode." When you start to learn a new skill, you do have to think about it, and you have to make an effort to replace old patterns of sensing, movement, and cognition with new. ... Eventually, you don't have to stop and think about what you're doing.

So how do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself. Rather than being frustrated while on the plateau, you learn to appreciate and enjoy it just as much as you do the upward surges.

Learn to love the plateau.

I love practice. I love working on "stuff" and digging into the details of how to do things and love celebrating when I am able to do things that I could not previously do. I also love the results of practice.

 

[Seldomski]

What do people reading in this thread think of George Leonard's idea below. He wrote a book (available online for free now) titled: Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long Term Fulfillment. He writes as an Aikido master but generalizes to other sports and more.

the Mastery Curve

View attachment 143293





Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurt of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which immediately preceded it.

To take the master's journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so - and this is the inexorable fact of the journey - you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. It's during these "plateaus" that the learning is going on. Your habitual system is being reprogrammed to the new task.

Why does learning take place in spurts? Why can't we make a steady upward progress on our way toward mastery? .... We have to keep practicing an unfamiliar movement (or thinking process) again and again until we "get it into muscle memory" or "program it into autopilot mode." When you start to learn a new skill, you do have to think about it, and you have to make an effort to replace old patterns of sensing, movement, and cognition with new. ... Eventually, you don't have to stop and think about what you're doing.

So how do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself. Rather than being frustrated while on the plateau, you learn to appreciate and enjoy it just as much as you do the upward surges.

Learn to love the plateau.

I like it because it makes me feel better about being on a plateau. Maybe something good will happen eventually!

However, I do not think that my plateaus are as flat as that picture shows. Sometimes the practice goes awry and I don't know it. So, there are some missing downslopes and reversion that happens.

This is because I ski at different places and take lessons with different people on an irregular schedule. If I focus too long on the last thing I heard from an instructor, it ends up being an over correction and something that may need to be fixed later. Also I sleep periodically and forget things .

The internal dialogue is something like - that felt good. Wait, did that feel normal or weird? Weird means change, but was it good change or bad? Hard to sort out what should feel normal or not. And then there's the new normal.

<--- see title for more details.

If I skied one place with a weekly mentor 'check-in', I think the plateaus could happen like that.