OMG, is my stoke evaporating? Will it return?

[1xsculler]

Probable last day this season was yesterday.  My stoke started last December when I dedicated myself to get my nine grandkids on skis and/or boards and since I was starting over my skill was about equal to their's, i.e. we went down similar slopes at similar speeds.  I had a great excuse to go to the Mt. which is something my wife doesn't enjoy.  It soon became apparent, as my skills improved, that I could make only half as many runs when I had to wait around for the little munchkins so I went bonkers going every Tuesday and Friday (the two days my wife worked) by myself determined to become a board bending, 45* carver.  I have been on a mission since then, my stoke never wavering.  I improved a lot on my own but didn't advance to where I hoped to be with the exception of a few well done, pencil-line, linked trenches.

I am really, seriously questioning (and so soon after the season has come to an end) whether I will become rededicated next November.  Maybe I'll throw in the towel like I did in 2005 and find something else to do with my time next winter. A dedication to carving certainly doesn't fit into grandkids.  In fact, it doesn't fit into hardly anybody else I know. Two hours drive up, two and a half hours on the hill, two hours to drive home, sleep deprivation and drive schedule to miss the traffic. Boy, I just don't know but I guess I don't have to worry about it until next season.

 

[big mario]

As with any endeavor worth pursuing, and improving on, it is about the commitment. It is all about the quality of your of time on the slope, not the quantity. If you cannot commit, and you don't have the passion, sell your gear and find something else to do with your time.

If you can commit, get a tighter radius board,  make more turns so your not waiting for the munchkins as much, slow it down and work on your weaknesses. Cut it down to one day a week, and raise the quality of your day, every day you are out. Raise the quality of  your turns. Always leave the slope exhausted and worked, yet wanting more.  If you cannot, see above.

Mario

[pow4ever]

It's a struggle I am sure all of us face eventually with everything.
Running/Lifting/Snowboarding.  Like what Mario said:  How to stoke that "passion" is key.

https://tapas.io/episode/341692#!/subscription/action/6016

"Once Thrilling but now a mundane daily rituals that has me questioning what I ever found enjoyable about it to begin with."
I have one of those day at ECES.  First day of the event; wasn't riding well; got hit by someone, physically drained.
Almost wanted to drive back to my comfy/warm bed at home; boy am I glad to stick with it.  Gotta take the good with the bed.  If it's always good; then it's not so special?

Commitment:  quote from millionaire next door
"Have you ever noticed those people whom you see jogging day after day? They are the ones who seem not to need to jog. But that's why they are fit."

Ride with other
challenge oneself by ride in different condition
set obtainable goal
Take a break.  It's ok to "slide" once in a while ;-)

[Lurch]

After watching a couple of young maniacs anihilate themselves off a BIG jump over and over I said to one "You must be sore" "Yeah" he said "but it was soooo much fun!" - a LOT to be said for that attitude  - isn't that why we all got hooked on pencil thin lines and face shots to start with? So what if I'm riding like crap, can't get a clean run or the snow is like concrete - a day on the hill is still better than most other stuff.

On days when it seems easier not to go, I personally poke my FOMO to animate my ass into action - what if they closed the road just after I get first chair....

[1xsculler]

Thanks for the replies. All very good points. Sometimes I just throw shit at a wall to see what sticks.

My last two days I did use a new 163 slalom board and enjoyed it very much. I doubt I will ride anything longer at Crystal again.

One thought though:  to use the tighter side-cut, or any side-cut for that matter, effectively it seems you must get aggressive enough (pissed-off enough) to bend the board significantly if you ecpect your arcs to tighten up.

I hate to keep bringing up age but one knows that these demanding endeavours , i.e. hardboot carving, surfskiing, kite-boarding, competitive sculling, taking care of kids and grandkids and dealing with kid's exes, evaluating whether you will run out of money in retirement and myriad other issues of one's 70s, 80s and 90s all play into whatever energy you have left.

Dick Specter (a BOLer some years ago), the 99 year old Utah skiier and the 100+ Japanese skier come to mind as I contemplate the future.

I suppose my stoke will return next November but switching gears for the next 6+ months will tell the tail.

 

[JRAZZ]

43 minutes ago, Lurch said:

what if they closed the road just after I get first chair....

Hehehe.... Happened to me this year on one of the best pow days.  And yes, it was epic and totally worth the 5 hour drive back home.

 

But I digress,

@1xsculler,  I feel you.  I think I went/going through the same thing.  I can see it.  Immense stoke at the beginning of the season, gear obsession, etc...   We're probably not the only ones to go through this.  After a season and a half of trying to hardboot I am only marginally better.  Season end duldrums?  Ya betcha!  Will I do this again next year?  Oh yeah!  

My suggestion?  Take a breather.  Put the board back in the closet.  Pick another fun way to fling yourself down a mountain (mtn biking for example) and rock on!  The stoke will be back.  And if it isn't?  Pick something else?  This is supposed to be fun.  You're paying a lot of money and spending a lot of energy on this.  Cut yourself some slack and don't fret about this*.

 

 

*Oh yeah, if you figure out how to do that let me know!!!

[Corey]

And to play the other side of the coin - sometimes things we try to love just don't click. 

I learned to scuba dive and went out to the Great Barrier Reef. It was pretty neat, but just neat. Not life changing, not epic. On my third dive that day I decided that it was a great experience but I wasn't going to pursue it further. 

Follow your heart. If you're hungry for hardboots in November, welcome back! If not, well it was a fun pursuit! 

[Erik J]

By the end of the season, I am pushing myself to enjoy conditions that are becoming way less than ideal. I go out just to go out. It's still fun but...

Then I'm ready for warm weather stuff. Backpacking, bonfires, ocean, mountain biking, swimming holes etc.

Around Sept or so I get a sense of something in the air on those first chilly nights. It seeps into my brain and I begin to steadily fiend for snow more and more. That's the beauty of having the seasons change around me.

You may or may not get the same sense as summer ends. I hope you do.  

Edited April 23, 2017 by Erik J
had to smoke some crack

[frozzen]

The main stok for me it is imagery of my ride. When I see my vids, I think - what the fuck, 8 seasons is passed and 'I'm riding like crap'

Edited April 23, 2017 by frozzen

[softbootsurfer]

if we can go somewhere

Edited April 23, 2017 by softbootsurfer

[bumpyride]

I have to say that I was pretty much over it by March (which was a pretty horrible month), and then the snows came once again.  Up until the new snows, conditions were icy and chunky which is absolutely not conducive to any sense of form or flow.

 I manage to keep my interest up by staying off the groomed slope and working the off piste. There's always room for improvement and honing skills for changing conditions (glades, trees, bumps), and trying to keep up with the better skiers. I understand the desire to carve the groomers, but I would have my fill within a couple of hours. Life on the slopes became much more interesting (in my opinion of course) when I have been exploring everything off the groom.

I'm about to turn 68, and every year has seen an improvement in speed, skills, and in pleasure. I like the challenge of the whole mountain experience even when I find myself taking a fall, and even more so when I don't have to look behind me to see if I'm about to get creamed by a high speed idiot screaming down the grooms.

Sometimes life is most rewarding when challenging yourself with new experiences - and that may well be on or off piste.

INTERVAL TRAINING AND MITOCHONDRIA 

 

By Andy Coghlan

HIIT it! We’re often told that exercise is the best medicine, and it now seems that regular high intensity interval training (HIIT), in particular, is great for reversing the declining ability of our cells to generate energy.

HIIT involves short bursts of very intense activity, interspersed with recovery periods of lower-intensity exercise. Sreekumaran Nair at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and his colleagues assigned groups of people aged between 18 and 30 and between 65 and 80 to three months of interval training, weight training or a combination of the two. Muscle biopsies were taken before and afterwards to measure the impact of these regimes on their cells.

Read more: Just a few hours’ exercise a week makes your heart grow bigger

Interval training boosted the ability of the mitochondria within cells to generate energy by 69 per cent in older volunteers, and by 49 per cent in the younger group.

Mitochondrial activity declines with age, which may aggravate fatigue and reduce the size and ability of muscles to burn excess blood sugar – a risk factor for diabetes. But this decline was halted and even reversed in the older interval-training group. “After three months of interval training, everything converged towards what we saw in young people,” says Nair.

Interval trainers also saw surges in lung, heart and circulation health. The amount of oxygen they could inhale and consume at full tilt rose by 28 per cent in the younger group and by 17 per cent in the older group. There was no corresponding change among weight trainers, although combination training boosted oxygen consumption by 21 per cent among older exercisers.

[pow4ever]

5 hours ago, frozzen said:

The main stok for me it is imagery of my ride. When I see my vids, I think - what the fuck, 8 seasons is passed and 'I'm riding like crap'

Nice!!  Love seeing those air transition.  If that's riding like crap; i am downgrading myself from "barely intermediate" back to "advance beginner" lol.
Now i want to ride after watching your video.  Where is my LDP deck?

[teach]

21 hours ago, 1xsculler said:

One thought though:  to use the tighter side-cut, or any side-cut for that matter, effectively it seems you must get aggressive enough (pissed-off enough) to bend the board significantly if you ecpect your arcs to tighten up

If it feels that way, then either the board is too stiff for your weight/speed, or you're doing something you're not really aware of to counteract the natural bending of the board.

There are lots of ways you can unintentionally interefere with the board, and lots of causes. Poor setup is one. With inappropriate cant/lift settings, you'll be twisting the board without realizing it.

This can also happen with _good_ setup, when you feel vulnerable -- too many people on the slope, narrow trail, firmer/faster conditions than you're comfortable with, etc. This happens to me all the time. When I become aware of it, a cue I keep in mind is to bend my back knee down to the snow for a toeside turn. That just takes away the unconscious twist I'm imposing with a locked straight back leg (a defensive reflex, I guess).

The article on "the Norm" might help here, by getting you to strip away any unnecessary movements.

[frozzen]

6 minutes ago, pow4ever said:

Now i want to ride after watching your video.  Where is my LDP deck?

Thnx,

everything is relative... I'll get out of the closet the slalom skate too :)

[MUD]

I get this often.

We have had two shitty seasons in a row now and I look back and wonder why I even have my boards. I pretty much skied the "whole" season (it started late and ended early, with rain quite a few days).

BUT, three years ago we had a stellar season, I had a blast!

So, you have them, if you get rid of them would you ever get another? Keep them just in case.

[Allee]

I'm finding I have the same problem right now. I've just put my downhill mountain bike on the market, because I used it one day last year, and I'm not likely to use it any more this year. I still have the all mountain bike so I'm not without wheels if I want to go and ride, but since getting a decent motorcycle, that's become the toy of choice for sunny days. Being able to jump on that and just go beats the hell out of rounding up all my gear, getting up early, strapping on the MTB and driving for two hours plus to get to the bike park, or at least 45 mins to get to the local downhill spot (and hoping that I can find a shuttle lift once I get there). I do enough of that in the winter, I'm kind of over doing it in the summer as well. I do love it, when I make the effort, but it's just making that effort sometimes ...

On ‎4‎/‎23‎/‎2017 at 9:57 AM, bumpyride said:

Sometimes life is most rewarding when challenging yourself with new experiences - and that may well be on or off piste

I couldn't agree more. Life moves along, and all. Doing new things gives you new opportunities to discover the next thing you love.

Edited April 27, 2017 by Allee

[frozzen]

On 23.04.2017 at 11:28 PM, pow4ever said:

 Where is my LDP deck?

The season is started yesterday

 

[st_lupo]

On ‎23‎.‎04‎.‎2017 at 5:57 PM, bumpyride said:

...

I'm about to turn 68, and every year has seen an improvement in speed, skills, and in pleasure. I like the challenge of the whole mountain experience even when I find myself taking a fall, and even more so when I don't have to look behind me to see if I'm about to get creamed by a high speed idiot screaming down the grooms.

Sometimes life is most rewarding when challenging yourself with new experiences - and that may well be on or off piste.

INTERVAL TRAINING AND MITOCHONDRIA 

...

 

Loved reading this post!  Since turning 40 five years ago tend to fret about being "over the hill" (especially since I'm a "late bloomer" for hard-boots).  Your post is a really good reminder that with work and investment in one's own health, things don't have to decline like a lot of people fear.

As far as keeping the stoke... for me it comes and goes.  When I moved to Norway I totally lost my stoke for snowboarding for probably about 13 years.  I'd keep riding each year and would have some ok days, but I never had _that_feeling_ like when I lived in Colorado and would wake up early just so I could scream on over to Loveland with a car full of Red Bull and pop-tarts just so I could wind up battered and bruised but totally blissed while having a beer and a bowl of whatever at Tommyknocker's on the way back home. When I started on hard boots a couple of years back that feeling is totally back again.   I kinda feel like I missed out on those first 13 years in Norway, but then again I had other things that kept me nearly as happy. 

As long as you've got something that gets you excited and puts a smile on your face its all good.