speaker-0: Ride, teach, inspire. This is the Dropping Next Podcast brought to you by the Canadian Association of Snowboard Instructors.
speaker-1: Hi everybody, welcome back to the Dropping Next podcast. I'm Gendev Piloto alongside Rob Whelan, and we'll be co-hosting today's episode. We'll be shifting gears today into the snowboarding coaching world versus the instructor world. So it will be all about elevating our snowboarding teaching and coaching knowledge. And ⁓ we have two special guests with us today. Both really involve us professionals in the snowboarding industry. We are really pleased to welcome you guys to the show, John Shelley and Jake Bowling. Hello, John.
speaker-3: Hi Jake. Hi Rob.
speaker-0: Hey, so ⁓ like Jen said, we have two heavyweights from the evaluator coaching community in snowboarding, ⁓ John Shelley and Jake Bowling, like she said. ⁓ and I'm just gonna read out a couple stats about these guys. There's a lot to list here, so I don't want to mess it up. I'm gonna read this here. John's a veteran with Cassie, level four instructor, ⁓ also a level two with the New Zealand Snow Sports Instructors Alliance. ⁓ and that's ⁓ to be noted that it was a level two before there was a level three. So that was top dog back in the day. ⁓ as well as a competitive development certified ⁓ coach with the ⁓ from the NCCP. Before getting into high end snowboard cross coaching, he taught some skiing in Tahoe, ⁓ snowboarding in New Zealand and in Whistler, raced NORAMS and World Cups back in the late 90s, early 2000s, and then transitioned over from that into coaching in with the New Zealand snowboard team in 05. Started a snowboard cross team with fellow Cassie member Dave Hugel for both able bodied and ⁓ paraathletes, ⁓ even at the Olympic level in 2018. ⁓ nowadays he is coaching with the Whistler Valley Snowboard Club. And moving over to Jake here is equal parts high-end snowboarder and mountain biker, ⁓ a member of both the Cassie and GSNBC's ⁓ national technical team, so the Global Syndicate of Mountain Bike Coaches, ⁓ and is a level four with both of those organizations. ⁓ he's been working as an instructor, a coach, a guide, a trainer in the snowboard, bike, and ski world for the past 15 years. And currently ⁓ Jake is ⁓ coaching high-end junior free ride and race programs with the Whistler Valley Snowboard Club, working with athletes who have ambitions of going pro ⁓ or may have their sights set on the Olympics. So ⁓ lots of knowledge in the industry, both of these guys. ⁓ so welcome again to the show. Excited to get into this here. As we
speaker-1: sit in the off season, what do you feel your time with? Like obbies, employment.
speaker-3: Tate, why don't you go first, man?
speaker-2: Well, for me it's ⁓ full bike mode all summer. I'm coaching open mountain biking and running courses and then just finding as much time as I can with my family. I have two young kids, ⁓ six and two. ⁓ so that keeps me pretty full on ⁓ after the summer. ⁓ yeah, and then just filling it out with some other kind of coaching and pursuits, whether it's through the text with Cassie or ⁓ some performance coaching online. Just a bit of everything really.
speaker-1: You John.
speaker-3: I mainly recreate in the summers, ⁓ to be honest. I I've been a avid mountain biker for a long time. I've riding less this year than I have in the past. I've had some niggly injuries that have sort of prevented me being too putting myself into risky situations. ⁓ but I fill my what was my bike time now with golf. I play a lot play a lot of golf, which is fun. ⁓ I d you know, provide a lot of support, as much support as I can to my kids. They're 19 and 16. My son races mountain bikes, ⁓ kind of at the World Cup level. And my daughter's a budding border cross racer herself. So I I I spend some time traveling around with them. Last last year I was away for 60 days. This year I I took Sammy to ⁓ France for twelve days and I'm taking her down to New Zealand ⁓ for another training camp. in August. So little little bits and pieces kind of staying around sport ⁓ and staying connected to my family, like they said. It's it's it's pretty easy to lose track of that. Nice.
speaker-1: What sport came first in your like you starting your sporting career or like love for sport?
speaker-3: I first spore for me for sure was swimming and it's a pretty interesting story as to why. Apparently I don't remember this, but before I was two, I drowned and was not breathing, no heartbeat when they found me. I sank to the bottom of a swimming pool. My dad swam laps in the morning. I went out and he didn't know I was there and he came back inside and I wasn't with him. So our neighbours We're a do ⁓ one of our neighbors was a doctor. He came over and saved my life basically. This is before I was two. So when I was two, I started swimming lessons. So literally the first sport I could ever remember doing was swimming. ⁓ I loved it. Well I I don't love it so much now, but I loved it then. ⁓ and that opened the door on surfing and and then every other sport. My parents played ⁓ tennis, so I grew up playing tennis. My dad was a golfer, so I played golf. Like it was But the answer to the question is swimming was the first sport I did. ⁓ but as a Kiwi and I think Jake is gonna say something similar, we we play all the sports in New Zealand, like everything. Like if you're not a good runner, you still do the running. And if you're not a good tennis player, still play tennis, you know, like no one really cares. It's pretty cool.
speaker-1: Good play playground for variety as well.
speaker-0: Yeah. That's a heavy intro to sport.
speaker-3: It's just the story of my life, man.
speaker-1: Thank you, Jake.
speaker-2: ⁓ yeah, I mean, kinda I didn't drown in a pool as a baby, but for me it was you know, we did swimming lessons as kids. Like I think everyone is very can swim, it feels like. ⁓ just we're all along with posts, but I don't know, I think I probably played fifteen different sports by the time I finished high school. But I think the the biggest ones for me, ⁓ was soccer. I played soccer for ten years or so and I actually grew up playing ice hockey in Australia which was ⁓ a bit different. ⁓ so I played that right through till I was like early twenties. But then snowboarding. Snowboarding was really started snowboarding when I was seven and that was although it was a kind of a luxury sport. It was a week or two every year and it was this thing that I look forward to all year. And then essentially as soon as I was able to, it was like, Cool, where can I go and snowboard for a really long time? And that was when I moved over here.
speaker-0: What resort did you learn on?
speaker-2: back home it was a bit of everything. ⁓ there's like six or seven big resorts in Australia. Say big, they're kinda like east coast resorts here. that are low elevation, pretty spread out, ⁓ very like melt freeze kind of cycles. And so we kinda did Falls Creek and Mount Hoffman a lot. ⁓ my aunt had a place just out of s outside of Mount Bullock so we'd go there every now and then as well. But you know, I think over the over the whatever it is, twelve years or so. tried out every resort at least once.
speaker-1: Okay, so we'll move into our next block, ⁓ which will focus on our a little bit more on our guest backgrounds. so John and Jake, we would like to know more about your journey and your evolution into the coaching world and also the specific impact your Cassie certification and foundation add on your professional path. ⁓ Rob, would you like to take us back to the spar spark and the Cassie Blueprint?
speaker-0: Let's let's get into the spark. So you know ⁓ our world starts with us as instructors and then some people choose to stay on that path ⁓ and then others transition into coaching. So I guess the first question here is when did you know that you wanted to take the coaching route versus ⁓ staying ⁓ in the instructor pathway?
speaker-2: I guess I never really decided. It just sort of happened. Kind of I you know, I came into the sport very different to John. I sort of you know, as a nineteen year old Australian kid came and just was like, How do I get a job where I can snowboard a lot? I was like, ⁓ well, if I teach people to snowboard I'll just be getting paid to do it. So ⁓ and so I kinda came in at from that side and The more I did it and kinda I worked through the Cassie levels pretty fast. ⁓ a lot of trial and error for sure. and you know, the more you do it and the more you're growing in yourself and especially training for level four, you know, you're wanting to work with higher level students so you can practice and you know that that for me that really started with ⁓ five programs with kids, you know, I think most resorts have pretty good kind of season long programming for kids. ⁓ and it's still sold as in you know an instructor based product. It's very recreational. you know and so I had a group of kids that started at six years old and I taught them every year for three or four years. ⁓ I've taught both of John's kids at different periods through throughout the years. and so my kids kind of progressed from they're learning to turn for the first time through to they're moving on to a club like Worcester Valley and starting to look at continuing to work on their snowboarding and what they can do with their snowboarding, which tends to be competition. ⁓ and so I think I just sort of followed the kids that I was coaching, essentially, ⁓ and kind of grew with them into working towards how they can use these skills towards competing. ⁓ so I think as I've developed ⁓ into that it's definitely become where my passion is. and I think a big part of that is just the ⁓ the motivation, you know, the the when you have young athletes or old athletes that are they have a target that they're aiming for, you know, it's very different to that regular lesson where someone goes, ⁓ I just kinda just want to get better You know, it's I want to win this race or I want to do this thing. And so kinda helps everyone focus where they're trying to get, both the the athletes and the coach. So I think that's kinda how I ended up just falling into it.
speaker-0: That's a really neat, like natural progression, at least like in the beginning when you had the same athletes up until the coaching phase. ⁓ now I would imagine that you're not seeing that full spectrum, right? You're just having the higher end athletes, you're starting with higher end athletes versus having instructed them to the coaching level. ⁓ how is that transition?
speaker-2: Yeah, for sure. I think it it still feels kinda similar, you know, like the when I started with the athletes that I've been working with more recently, it kinda feels like they're at the beginning again because it's just the the scale has changed a little bit. You know, they're not learning to s learning to turn up to learning to compete. They're now like brand new at competing. Right, which, you know, we've all raced. a snowboard or something before, you know, and the first time you race it's like, I just completely forgot how to do this thing. You know, I held my breath for thirty seconds and, you know, sliding all my turns and you know, it all falls apart and so it still feels a bit like that. You get these kids or these athletes when they're kinda new to that competitive journey. And it's kind of that same progression just sort of scaled up to a higher level.
speaker-0: Mm-hmm. That's super interesting. What about you, John?
speaker-3: ⁓ I honestly never wanted to be an instructor. ⁓ I started out as an athlete. ⁓ you know, I started snowboarding and within eighteen months less of starting snowboarding I was competing, racing, ⁓ riding outpone equipment. It was just like I was hooked. I'd found my thing. ⁓ and I had the opportunity to train with one of the if not the first, certainly one of the first ever snowboard coaches in the world. He coached a bunch of ⁓ Canadians, actually, JC J. Anderson, Mike Fawcett. ⁓ I well, these are friend you know, these are guys I trained with and I I rode with these guys for three years. So ⁓ I very much the coach. ⁓ the coach's name was Jerry Master Paul, and here's the cool part. He never snowboarded. He was a skier. ⁓ Burton hired him as their first ever team coach back in the I guess the mid nineties.
speaker-0: You want a name drop?
speaker-3: And he he I ⁓ maybe he snowboarded one time on a board fossil entum or something, but he was a skier. and so anyway, fast forward to like I retired out of competition and and I was friends with a lot of the New Zealand team coaches and and ⁓ administrators and one of the coaches, Tom Wilmot, ⁓ invite he said, Hey, you should, you know. come and coach ⁓ halfpipe guys, they need some work on their turning, because we think, you know, half pipe and turning are ⁓ related. ⁓ you wanna come and do that. So I work with those guys a little bit, you know, four or five days here and there every now and then. work with some great athletes. Mitch Brown was a I think he was top three at at ⁓ junior world champs in halfpipe, maybe once, maybe twice. ⁓ Julianne Bray went to a couple of Olympics. So I got a chance to work with really high end athletes. And all I could do was tell them what my coach told me. Like I just knew it worked, but I didn't really get why it worked. ⁓ and anyway, f fast forward another couple of years, I'm in Canada and a friend of mine, Christian Raab, who's historically in the in the Cassie system as well. We used to race together. Anyway, he caught up with me out in Whistler maybe ⁓ seven. And he advised me to sign up for the NCCP comp. ⁓ comp dev on snow course. And I went to that course and I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Dave Ballin and Jeff Chandler ⁓ at that course, as well as Mark Ballard was running it. So this, you know, this there was a strong theme of Cassie in the background of the places I'd ended up being. ⁓ and Jeff and and Dave through the week I made friends with them and they encouraged me to follow, you hey, check out one of our courses, let us know what you think, kind of thing, right? You can start at level two, they said I I ended up not doing that, but I I've through that process, somewhere I framed what I was doing as I'm gonna use this Cassie system as a way to unpack what worked about my the way I was coached. I mean I I went to that team Cross ⁓ Jerry Masterpool and I trained with them for well let me tell the story this way. I one year in New Zealand I came second in our nationals by half a second over two GS runs. Then I went in chain with CrossM for three weeks and I went back to New Zealand and I won our nationals by fourteen seconds. It was just what happened to my riding in this moment or in this three weeks that had me like that is a quant that's not even a quantum leap. I don't know what that is. That's like way different riding. ⁓ you know. ⁓ And so, you know, as I got to Cassie, I was like, okay, what was it that worked about this stuff? Because Jerry used to I had three pieces of feedback in three full years of training. Early pressure, late pressure's killing you, which is early pressure, patience, you know. That's it. That's that's all this guy ever said to me. We I mean we talk about other stuff or whatever, but when we're on snow, those were the three pieces of feedback that I got. And they were the same pieces of feedback that everybody got. And so the question became for me, why is that what worked? You know? ⁓ because we all rode the same fossil, you know, I don't need to explain JC or Fossey's record, Fawcett's record, they're two of the best riders of all time. ⁓ you know, so anyway, Cassie offered me an opportunity going through the courses and learning to meet some interesting cats who had some good knowledge ⁓ and begin to unpack this ⁓ extremely simple. coaching technique that Jerry had used. ⁓ and I like Jake. I, you know, I moved through the levels pretty quickly, met some really good riders along the way, Jake among them. ⁓ Jen among them. Rob, we haven't ridden together yet, but ⁓ but ⁓ yeah one one day and you know obviously Chandler everybody loves how Chandler rides and ⁓ like just a really cool experience to be able to unpack it in in that way. So that's what got me to Cassie and then from there that understanding that I unpacked really helps my coaching day to day on snow. Like I I can understand what I am trying to say in so many different ways from so many different angles. And I I think Cassie has a lot to like that the reason for that is because of how I learned to use the Cassie system and language.
speaker-0: Well, it's really interesting that you kind of segued naturally into the next thing that I wanted to ask so you can kind of both speak to it, although you kind of just did, John, but maybe more specifically, how h has your kind of journey with Cassie and learning the the skills concept and using the competencies how has that affected your your higher end coaching?
speaker-3: ⁓ cool. Actually, I finished my level four before the competencies were a thing. They were just beginning to percolate in when I finished my level four the level four. ⁓ so I I have a conceptual understanding of them, but I don't really relate to them in the way some of the newer level fours do. I did like some of it is easy. I I see those those concepts very much as a competencies very much as a As a framework for analysis, like a are they steering with the lower body? Exactly. Are they balanced over the edge? Is there strength and flow in the riding? I don't remember what the other ones are. sorry. They were never in the ma I never got the chance to memorize them because they were never in the manual. You know, like when I was doing it. They just weren't something that I could like absorb. ⁓ but it but in all of that, like The way Cassie really helped me, and I think this is actually really important and ⁓ for Canada Snowboard, I think, could utilize certainly a component of and perhaps the whole of the level four course for their ⁓ coach training. Not so much for certification, but just here's some information that's really gonna help you put together an excellent session or an excellent week or an excellent ⁓ season. And And the parts that really were helpful for me were the PED stuff, understanding lessons like is this a whole part whole lesson? Is this a building block lesson? Is this a a guided discovery lesson? I was already using those tools, but to come in and have them presented in a format that was just like building block, basically, really helped me understand how to pitch what I'm pitching to the rider. There are the majority of high end riders, and I think Jake would speak to this too, they're somewhere in whole part whole guided discovery most of the time. but in a in a season, in a year round high performance program, it's I believe it's important to building block a portion of that season as well on the movement patterns. ⁓ you all good riders end up having the best fundamentals. And and you know ⁓ Bar none, they all stand beautifully on their snowboards. You know, when you just see them standing riding a cat track. And I and I believe that deliberately breaking down the very important phases ⁓ every year gets the high-end rider the chance to go back and and repair or replenish or make an a another little shift ⁓ in their writing. So I I use all of those formats a lot and understanding. that they exist and then how to use them has probably been the most beneficial thing. ⁓ and also how you guys use questions. The presentation of how you guys use questions in the level four was very powerful. I was actually able to share that with one of the coaches that worked for me when I was running my border cross team. He was his head was exploding as the athletes just couldn't do what he was asking. ⁓ and I was like, well have you thought about like not telling them what to do? He's like, well then they won't know. I'm like, well how do you know? Why don't you ask them what they think they should be doing, and then you'll know what they think they should be doing, and that'll help you coach them. ⁓ I didn't say it like that. I'm being much more glib. I was being much more constructive with him. but yeah so there's an example of a few of the tools that you guys present that ⁓ that I really use intuitively but also quite consciously. I'm very deliberate, especially about the questions I ask. I really try to ask questions that are pertinent and that hone the awareness into where I think it needs to be.
speaker-2: Mm-hmm.
speaker-0: Good teaching tip for the ⁓ listeners out there. So, Jake, in your instructor pathway up to the level four, I would imagine the competencies were in place by then. how do you lean against the competencies and the skills concept in your coaching?
speaker-2: Yeah, I mean level four actually changed a bunch when I was doing it. ⁓ was it right in that period where I think I started it just after John finished and it kind of went through like three or four iterations of we're gonna do it this way and then I actually this'll work a little bit better or this will it felt like it changed every year as we went through and ⁓ so I think we'd started talking about kind of the core competencies through when I started the process and by the end the advanced competencies were kind of a big piece of it. ⁓ but I definitely started that process really early, you know, like I I did my level four course for the first time at the start of my third season teaching ⁓ as a twenty one year old that didn't know anything. And so I think a lot of it went over my head initially. but I think a big part of what the chassis system and training for that level four. I think it's one of the most valuable things I've ever done in just communication and working with people in general. ⁓ but one of the things that I think it ⁓ helped me with the most was just first just understanding snowboarding. Right. I guess I could snowboard. I you know, I was always that that kid that, you know, ended up with a private lesson in a group product because I was a bit better than all the other kids my age and you know I'd been in been instructed every year that I went snowboarding and I'd been around it the whole time and but kinda like John and I think like a lot of the people that come into instructing as a good snowboarder ⁓ y you can do it. Just like not really sure what how I do this thing that I'm pretty good at ⁓ or how I explain what I'm doing. I just I just kinda do it. And so for me I think the biggest thing one one of the biggest things level four did was just help me understand what's actually happening. You know, like, you know, what are the the physics and the biomechanics of how the my body and the mountain and the snowboard all work together. and then having that framework of well, so now I understand a little bit of what is happening, but how do I see that in the people that I'm coaching or or instructing and how do I look at someone who's really good at this thing already and work out well how do I make that person better? You know, and I think that was a big stumbling block for me initially with the level four process 'cause I was so new to to teaching and doing that that process that you know I was training in my exams people like John. You know, people that were, you know, former professionals or who had been teaching snowboarding as long as I'd been alive. Right. And I'm going into this lesson, being like, okay, how do I make this person who has so much more experience and is really good better? ⁓ and at the start of that process it definitely felt very like I have no idea. ⁓ but as I started to understand kind of the competencies for sure, and just how the pitch of it, the seeing related to those physics and biomechanics kind of plow to then you you started to see more. I think that was a big thing that the level four showed me was started to see more in the rider. They're like, ⁓ like they're doing that really good. But if they did it a little bit earlier, this would happen. Right? Or if they just made that turn on that bank over there instead of ten feet before it, they'd use way less energy and get the same performance out of it. ⁓ so that was kind of the first big thing I think was making those connections between what someone that's really good is doing and what's actually happening in good snowboarding. and I think the the biggest thing that I took from that process was just how to take this big thing that you're thinking in your mind of how you're explaining something, you know, and And essentially getting to what John's coach was doing, which was just you need more early pressure on your board because the late pressure's killing you. Right? and it's I actually wrote a bit of an article on the evolution of my lesson plans. I kinda kept them all throughout that level four process and it's the f the first one's a you know, a three page script. It's almost like a screenplay of Okay, we're gonna ride this far and I'll say this thing and I'll ask these questions and you know, the goal is this big long, you know, rambling sentence. And then by the the time I was passing the teaching exams or the pedagogy exams, the it was, you know, you could fit it on a napkin. The goal is, you know, one short sentence and it like, ⁓ I'm gonna say talk about this thing here and that thing there and maybe this'll happen. Right, and I think th that's what the level four process did for me was help me just understand it and then get that understanding to a point where you could explain it in you know, really simple, concise terms. Because it's it's a little that complicated, you know, we kinda just stand on the board and then lean over a bit or move up and down. You know, like there's technically and you know, from a physics point of view a lot going on, but The actual movements we're making or the things we need to adjust are often quite simple, but it takes a good in depth understanding of it to be able to see and articulate those things simply, I think.
speaker-1: Mm-hmm. You both talk a lot about the level four process and the level four journey and and that just made me think like to my next question. Do you think that great coaches need to be instructor first? And does it necessarily involve being a level four or any of the more foundational ⁓ levels in Cassie could could help coaches according to what they're coaching as well? Like whether we're talking about the park, park one, park two, ⁓ for example.
speaker-2: ⁓ I guess in my experience, coming from you know, I've done all the most of the Canada snowboard coaching certs as well and done, you know, BC and Canada cycling coaching certifications and followed that pathway as well as the kind of instructor pathway in in kind of the different industries. ⁓ and I think one of the things that the instructor certifications do really well is just give you the the framework for simple presentations. Right. And I think that starts with a level one. Right? It's just we give you a recipe of like this is what you need to say because we know it works. You know, if you teach turning like this or you teach side slipping like this, it will work. It's not the only way to do it. You know, there's twenty different systems around the world that all do it slightly differently. But if you do it like this and you just follow this framework, it'll work. Even if you change the content a little bit if you just follow the framework, it will work. And I think that that's something that the instructing certifications do really well right from the level one. And we kind of from a teaching skills point of view, that's what really builds through the the levels within Cassie and and the bike industry and all of that. It's the You know the the actual the skills or the fundamentals of what you're doing don't really change. It's just how good you are at using different ways to present it or work with someone that knows more already. You know, I'm not telling you this thing is a brand new. Like you know a lot about this topic already and I'm gonna help you understand that more. And I think that's what the instructing systems do really well, which the coaching systems ⁓ I think could take a lot from. They do a really good job in terms of looking at the sport a bit more holistically. Like how does the equipment play into it? How does the you know, the preparation physically and mentally play into the outcome of what you're doing? or I don't know, what does it look like if we take the person now and we want them to be at this, you know, this point by the end of the season or by a certain race in three months time? Right. I think the coaching systems do a great job with those, kinda more ⁓ bigger planning and other factors. ⁓ but they could do better with the just how to present those things on so a little bit clearer, ⁓ at every level. And I think even if you took a well up level coach that had done no instructing and they did their level one or even their level two, They would take tools from that process. ⁓ and maybe John can speak to this 'cause, you know, he started at level one while he was already coaching high end athletes.
speaker-3: Yeah, I like I I agree with everything Jake just said in terms of the formatting and and and the differences between the the maybe the NCCP coaching pathway and the Cassie instructor pathway education. ⁓ and I agree that the about the strengths that he highlighted in those two systems, right? Or in the rel relative ⁓ let's call them like gaps ⁓ that each system might also have. Although the instrument I think Cassie, the Cassie system doesn't really have any gaps as it refers to coaching because that's not what it's designed for. ⁓ but on the coaching side, all on snow coaching sessions end up being like lessons. I mean, that's what it is. It's a different version of a lesson than a customer might pay for at a mountain. But it's still a two or a three hour block where you go and you work on a specific piece in a specific environment with, you know, th there's people trying and there's someone telling those people what to do. That that format is true regardless of whether you're coaching or teaching. And so I think going through some teaching education really helps everybody do that. ⁓ and and ⁓ what I will say is I I also think it's a little bit horses for courses. I think my opinion, my personal opinion is that the best coaches are former athletes who have instructor training. I think because they've Being athletes at a high level, and and maybe I'm blowing my own horn a here a little bit because that's what I am, but but I because the athletes, especially if they've been at quite a high level, have a very good understanding of how to do the sport. And then if they take the time to go and learn how to convey the message of how to do the sport, which is teaching, now you've got this person with a very deep understanding of how they ride and a language that allows them to articulate it. such that other people might be able to understand it, you know. ⁓ so I really think there's a lot of power for ⁓ coaches in in in going down that ⁓ instructor training pathway, at least a little bit. you know, I and I think the like I think Jake's in my experience you know also shows like the further you go, the better you get at coaching, for sure. There's no doubt. Like so yeah, I think in short, you know it d it's There are great coaches out there who have no teaching experience. but I think ⁓ the coaches that have teaching experience ⁓ and were former athletes, they become very, very good, especially if they've taken the time to teach some beginner lessons as well. There's a lot of high end coaches now who are great coaches, who've had a lot of success. ⁓ they don't have a great understanding of how a person goes from not being able to do something. To being able to do that thing. ⁓ and I you I see that all the way through, right up to riders who want to bridge up to the World Cup level. There's some moves that World Cup watercross riders have in their bag that they just do that aren't intuitive and so have to be presented like in isolation almost as a thing we need to learn. ⁓ and and that's a I mean I would s I would argue that it's certainly the free ride and turning portions of the level four course, every Noram rider, Noram level rider, which is mi mid level in the FIS hierarchy, would pass the level four free riding and turning. No trouble. They have those skills like on lock. ⁓ they the freestyle maybe not, some of the teaching demos maybe not, but where it's just them allowed to express themselves through their own writing, they would adjust to that level really quick. And so even at that level, there is still the need to be able to present a building block approach to a new move that these guys don't yet have. A lot of coaches fall down there. They they're just like, Why can't you do this? And the like the example I gave before of the guy that was w who used to work for me. ⁓ and I you know, he was a great coach and he ended up being the US national team coach after he finished working for me. His name was Rob Fagan. He's a former Canadian national team athlete and a wonderful writer and a great, great coach. ⁓ but he would get so frustrated in the process of having of watching these great writers not be able to do something that he thought was really simple. and that is literally the experience of teaching a beginner lesson. That that's exactly what it is to any person who snowboarded and taught beginner lessons, they're a better writer than the person they're currently teaching by quite some margin. You know what I mean? It's like not even close. And they have to find a way to explain to this person who's never snowboarded before what they need to what what they're trying to accomplish, how to move their bodies to do that. And then they need to give them the space in the environment to figure that out on their own. Rub up against a little like full on your bum, full on your face, hopefully the elbows, you know, ⁓ kind of thing. And and I think that process really helps high-end coaching. Just being able to understand that the person you're talking to doesn't have that knowledge. The the neural circuit doesn't exist in their brain to do the thing. So they can't do the thing. If and if they do happen to do the thing, it's probably luck rather than anything else at this point. And just being able to be patient, so I really think that's where the all coaches would benefit is a little more understanding of how that the beginning of each Learning curve moves. Does it make sense?
speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Totally. Totally.
speaker-2: I I really like I like what you're saying about ⁓ like I agree with like former athletes often have a bit of an advantage for sure. I think I don't want to I don't want that to discourage people from who haven't come from that. Like it's not if you weren't a former professional, semi professional, you know, high end athlete in your youth and you're in the snowboard instructing system and you're like interested in coaching and competing and training people to compete, like it's not too late, you know, the but one of the things that is important is it's really really fun to coach competition if you don't understand personally what it feels like to be in competition. And you can do that at any age. Right? My mum raced in a bank slalom last year at sixty five. Right? Like it's not you don't have to be new you don't have to be in that pathway from when you're starting off. Like you can feel the the the adrenaline of being in a start gate or of the top of a you know slopestyle course or whatever it is. Like you can feel the nerves, you can see how ⁓ that person who's just standing still on their snowboard just blew past me on this flat section of the track because someone made their board faster. Right, like you can you can understand what's happening, and you don't develop that skill set, you don't develop the understanding and kind of the empathy of how to of what's actually happening within competition and around competition without experiencing it yourself. ⁓ and I think the partly why people can pe as you move through the level the the classy system, and especially into the level four, you get better at coaching. is because the level four in a lot of ways starts to become more like a competition. You're only competing with yourself, right? The other results are relevant to you, but it in the way it's structured, you know, it's a cool, you've got the microphone for an hour, do the thing. Right? Or you're standing at the top of this this slope in a bib, and there's People with notepads on the side judging you, like that's competition. You're having to perform on demand under pressure, you have to do it multiple times in a row throughout a day. ⁓ and so I think if you've gone through that process and you've passed the writing, you've passed the teaching, that kind of thing, ⁓ you're starting to get a better understanding of if you'd not been an athlete in the past, what it feels like to be in competition. And so what I've seen working with a lot of instructors that are working in a kind of a coaching role, you know, like the the club that we work at very lucky in that, you know, there's what, a hundred ish level fours in Canada in the system. And I think we have twelve or thirteen working in our club or SAD side working in our club and and you s and I've seen lots of them go through the process and pass that certification while working as coaches and you can see how much better they are getting as they're going through that process because they're they're understanding it more and it's not just the skill stuff, it's just the they can connect more with what the athlete is feeling because they're going through it a bit themselves. And the more that they put themselves in that, whether it's signing up for a free ride event or, you know, a local rail jam or whatever it is, the better they get. And they don't have to draw from this past experience as an athlete. They're actually seeing themselves as an athlete now, which can also, you know, John still competes in races every now and then, right? And probably learns a lot from that because he now has the toolkit to break down and understand his performance better than he did when he was an athlete after the fact. You know, like I w after the race I wasn't mentally prepared properly. I didn't do what I needed to do and that's why I blew that first turn and lost the race or whatever it is. So ⁓ if you want to be a coach, I think you need to compete at some point in the sport that you're coaching. It doesn't have to be that you used to do it. You just you gotta start. I think
speaker-0: One of the big things that you take with you ⁓ from being an athlete and having competed is the kind of psychological side of things, like mental preparation you just mentioned there, Jake. ⁓ how can people train their brains to be good at that aspect without having been a former competitor?
speaker-2: But you make yourself feel uncomfortable. You put yourself in situations which are hard, which scare you a little bit, which you are nervous, you have to perform, right? and that that could be anything. It doesn't even have to be on your snowboard. That could be going and, you know, asking for someone's number at a coffee shop or starting up a conversation with a random stranger, you know, that you're sitting on the bus stop with, or it could be putting yourself in you know, teaching a different role within the snowboard school or or signing up to or trying to get into the space to, you know, work as a trainer on a morning session, right? Or whatever it is. But putting yourselves in situations where like you feel nervous before the fact. ⁓ and having to start to work out what works for you. You know, there's so much great information available in terms of different ways that you can help manage some of the the nerves and anxiety and build self confidence. but you you can't do it just in theory. I think you need to put yourselves in situations which could be could be competition or it could be just, you know, finding opportunities to do something that makes you feel uncomfortable and realise, ⁓ I just tried to start a conversation with that person and it didn't go very well but I'm alive and may never see them again. And it's okay, you know. ⁓ practice.
speaker-1: And those are also advice that that that's really good what you're saying. Like those are advice that we give at all level really for like 'cause this the stress can be there at all level. I would say there's more you go up, more it adds up. Like if you're thinking ⁓ exams at level three and level fours, there's gonna be a probably a greater amount of stress, like typically as an average, because there's just the the exam word itself is as a bit of a competition. signification, right? So like this those are things that as evaluators we're promoting ⁓ or candidates or people going up the system to just like go out, put yourself out there and do some stuff. And out random compliments to strangers, for example, right?
speaker-3: Yeah. A hundred percent echo what Jake said. There's only one way to gain experience, it is to do something like the thing, if not the exact thing. ⁓ what I will add is I find it useful as a coach when athletes are especially newer athletes that I begin working with, say at that like ⁓ continental cup level, often they have in their heads that nervousness is a bad thing. that that kind of projected anxiety is a is not what they want to be feeling. And I, you know, physiologically speaking, the opposite is true. Actually that nervous is a good thing. and you need a bit of that, especially if you're going to do something physical. and and I think as Jake suggested, you know, putting yourself in the situation allows you the chance to practice being with those feelings. Noticing what you notice, especially if you can be supported outside by someone else like a Jake or somebody that can kind of guide. And that's what you guys do with the level four, level three and level four courses. It's like actually here's some tools that'll help you develop the skill that you currently feel uncomfortable with, you know, going and talking to somebody or whatever. And then, you know, you guys check in as they go, right? Or they'll share with you. And and letting everybody know that this is normal and it's okay, I think is a pretty important ⁓ Pretty important piece of the puzzle for personal development. Like, hey, yeah, you're not going to get better if you're not taking some kind of risk, whatever, you know, personal risk, emotional risk, physical risk. ⁓ and along with that, your body's gonna do some stuff that you're gonna sense that you may not want to feel those things. But you know, I was just listening to a podcast the other day about ⁓ Bill Russell. You know who Bill Russell is? So Bill Russell's one of the greatest American athletes of all time. ⁓ basketball player. And I can't remember the stats, but it's astr astronomical. He won so many NBA titles, high school. Anyway, he apparently vomited from nervousness before every single game of basketball he played. ⁓ and he's one of the greatest athletes of all time. So the nervousness is not necessarily something that will affect the performance negatively. And I think that's an important thing for newer athletes or newer people who haven't competed before, who are now Go into their first bank slalom or first soap style or whatever, even as adults. Hey, that nervousness is meant to be there. It's good for you. ⁓ and it's more functional to embrace it and welcome it and let it be part of the experience. And that takes some practice. ⁓ and so you have to go and do the you've got to put yourself in those situations to experience it.
speaker-2: that the like working with like the fruit like kids a bunch, you know, you're you'll be standing on top of a cliff and they're like, I'm nervous, I'm like, sweet. 'Cause we're standing on a cliff, right? Like we it's it's intimidating. Are we but are we nervous dead or are we nervous excited? Like can you can you see the outcome happening in your mind, how you want it to happen and you know, like you do you know how to do this? Do you want to do this? Sweet. If you those are both yes, then let's work out tactically what we need to do. And that that nervousness is okay because we we understand what we're doing, we understand we know how to do it and we want to do it. So let's do it. Right? you're always gonna be nervous. You know, nervous before you start a podcast. You're nervous that this is gonna go right or or whatever. ⁓ but yeah, I think you're What's happening in the brain when you're nervous is a lot of really good things in terms of high performance. ⁓ it's just that framework like John's saying of switching from I'm I'm nervous because I don't think I can do this to I'm nervous because I want to do well. I want to perform at the level that I know I'm capable of. ⁓ you know, and I think putting yourself in any situation where you can have that conversation with yourself. Even if it's just a little drop on the side of the the run and or whatever it is, like that's that's how we get better at that, sure.
speaker-1: Yeah. That's all really cool. And we naturally merged into where we wanted to lead this show at this point, which is awesome because we touched on some of the points. ⁓ I'd like us to explore a little bit more the differences between the instructing, t teaching, recreational snow sports or riders in c in private clubs, for example, but recreational versus coaching competitive athletes. Whether it's across tactical, physical, psychological approaches. And ⁓ we can start with a bit of the tactical and terrain adaptation you guys started to touch on.
speaker-0: Yeah, we did sort of go down that road already, but like kind of specifically, you know, when we're comparing ⁓ how you would teach snowboarding versus how you would coach snowboarding, when it comes to terrain, what are your tactic like how does your tactical approach change to terrain adaptation?
speaker-2: I guess I can sweep to this a bit. I do a bit more instructing when Done does these days. But ⁓ I think in general just instructing versus coaching, like if we're gonna break those two into two separate things, ⁓ because they do overlap a lot, right? Like the coaching generally, the student knows more and I'm able to work with them collaboratively on getting better. Right. So they have a skill set that I am working with and I'm asking questions and they're trying things and they're giving me feedback as well as I'm giving them feedback and we're we're kind of growing that skill set together. ⁓ instructing I'm giving I'm giving them the information. Right. I'm I'm telling them what to do and how to do it and why it works and when they should start and how much they should move and I'm giving them all the skills they need to be successful in trying it. And that that person, you may end up in more of a collaborative kind of teaching style as they get better at it because they now are better at it and they know more. ⁓ and so I think if if we're just talking about like the two different teaching styles, I guess that's how I would differentiate them. If we're talking about the job of being an instructor versus being a coach, I think working as an instructor with recreational holiday makers, essentially. ⁓ we're just looking for quick wins more often than not. You know, like what's what's the thing that I can give them that's gonna have the biggest impact today? You know, whether that's riding improvement or ⁓ guiding experience or, you know, a secret stream run that they wouldn't have found without you or whatever it is. ⁓ with because their goal almost always is to have a good time. Right? They're here on holiday to snowboard because they love snowboarding or they want to learn to snowboard or whatever. And their goal is just to have a good time. ⁓ you're training for a ultra marathon, your goal is not necessarily to have a good time. Your goal is to complete the the run, right? The to embrace the suffering to whatever it is like your your your goals are different and so, you know, when it's six in the morning and it's raining and it's cold, you still go out and do the work because you know why you're doing it. ⁓ and so I think in coaching doesn't mean suffering. But what I what I think it it does mean is for kind of separating those two jobs as instructor versus coach is ⁓ I don't have to make you better today as a coach. If what we're working on today actually feels like you've got worse, that's okay. 'Cause I don't care about today. I care about where you are when you need to be performing at your best. And that you know, that might be in a month's time you've got this certain event and I know that we've got enough time to work on this specific thing that you've been just hiding. or or dealing with, you know, and you know, playing golf, you make a change to your grip or whatever, and suddenly everything feels really weird. And you start getting worse scores and you're hitting hitting bad shots that you'd never get before. Be like, cool, I know that I want to make this change and I need to make this because it's gonna help in the long run. ⁓ and I think that's how I see the the two different jobs being kinda different in terms of the the tactical approach. Coaching, I'm looking to get them to where they want to be in the future and instructing it's like, how can I make you really good today? And then terrain wise, I think it kind of does the inverse in that instructing, we're really looking at progressing terrain because people want to tick boxes. I want to do that cliff or I want to do my first black line or whatever it is. ⁓ more often than not if I'm working with an athlete coaching, I'm making the terrain easier because I want to give them the capacity to think about something small and actually work on it. ⁓ so just the yeah, I guess the why the why I'm using the terrain or the why I'm what I'm choosing to work on that day changes just based on what their ultimate goal is, whether it's competition or just having a good time. And
speaker-1: That that's probably gonna change and evolve as well, depending on what type of students you're teaching. So like you say, like it's it's hard to separate those all the time because ⁓ an instructor will tap into their coaching skill or their guiding skill, even depending on the students that they have that day or for the seasonal program, for example. That's gonna be a little bit different, like the goal will be will be different than a one day more.
speaker-2: Yeah, for sure.
speaker-1: touristic lesson or someone like there's some people that come to ⁓ private lessons with like very specific goal like you say like taking those boxes and you're gonna first adjust expectation to make sure it's realistic before you you reach a certain goal during the day. ⁓ so I think those are really complementary, vice and versa. That kind of come back to what we touched on a little bit earlier in the show where we talked about the the background in the foundation, how Cassie ⁓ teaching knowledge can help the coaching and vice and versa, I think it's true as well. Kind of come back full circle.
speaker-2: Yeah, for sure. Like I watched John coaching. John picked up a group last winter of ⁓ some younger, newer to competing athletes, which was really cool to see in going back to doing working with a group like that. And ⁓ you'd see that. You'd see like you know, in the morning they're on a green run doing the same thing over and over again. And then in the afternoon they're writing pow in the trees. And it's like, cool, they've done the work. We did the work this morning. they focused, they were engaged and now my goal as the coach is to have fun and love snowboarding and, you know, feel that on you know the terrain where they want to be right.
speaker-0: I think this all speaks really well to we keep coming back to this idea of like fundamental knowledge ⁓ and how that helps the coach. ⁓ you know, this idea of okay, well, we have a specific goal for this athlete. ⁓ and so from a terrain perspective, we can use a lot of different terrain over a longer period of time because we understand what we're trying to get that athlete to do, versus like you said, Jake, having you know, a private lesson one day and you just wanna show them the mountain and you know have a good time. You're gonna take them to cool terrain that they're gonna enjoy, period.
speaker-2: Right.
speaker-3: Hmm. Yeah, like ⁓ I love what Jake just said. It's so, so true. I like the the difference between an instructor who has this opportunity, maybe ongoingly, but you know, once or twice a season to ride with the same rider, they're really delivering based on that rider's current experience. ⁓ whereas a coach is really delivering based on that writer's long term goal and maybe medium term goal. And those the path starts to diverge there. ⁓ and the one thing I would add that Jake kind of intimated but didn't r ⁓ didn't quite get to is ⁓ well two things really. First of all, the definition in the dictionary of instructor and coach is the same. Like they are the like when you look up the definition of instructor, you see coach. And when you look up the definition of coach, you see instructor. So definitionally they're quite similar words. And that and that speaks to how much overlap there is between the two. But where I see a really, really big difference, ⁓ and I think this is true if we think about coaching in general, in all sports or life coaching or whatever, part of the job of the coach is to help that person that they're working with learn to get the best out of themselves through the medium that they're teaching if it's baseball, a baseball coach is gonna have that athlete not only get better at the sport, but learn how to be at their best in a moment of their choosing. And the only way you can get there is by helping that person or supporting that person while they find out how to get the best out of themselves, which, as Jake intimated, like that includes getting up at six AM on a rainy morning. If you want to be an ultra marathon runner and it was scheduled to go for a run. The only way you're going to get your best out of yourself in that context is to get up and go for a run. You know, like it's that's it. Otherwise you're not walking towards your target very well. Now, there may be reasons why people choose not to do that, and a good coach will also create a space that's safe enough for that person to not be at their best today. That's part of the process. ⁓ but I I'm a firm believer and I I bring this into my coaching, even at the level of the nine and ten year olds I was riding with last year, where part of my part of what I'm trying to do is to help them learn how to get the best out of themselves. So you know, like challenge yourself a little bit here, back off a little bit there, turn those dials, learn how to turn those dials as a human being. ⁓ and I think instructors, the best instructors do that and that's why they have those return clients all the time. I feel good when I'm skiing with X or I'm snowboarding with Jake because he creates an environment where I feel safe and I like I take risks with him that I won't take with other people kind of thing, you know? ⁓ and and and that comes back to the instructor or the coach, understanding that it's not just about the sport. It is about the experience. And this person is there's an opportunity even in a lesson to help that person get a little better at being themselves. ⁓ and I think coaches are just much more heavily on that side. ⁓ you know, the you you don't find out much about yourself when you're having success. There's a little bit to learn there about how you deal with success and stuff. You find out an awful lot about yourself when you're being challenged. ⁓ you know, and in life in general. Like we find out way more about ourselves and there's way more learning in that space as well. ⁓ so I and I think coaches ⁓ by definition have to dwell much more on that side of the ledger. ⁓ because as Jake said, you know, your your writing right now isn't gonna win that race, but we got six weeks to get you much closer to winning that race. and it's the patience th ⁓ that you have to bring to that situation, as well as the, you know, holding the focus. When the athlete's focus wants to go away, the coach will hold the no we're this is the target. You know? ⁓ and I think that's that that alone just Not so much that they're indistractable, but that they can return their focus to the task. ⁓ and that's very much a process that coaches go through like with nine and ten year olds, it's like twice a run. ⁓ and with with World Cup athletes, it's maybe more, you know, maybe every run. You're returning them to the focus. You know, just every single time. ⁓ because the focus is so specific, because the the Consequence may be a lot higher for the high end athlete as well. and also their ability to have a high level of focus is much higher. You know? ⁓ and then how do I how and that kind of segues into how I think about terrain adaptation? I'm I'm exactly like Jake for in a regular lesson or even coaching those nine and ten year olds, there's a terrain building rock progression that I'm gonna go through. ⁓ I'm definitely gonna, you know. If we need to bend our knees more, I'm gonna make them ride in the bumps. If we need to be smoother on on and off our edges, I'm gonna make them ride green runs. But as I start to work with higher and higher level athletes, the terrain gets much simpler for the same reason as Jake. I want them to be able to focus their awareness on a very specific piece. And the more complicated the environment is, even to the point of riding in a border cross track, like They've got to deal with so much more external noise that it makes it hard to hone in on the thing ⁓ that that I want them to hone in on. And so as a coach, I will use very deliberately, much simpler terrain, or very specific shapes in the terrain that I know produce certain feels or cer require certain movement patterns to be ridden smoothly or to generate speed on it or whatever like that. ⁓ it's much more specific. ⁓ and it requires I think and maybe Jay can speak to this more, I think it requires a lot more knowledge about what the outcome is you're trying to produce and the different maybe pathways to get there. Yeah.
speaker-2: Yeah, for sure. I think I my I'm lucky, like and ⁓ my riding style and how I like to ride the mountain, ⁓ and you know, working at a resort like with the Black Home, which is some of the best terrain in the world, ⁓ for pretty much any avenue you want to take in terms of competition. I tend to lean on the terrain a lot. ⁓ and I think with the instructing, you know, we're using the terrain as a tool to give them the space to work on their skill set or to ⁓ challenge them a little bit. I find the terrain becomes a tool with higher end athletes to help them really identify what their input is having on the performance versus what the terrain is doing, in terms of where where the speed is coming from, or how to you know, how to feel strong and stable and safe despite the fact you're going eighty kilometers an hour, you know, or how to land a drop in choppy, bumpy snow on a double black run and have the confidence you're gonna ride out of it safely and I think so the you know the there's a lot you're doing in that situation but the terrain is also doing a lot in that situation and so the terrain becomes a tool to help them help the athlete understand what they need to do to manage that. ⁓ and I think it becomes a tool that I use for sure in terms of developing their mental skill set and that psychological performance factor ⁓ in their riding, you know, in with a you know, you come to me for a private lesson because you're on your holiday, whatever, I'm not gonna take you to go and ride some pretty sketchy, challenging, semi high risk alpine run that you're not gonna enjoy, right? But if you're an athlete training for a free ride event We're gonna use that terrain, use that high consequence, challenging environment to, you know, stretch the their capacity for what is okay and what feels safe. You know, if I can navigate this super challenging, scary, icy run today, what's that slightly easier run in good snow gonna feel like when I come to competing in it? Right. And so ⁓ the terrain just becomes another skill essentially that we're working on in terms of their their kind of comfort zone and what they feel safe and able to perform in. ⁓ and so yeah, I'm using it, just using it differently as a different tool to work on a different skill set ⁓ with with athletes versus recreational snowboards.
speaker-3: I would add to that as well, there's and and Jake touched on it just then too, you your freeride athletes, they are, you know, you're gonna be presented with this challenging terrain at every event you go to. So they they have to get into that ⁓ in order to be able to perform when they need to. ⁓ whereas an instructor is you know bringing a client to that type of terrain only when appropriate for a completely different reason. They don't need to perform in that terrain. They just want to go and have a good experience in that terrain. and and the way like that translates that what Jake's talking about translates into border cross training, especially here at Whister Blackham. ⁓ a border cross track is a minute long. It's got booms and jumps and rollers and and so putting riders in a situation and you've got to hunt speed in border cross track. So riding terrain where they have to hunt speed, where there are, if not shape booms, at least banks to ride up and down. where there's some places to jump, s even side hits. All of these things mimic the competition environment. ⁓ and that's a consideration that we don't have as instructors. You know? As I like Jen, you rode with me out here and we ripped around my like ⁓ like homemade border cross track. Right? You know? ⁓ and and if I had a client I might take them there to that terrain 'cause it's fun to ride.
speaker-1: Okay, I was just thinking about that.
speaker-3: But a border cross athlete is going to look at that terrain, following me or Jake down there and go, ⁓ I get this. This is as pretty close to a border cross track as you can get without actually being a border cross track. ⁓ so we can as coaches, I think we've got a much more tuned awareness of how to use this terrain right now and how that relates to the end goal.
speaker-0: I like the kind of breaking it down nature of all this, right? Like the the marathoner doesn't train by running race pace every session. You know, so you're using terrain to you know, one day you're gonna be working on if for the snowboard cross athlete, you can you can use just jumps or you can just use some portion of the mountain to train one specific thing so that come race day, you know, they can put all those pieces together and they've got all those kind of nuanced ability to adapt to terrain just 'cause you've given them that opportunity in different scenarios.
speaker-3: Well that's that's exactly the whole part whole format, right? Like that's exactly it. We're gonna work on this part today, but you have to put it together over there as a complete package for the race or the free ride run or whatever, right? But the other thing I will say about training is like that there's so many different dials we can turn as coaches. Like people think about the terrain as a dial and as it gets more ⁓ challenging the intensity goes up, right? We have to have better awareness, whatever. We can turn the intensity up without changing the terrain simply by honing the focus more or riding faster or these things as well, right? Like there's a lot of ways to change the intensity. and the other thing that maybe instructors never have to deal with, well, maybe maybe sometimes, but certainly coaches have to deal with a lot, is how long do I want those riders at that level of intensity? You know, how much time. do I want to spend with them revving it close to a hundred percent in their brains and in their bodies because obviously there's a risk factor to to deal with, but also they have to be in that mode because when you show up to a race, you're the system turns on. You're like at a hundred percent. That's what happens. So and in some cases, for some people that hundred percent actually makes them go flat. Like they can't perform. They're overstimulated, you know, and and Putting our riders into these different scenarios, changing the dial such that they experience the intensity or something like the intensity, ⁓ is really an important part of coaching that you probably don't really think about when you're working with a one day client. You know, you like you're not really thinking, okay, I want to push this person, challenge themselves a little bit here. And you just don't really we don't I never thought that way as a coach. I was mainly thinking about how do I wanna mitigate that intensity so that this person's experience they they feel like they're on top of their experience rather than along for the ride sometimes. And I think with our certainly with my border cross races, there are times of the year where I want them burned out almost like fried. And you know, so that like just understanding that and and how the terrain impacts that on a day to day and then on a week to week. I mean, Jakey, we've Jake and I have definitely had some riders getting injured within a week of competition over the last few years. ⁓ and and n through I would say no mistake on the coaching side. It's just what happens when riders are pushing. And so it's very important that we as coaches are clued into how this rider is behaving and responding. And when we see some good quality stuff, there's a temptation to keep pushing to ⁓ do another one. You like you nailed that, try for three in a row. And and one of my practices is very much to Step back. I saw three real good ones. We got an hour to go in the session. Stop. You know, let's let's go to something else at this point. Like, well, we got two half good ones, but you seem frustrated. Perfect. Now's the time to let you sit with that frustration for a week or whatever till we get to see you again. You know, and think those those dials are so important to understand as high end coaches, people who are working in long term programs and and absolutely n necessary. if you're coaching competitive. Like you have to know how those dials work and what the impact is on each rider, or potentially what it could be on each rider anyway.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-1: think we do a pretty good job in Cassia exploring those ⁓ dials, especially through the level four process. ⁓ as like we're we're assessing people, we're training people to teach with a creative variation level. And the I would say that most successful lesson or pedagogic or instructor training sessions at the level four are people that masterize those dials. Like are able to turn those dials within a frame of one hour and make things happen because they have such a good understanding of what the people that they have in this group right now, whether it's most of the time it's peers that are already expert or advanced writers that you're you're trying to push and challenge within that safe zone that allows them to to grow and and understand the concept that you're trying to to bring them. So the importance of turning those dials as intensity, dynamism, rhythm, whatever it is that you're working on that's gonna make the difference to that during that specific period of time is super important. And that's that's also the same as the terrain as a teaching tool. ⁓ you both say that sometimes you scale down in order to make things a little bit easier for your athletes so they can understand and f take the time to feel better on something that that's easier. And I think that that's something that were also educate our people to use the like there's no other better tool, teaching tool than the terrain. So that's pretty cool that y you guys are bringing this up because this is something that ⁓ we always try to to promote and it comes with experience and that's what you're showcasing with what you're saying there.
speaker-3: I was just gonna say, like I if there's one thing I see from our coaches at Wister Valley, the coaches who coach the under fifteens, mainly the kids that come in and need more general writing. the and and all of them have progressed with this over the last couple of years. They are all much better at using simpler terrain to be more specifically developing a piece of the riding. ⁓ And what we see, you know, as the riders come through is there's there's a good crop of like these these kids know how to ride by the time they're eleven or twelve. They're good little riders. You know, I could feel confident taking them most places, ⁓ at speed or, you know, maybe the trees are a little hard, but that's more because they're little and they're kids. ⁓ it's dangerous, but but but I still take ⁓ in there, but but just I think that's a place where instructors should feel more confident to keep the terrain simple, provided they are prepared to turn up the level of expectation that they want to see. Yeah. Like if if you're gonna have s simple terrain, then better have a good focus and you better be able to stick to that focus and use it to develop the rider in the moment. You know, I think that's 'cause it's it's pretty easy to just be lazy in simple terrain. ⁓ And the ki the the writers can often ⁓ not be paying attention. And then they're not really I mean, the the the system is learning something in the background of our consciousness, you know, the brain is adapting to that. But if we can be highly focused, like the the thing that really progresses learning is deliberate high high focus. That's that's the thing that makes a huge you know, deliberate high pro focus during practice. makes the biggest difference to learning. So creating an environment, whether it's complex terrain or simple terrain or something in between, that allows for that is probably the most important thing in terms of choosing terrain, is that does this terrain allow my student or my athlete to focus close to their limit of what they're capable of focusing on for the time that I have them in this terrain? Mm-hmm. Kind of thing.
speaker-0: We've talked a lot about terrain as a tool. let's change gears here and talk about the tool that they're standing on. How does the conversation change when you we're dealing with high end athletes who know a lot about their equipment? ⁓ how does ⁓ you as a coach, how do you have those conversations with your your athletes about their equipment versus, you know, ⁓ your average ⁓ snowboard lesson where, you know, you just want them to feel good on a board.
speaker-3: I guess ⁓ first of all, high end athletes don't necessarily know very much about their equipment. most of them, frankly, in my experience, are almost as ignorant as the general public. ⁓ at that kind of mid pack NORAM level, they really don't know much about why their board does what it does or what kind of board that so many mid pack, especially guys on the NORAM tour, are just writing boards that someone else is writing and they don't really know why. I don't know, you know. ⁓ so the conversation with it border cross athletes anyway. First of all, border cross equipment is very specific. ⁓ it most of the boards these days have two layers of metal in them. ⁓ Jake's rides a board that's got some metal in it. He can attest to how different that feels. ⁓ Jan U rode a a board that had some metal in it and how different that feels from from a a standard board. And there's a lot of advantages to having metal. It tunes out a bunch of vibration. ⁓ It it it has this ⁓ like three hundred and sixty degree tensile strength. So it's strong, it's the same amount of strong in all the directions, whereas like cross laid fiberglass or carbon is strong along the stringer, but it's not strong between the stringers. So you have this weak, strong kind of component that I feel in a flex pattern that I don't like. I prefer having metal in my boards. ⁓ and so I'm always like the camp I just did in La Dooz out ⁓ last month with a bunch of riders, we bought a bunch of ⁓ Oxess boards in to test. Most of them were on ⁓ one of them was on Kessler, ⁓ the other three were all on Apex boards. And so we got them to try some boards out and what I loved hearing mainly was, wow, that feels different. I like this or I don't like that. Just just having that conversational interaction with the athletes is probably where I want them to be as a coach. ⁓ and And that takes some time to get an athlete to that point. You've got to like they've got to be tuning their boards so that they know what their boards look like underneath and and they've got to be like aware of the damage on their boards or if there's edges that need work. They have to be tuning their boards. And ⁓ even just that familiarity that that breeds really helps. ⁓ and then on top of that, I I believe they need to be able to feel the speed. So they need to f like, did this wax work or not? ⁓ And and that's a conversation that we end up having. And then, you know, does the board feel chattery or settled? That's a conversation. How does it work in this in the start section? ⁓ you know, so many different demands, ⁓ specific demands within Bordercross that ⁓ there's so many little conversation pieces and and ⁓ construction, radius, ⁓ turn radius, side cut shape, all of these things influence that. ⁓ but like I say, most athletes at even coming into that mid pack NORAM level, which is a good rider already, have no idea that these things matter. You know, I was talking to my buddy ⁓ the other day, he's a one of the coaches for the US team, he said some of these riders are coming in on their race board they've got a twenty four inch stance and on their freestyle board they've got an eighteen inch stance. It's like, how does that work? First of all, your twenty four inch stance is too wide and s and second of all, your eighteen inch stance is too narrow. Like What are you doing? ⁓ kind of thing. So and and the specific rider that I'm thinking of here, that guy is a top three Noraim level rider. Like he's a good rider, ready to race wheel cut and no concept of set out. ⁓ so I y you know, I guess the the conversation from a coaching perspective is much more important than it would be from a customer's perspective, ⁓ because the performance requirements are much higher for you know, there's there's a specific If I'm a border cross racer, I want to win border cross races. You know, if I'm a ⁓ client riding around the mountain, I really want to ride around the mountain. you know. I guess there's there's a caveat there in in freestyle, like if if a customer is really freestyle oriented, they'd need some specific equipment, maybe a little more. May Jake obviously is gonna be able to speak to that a lot more, I think, than I can. ⁓ but that that's how I would that's how I see the equipment conversation with athletes.
speaker-0: How do you use equipment on different training days? So you talked about riding different parts of the mountain, you know, that board across board might not be much fun to ride in in different environments. Are you having them on kind of boards with more torsional flex on like training days to work on certain things? So I mean always on their bullets.
speaker-3: No, I'm I'm much more deliberate than that actually. F the first rule I have is you show up on whatever board you show up on. If you if you we show up to a border cross race and you show up with your freestyle board, that's what you're training. I don't have a I don't mind that so much. I mean it's not super practical, but because of how learning is in the brain, learning is just an adaptation to a situation, right? A scenario. So no matter what All roads lead to Rome, you know. I mean, you can get to being a fast racer by riding nothing but freestyle boards for years, provided you focus on making the board work the way a race board would work. And there are limitations to that. You know, a soft, torsionally soft twin, full twin freestyle board can't hold the loads that are one six five, sixteen meter, two layers of titan titanal Board across board. It it'll fold. It doesn't, it's not built to deal with those loads. But that puts extra premium on the timing of the move. Like if you get it wrong on a freestyle board, it's gonna fold, you might break it. If you get it wrong on a race board, it's probably not gonna turn and you're gonna be going real fast. ⁓ you know, ⁓ kind of thing. So I am pretty directive with my athletes. I like them to the one thing that that only raceboards can produce is the speed. You the freestyle boards just don't go as fast. ⁓ they're not as comfortable at speed, so the rider's less likely to go as fast. And I think speed, getting comfortable with speed, is its own skill. Like it you you can hone that skill. I first of all, I believe pretty much everything is a learnable skill, but I would part out speed, getting comfortable with speed, as its own skill that can be practiced on its own. ⁓ and so in that context, I do want my guys on raceboards a lot. And I do like seeing them riding their raceboards free riding, 'cause they are hard to ride and especially grabby snow, grabby off piece snow, race boards are much more demanding to ride. They're not impossible to ride. I actually like the way they feel. But you gotta ride fast and be strong ⁓ to make them work. but like I say, if I had a if I was doing a especially a turning session and I had riders showing up on twin freestyle boards. I'd probably just turn the dial up on how good they needed to be at the move to make the board work. Like I'm sure a good rider like I'm I know that the the great border cross racers of this moment all could make a twin freestyle board that was too short for them work such that you guys wouldn't be able to tell that weren't riding equipment they were comfortable on. You know, like it's not that it's not that big of a deal. Except where, as I say, speed is you've got to feel that speed. And understanding where the limitations are, kind of thing.
speaker-0: Nice. That's that's a bigger answer than I was expecting. like lots of really good stuff in there. Yeah, I'm getting I'm getting the hang of things here now. So we're kinda midway here and one of the things that we like to do on this show is ⁓ we call it our palate cleanser. ⁓ just a quick kind of lighthearted shift ⁓ just to give ⁓ a little break. ⁓ just have a little fun here. So ⁓ I'm gonna let ⁓ Jen kick this one off.
speaker-3: Yeah.
speaker-1: Okay. This question is about what what is one weird or not so weird because really what is weird anyways, but ⁓ yeah, one one snowburn fashion trend that you proudly participated in in your writing career, if any.
speaker-2: I ⁓ I had a couple seasons where I wore women's pants because they were really tight when the ⁓ tight tight pants platform was coming in and I loved it. It was it was red. It was fast, it was they w they were black for sure. But I think the generation of pants before that were like bright yellow double XL and it was a
speaker-1: Which colour?
speaker-2: a very huge shift for me. yeah. I think I've still got them somewhere. But you get rice plants, I think.
speaker-3: Yeah, totally. You should racing it back. Yeah.
speaker-1: You'd save some seconds.
speaker-2: Yeah, good job.
speaker-3: Yeah, I ⁓ I actually was gonna say the same thing. I've always kind of preferred wearing pants that were a little closer to the leg. ⁓ it just it feels better. I feel like I can move well, I feel more in my movements. But the thing that I like I have done in snowboarding that's a a trend or a fad, if you like, is my love of turning, dude. Like it's come and it's gone and it's come and it's gone and my ⁓ I just love the feeling of carving turns at speed or in terrain and and you know, that the trend of turning. It's it's actually coming it's kind of swinging back towards us, you know, ⁓ a little bit and and I love that. Like the the what the Karua guys are doing, what Lars who you guys hand on a few weeks ago, like what he's doing. There's it's it's ⁓ to me that part of the sport is just so ⁓ cool. It's such a tangible feeling. And I I think it's actually the most accessible part of the sport. Like you know, like everybody can turn if they wanna. Like not everybody can hit a sixty foot tabletop. That's that's just not gonna happen.
speaker-2: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
speaker-1: ⁓ that's a cool answer. okay, totally different topic. If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be? Start with you, John. You seem to have a good answer.
speaker-3: Yeah. Well, ⁓ I found or I made up this recipe not long ago. It's like can it be a meal? It doesn't have to be just one thing.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, yeah. It can be ⁓ a few elements.
speaker-3: Yeah, cool. I've I've been making this really yummy chicken pasta like alio oglio, which is a really hard thing to say, but it means with garlic and olive oil. ⁓ it's an Italian kind of sound, I just added a couple more elements to it and man, like I feel like I eat that twice a week right now. And I could probably that's the thing I eat the most, so that's probably the thing I could just keep eating.
speaker-2: every day without without a doubt. Like Arthur's the best for sure.
speaker-1: Pasta with like pesto or bloody
speaker-2: And anything. Like honestly I could pick like any kind of pasta with any kind of pasta sauce and be like, Yeah, that'll do forever.
speaker-0: All right. We got a couple past delivers. ⁓ okay, last one and you can only choose one, golf or mountain biking.
speaker-2: Golf. There's only one radio magic. Trickier than it than ⁓ you would think. ⁓ probably golf, which is controversial, but I'm for sure gonna be able to do it for a lot longer. So Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah, okay.
speaker-3: It's not to say I don't love mountain biking. I love it. I've had a much longer shelf life. Yeah.
speaker-2: And the buttons.
speaker-1: I didn't know you golfed, Jake. I I knew John golfed, but that's I just learned something.
speaker-2: There you go. I wouldn't say I dulk, but I like dolls.
speaker-1: Well, yeah. That's that's a common answer from a lot of us. I wouldn't say I golf either. ⁓ okay. ⁓ we Rob said we were at alpha the show. I don't wanna scare you. We're at one hour forty five minutes. So we're at mostly three quarter of the show. So hang on there. we'll dive a little bit more on a technical focus to a specific scale evolution and transition. And your personal golden rule of coaching, just to finish this show with a more of a technical dive. Yeah.
speaker-0: So I guess one of the the first thing we're gonna jump into here is making that transition from a sliding turn to a carved turn. ⁓ you know, that's that's a big difference maker ⁓ as you become a better snowboarder. ⁓ what ⁓ what's your kind of go to strategy for ⁓ getting people to do that pure pencil line, you know, from the intermediate to the advanced writer?
speaker-2: Yeah, I guess ⁓ you know, we have lots of different tactics that that work well and I think this is one of those things where there isn't a, you know, one size fits all solution. ⁓ because really it you know, there's there's quite a few things in snowboarding or mountain biking or really any sport which feel really hard and awkward initially. And then the second you feel it and you create that pathway in your brain and you and you connect like, ⁓ that that was it, that felt good, that worked. ⁓ you can then start to repeat it and you can start to work on it. And I think carving is one of those things where, you know, we've started our snowboarding career afraid of the fall line and trying to get from slowing down back to slowing down quickly, which is essentially what we're doing when we're sliding a turn. ⁓ and the the shift from that to embracing the full line and having the patience to stand on the edge and let the side cut and gravity do its job and bring you around is scary and it's tricky. I think the ones that work the best for me ⁓ a lot of time getting comfortable just going straight on a flat base ⁓ and progressing f like on mellow cat tracks ⁓ or you know bunny hill whatever. I'm just getting tough ball going straight and then hitting the brakes and then just progressing that into what happens if I'm going straight and I'm picking up a bit of speed and I just flex my ankles a little bit and let my hips move over that tow edge and do nothing else. Right. And just starting to find and help them connect to if I just move enough that I'm now standing on a different part of my board and the edge starts doing its job. What does that feel like? And then you're just kind of going back from there, right? So, ⁓ finding opportunities for them to feel that connection to the edge and feel the speed, but not have to worry about slowing down. Whether that's, you know, turning up towards a bank or doing You know, trying to do it at the end of a traverse or whatever. Just taking away the fear element as best we can. ⁓ building comfort with the fall line, I think. So lots of different tactics and it'll be this one for every person really. ⁓ but that's sort of the the goal that I'm working towards is comfort in the fall line and the patience to let the edge do the work.
speaker-3: Yeah, like that. Yeah. ⁓ for me, I I look at it and maybe this is definitely how my brain works. I look at it from the perspective of what does the board need to do to carve or to skid or whatever, right? And ⁓ intermediate riders ⁓ tend to not want to engage the edge clean. They're still engaging the edge 'cause they're turning on it, but the edge engage edge set at the top of the turn isn't very clean. And so it it makes it very hard obviously you can't carve if you don't set the edge correctly to begin with. ⁓ so the the place where I think intermediates where the gap is between intermediate and and and a person who can carve, intermediate sliding turns and a person who can't carve, is in that realm of just understanding how it feels, ⁓ what the board's meant to do and what it feels like when it does those things, which is, you know, what Jake was talking about just putting them in scenarios where they can feel this over and over again. I try to work because carving's a feeling, right? Like yeah, it's an outcome that you can look back on and say, ⁓ yeah, look, I was carving the pencil line and the nose spray or whatever. ⁓ but when I'm doing it, when we're doing it, it's it's a sensation that we're working with. The only thing that's really noticeable is that sensation and the direction change that happens. Right. ⁓ And so giving the riders the opportunity to feel that sensation, like Jake's talking about, uber flat terrain, I also build it all off ⁓ being able to ride a flat base properly, stand really neutral and calm on the flat base while the board's moving. I think that's a I think that's the fundamental skill. ⁓ not so much to hold the posture while you're standing still, but to be able to hold that posture while you're moving, because everything builds out of that. ⁓ and then like Jake was saying, you the first half or the first part of a beginner's progression, I don't know whether they're afraid of the fall line, but the teaching is predicated on getting them through the fall line and controlling their speed as a way to stop them running off down the hill going straight. Then they'd be scared. ⁓ you know, so a lot of the teaching movements hurry the first part of the turn. They don't let that turn build. And that that's ⁓ it's a good place to be teaching from. You know what I mean? You want to be teaching safe You want to be teaching something that's reliable, that the person can do easily, ⁓ that's more obvious as a movement. And I address it the same way as Jake does, with simple terrain, really simple drills, feel based, rather than focusing on a movement pattern, just focus on feel like you're standing on this part of the board. Notice how the board responds when you do that. Do that a bunch. Try to bend the board a little more. You know? Like that's kind of the progression I go through.
speaker-0: been a really common theme throughout this whole episode, i which is develop the fundamentals, progress towards your the outcome you're looking for.
speaker-3: hundred percent the the the best riders, the best of anything in the world, any sport anyway, absolutely have the best fundamentals. The most the fundamentals that are least likely to break down under pressure, the fundamentals that are the easiest to execute without thought. You know, like e even even in golf where the swinging of the golf club is so, so different person to person, there are certain things that a good golf instructor Or a good golf analyst can see that all players do, and the best better than everybody else at these couple of things that everybody needs to do, and the best of in the world are the best at those things. And you look at slopestyle, the best slopestyle riders in the world have the best awareness in the moment of that nineteen hundred they're spinning. And that they, you know, they're not thinking about how to move in that moment, they're just doing it. And that only comes from practicing and developing extremely strong fundamental movement patterns and awarenesses, my opinion.
speaker-2: It's funny 'cause you ⁓ you know, you think about like the the biomechanics behind a turn, calve turn, especially a beginner calf turn, is significantly easier biomechanically than a sliding turn. Much. Right. And ⁓ yeah. And the you know, if we look at really high end snowboarding
speaker-3: Much simpler.
speaker-2: or biking or whatever, like the people that we often idolize or look towards, the you know, you think of like some of the best rail riders in the world, you know? and part of what we love about their the way they do it is they look like they're just standing there. Right? They're then they're just stood up on their board, locked in, they're just they're connected to it. Right? Or you think of like, you know, a a Seb Toots or Mark McMorris or something in the air, it's like the spin snaps and then they're just kind of in the right position, they've done what looks like the bare minimum and this great outcome happens. ⁓ and I think for carving is kind of the turning version of where the fear comes in early, you know, in that We're starting to deal with speed and almost always with athletes and high end anything, it's that psychological side, it's the fear that's we're getting in the way of the performance. ⁓ and so, you know, to climb a snowboard, literally you just stand on it and then you tip over a little bit and you just stay there and you let everything happen. What's hard about it is that you start picking up speed. And now sud now you're going twice as fast as you've ever gone, standing on this like little knife edge, trying to balance. Right? And so we start doing weird stuff. We lean back a little bit, we start to face where we're going, we start to make all these movements that are not what we're trying to do and end up fighting it. Right. And so I think like like John does ⁓ like Alf was saying, really if you can do a good intermediate sliding turn on kind of a blue run, you can tell for sure. It's just about gaining the capacity mentally to be comfortable letting that happen and having the patience to feel the speed increase and not get in the way, basically.
speaker-3: Yeah. I would I would add to that actually something that Lars touched on ⁓ in in the podcast he did with you guys that I think is overlooked in snowboarding instructing and the way we talk about carving. Carving, riding a clean edge, is the way all good riders get around the mountain. You know what I mean? Like if if we all went riding together and I was showing you guys around some resort in New Zealand that I've ridden. I'd be riding pretty fast and you guys would just be riding the clean edge. You'd make a turn somewhere near where I made a turn or whatever. But you'd be riding it, you wouldn't like skidding around the cat tracks or skidding down the green run or whether you'd be getting down the green run or the cat track or whatever, riding as clean as edge edge as possible because it's efficient, like Lars said, and the equipment's designed to do it. and so I think one of the places where ⁓ intermediates can benefit, ⁓ in terms of their progression towards carving, is to notice actually that carving is what good riding is at a baseline. Like that's just how you get around the mountain efficiently and get over there to hit that side hit or ⁓ you know, make that pencil line in the b on that bank or whatever. Carving is the like where everybody kind of can get to and where all good riders are.
speaker-2: I've been thinking about this a lot the last couple of seasons actually and I think we within Cassie we often talk about the sliding turn as being like the fundamental of Cassie snowboarding. and I've I don't think I've really thought that way, especially as I've got ⁓ you know, through the level four process and all my writing and coaching now, I think every every turn that I make and working with the athletes last season I was doing this quite a lot. Like I think every turn starts with the intention of it being a carved turn. Right? I'm stood on my board and I move across the board as if that turn is going to be just locked in on its edge. And then a decision's made. And you know, often that's subconsciously, but a decision's made to either stay there or displace the board in a certain way to change the outcome. Right? If I'm in really steep terrain I'm getting onto that edge as if it was going to be a calve turn on a green run, but then I can't stay there because I'll go too fast. So I then make a movement to get the board to bend more or to start to slide and break that calve to control my speed a little bit. ⁓ you know, running up a bank or even doing a rail. ⁓ I'm starting that turn as if I'm making a tarb turn to lock in the edge so that I've got a stable platform. to to push off, to get up onto that street style rail or whatever it is. And ⁓ I think that especially with some of these athletes, that shift to every turn starts as if we're just gonna tip on edge and let the board do its job. And then I change based on what I need to do after that. ⁓ has had a hugely positive effect on my writing for sure.
speaker-1: Yeah, totally. I it makes me think of ⁓ I'll quote my colleague and your colleague as well, Adam Gardner, who at the top of ⁓ I think we were teaching a level four module together or I can't remember exactly what it was, but he said a c a sliding turn is only is always a carving turn until it's a sliding turn. So I very much agree with that as well. I think ⁓ I don't think anybody's argue with this here.
speaker-3: No it's
speaker-1: Yeah. That's a cool way to think about it. It simplifies a lot the the the full-turning motion.
speaker-3: I I totally and I love what Jake did with his crew last year. My daughter happened to be riding with Jake when she was on snow with Wister Valley last year and I heard a lot about that particular focus last year. I love it. It's ⁓ one I use myself ⁓ a lot. ⁓ when I'm teaching and for my own writing. ⁓ it's kinda how I see it I see it as well. And the one thing I would say just in and th Jake maybe you can speak to this having done way more intermediate lessons than me. but But there needs to be, yes, rolling the board on edge like we're gonna start a calved turn is a great way to to begin any turn. ⁓ but as you were saying earlier, for a lot of intermediates, there's a fear factor there. And so giving them the space and the time and the terrain to be able to hone in. And this is why I use simple terrain. Once things get higher end, simple terrain is better because if they're scared So scared that they well, what happens when we get scared is we get a bit of adrenaline in our system, bit dopamine in our system, a bit of acetylcholine in our system, the focus narrows. My brain actually, the prefrontal cortex part of my brain shuts down and I'm more riding on intuition and instinct. ⁓ and if the instinct is to be a little bit afraid, then that is the thing that shows up. And so something that helps, I think big ⁓ intermediate would help intermediates is just a a really patient approach and and and and r reminding them how to focus in into that part of the tune that we really want them executing correctly. I don't know, Jake, how do feel about that?
speaker-2: It's all I think you just you just celebrate the success where you see it. You know, like the a turn is a turn. It doesn't have to be sl carving the whole way or sliding the whole way. Like you can start that term sliding and then when you hit the fore line it kinda lops in and carries you across the hill. You might even just carve the traverse across the hill. Right? And it's just embracing and trying to connect the positive feeling of did you notice there? a board locked in and you picked up a bit of speed but you felt stable and safe? Sweet. Mm-hmm. Let's just try to do that again. ⁓ and now we're doing it consistently. Yeah, now we're doing it consistently. Let's can we can we try that a little bit earlier? Right? Can we try to get to that feeling that we know and we like, but just a bit sooner in the turn. ⁓ yeah, no, the time's a turn. I think we're just ⁓ the the outcome and the feeling of Sliding the turn versus starting the turn are different and ⁓ by necessity we learn to slide first because otherwise our brushes are huge and numerous.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. Totally. One step at a time. ⁓ we'll finish with a question. ⁓ your golden rule. ⁓ every coach has a golden rule or sets of principles, right? And so what both of you individually would be your personal coaching philosophy or golden rule that you find yourself repeating to your writers, your athletes, ⁓ season after season. Regardless of their levels. Is there anything that you
speaker-3: ⁓ yeah, there's some. I got I I know, I know, I know. So I'll go first. The golden rule, the thing that I most say, is the thing I say to myself. And I've been saying it to myself for 20 something odd years, the start of every season and throughout the season. I really focus on early pressure in the turns. That it's like it was my coach's first thing he ever said to me, it was the thing he said the most to me.
speaker-1: One.
speaker-3: It's the understanding that principle through the Cassie system is how I got to where I got to as a coach. And and even to the point where ⁓ writers that I've worked with at various times in various contexts unrelated to each other have all made it the running joke about what I coach. Like everybody has the same joke. ⁓ I first worked with Paul Howard when he was ⁓ Before he got us level four, he did the level four carving and we did about I just met him and we were making friends, you know, and I was like, ⁓ I'll help you learn how to carve better. ⁓ so we spent about six weeks just him riding hard boots and and he I remember him saying when I like Shelly, all you say is early pressure. It's just you bang on about it constantly. I'm like, Well, that like, yeah, it is, man. Like that you need to be able to bend the board at the top of the four line to be able to control what the arc looks like after that. ⁓ if you can't set the edge with a bend in the board, ⁓ then you don't have as much control as you could have. And the other thing about early pressure that's really important, I think, is it's very hard to do. And it's a subtle but quite significant different feeling from when the pressure builds at the end of the turn, which is very easy to do. Gravity's helping, pretty much just need to stand there and resist. It's going to happen. Bending the board at the top of the turn requires a lot more subtle direction of move movement, a lot more patience, a lot more feel. ⁓ and so all of these qualities by setting that as a target, all of these qualities really ⁓ help the writer develop outside of that context as well, I think. ⁓ because you have so much better awareness of what the board's doing. ⁓ you know, so then I start my ⁓ my border cross team and in border cross the base is the fastest part of the board. Well not in border, snowboarding the base is the fastest part of the board. So you want to be in border cross on the base of the board as long as possible. Which means you've got to wait as long as possible to start the turn, ride the flat base as far as you can into the perm, if you can, right? And when you throw the board on edge or roll the board smoothly on edge, I guess, you want the board to respond. That's what allows you to ride further before you start the turn. so that is also early pressure. and ⁓ and then in in that same board across context, my old team, Ross Dunlop, was one of my coaches, Rob Fagan was one of my coaches. All of the athletes, they would just heck on me mercilessly about early pressure. That was their joke to me, ⁓ more early pressure, whatever. Anyway, I was just in France with that crew I was telling you about, and after three days of working with me, they were making fun of me about the same thing. They sat down to dinner one night and someone dropped a fork and my daughter Sammy said, ⁓ not enough early pressure. And it was just like So it's it I love it. I think it's cool. It it speaks to it shows me what I'm saying and it shows me that they're listening. ⁓ and it shows me what really matters to me as a coach, ⁓ the in the writing that I want to see. And as I said earlier, the very, very first turn I make every year, I say to myself, early pressure before I make out, every time for I don't know how long, since nineteen ninety seven. That's cool. Yeah.
speaker-1: Early pressure. Mm-hmm. What about you, Jake?
speaker-2: So Murphy's just let the mountain be your guide, really. Like I think we the mountain will tell you where to turn and how to turn to get the most out of it. And I think at any level we when we focus too much on how we're making the movement and trying to force something to happen when sometimes, you know, you're you had a really hard time making that sliding turn on the you know, scraped off Blue Run at the end of the day. If you'd have just made it three meters to the left in that sugary snow, the mountain would have s done half the work slowing you down, it would have felt softer, it would have been easier, you'd have avoided half the people. You know, and watching watching the level four exams this year, watch four people in a row flash in their carving exam because they just turned at the wrong spot. They're trying to make a turn and have that loading happen right as they're testing a roller and so they're all airborne when they're trying to feel the most grip. Well if you just started that turn earlier and planned based on the mountain, the turn would have been easier, the outcome would have been better. ⁓ well just let them mountain. It we're just there to experience how sliding on this piece of plastic down a mountain works and feels and make it feel good. And so I think most of the time we just get in the way. Just it'll tell you where to turn and it'll do a lot of the work for you if you just learn to look for it. Mm-hmm.
speaker-1: Very much agree with this as well. Cool. we reach ⁓ the finish line of this episode. Good job. A huge thanks to both of you. It was really good discussion. I think we could keep going forever. ⁓ we could ask you questions, and I feel the discussion could just continue and it and it's awesome. So maybe you'll be reinvited to this dropping next podcast in the future. ⁓ Thank you for sharing your time, your philosophies and your expertise with us today, your passion for the sport and your commitment to coaching excellence and everything you do to contribute to as Cassie members, consultants in the industry or as technical consultant for for us, Cassie, and passionate advocates is a big, big part of what keeps our association evolving and our snowboarding community as a whole as ⁓ always seeking to push boundaries. So thank you and thank you everyone for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dropping Neck podcast or on Snow This Coming Season.
speaker-3: Thanks. Thanks guys.
speaker-2: Thank you.
speaker-0: Thank guys. That was great.
speaker-1: Hi everybody, welcome back to the Dropping Next podcast. I'm Gendev Piloto alongside Rob Whelan, and we'll be co-hosting today's episode. We'll be shifting gears today into the snowboarding coaching world versus the instructor world. So it will be all about elevating our snowboarding teaching and coaching knowledge. And ⁓ we have two special guests with us today. Both really involve us professionals in the snowboarding industry. We are really pleased to welcome you guys to the show, John Shelley and Jake Bowling. Hello, John.
speaker-3: Hi Jake. Hi Rob.
speaker-0: Hey, so ⁓ like Jen said, we have two heavyweights from the evaluator coaching community in snowboarding, ⁓ John Shelley and Jake Bowling, like she said. ⁓ and I'm just gonna read out a couple stats about these guys. There's a lot to list here, so I don't want to mess it up. I'm gonna read this here. John's a veteran with Cassie, level four instructor, ⁓ also a level two with the New Zealand Snow Sports Instructors Alliance. ⁓ and that's ⁓ to be noted that it was a level two before there was a level three. So that was top dog back in the day. ⁓ as well as a competitive development certified ⁓ coach with the ⁓ from the NCCP. Before getting into high end snowboard cross coaching, he taught some skiing in Tahoe, ⁓ snowboarding in New Zealand and in Whistler, raced NORAMS and World Cups back in the late 90s, early 2000s, and then transitioned over from that into coaching in with the New Zealand snowboard team in 05. Started a snowboard cross team with fellow Cassie member Dave Hugel for both able bodied and ⁓ paraathletes, ⁓ even at the Olympic level in 2018. ⁓ nowadays he is coaching with the Whistler Valley Snowboard Club. And moving over to Jake here is equal parts high-end snowboarder and mountain biker, ⁓ a member of both the Cassie and GSNBC's ⁓ national technical team, so the Global Syndicate of Mountain Bike Coaches, ⁓ and is a level four with both of those organizations. ⁓ he's been working as an instructor, a coach, a guide, a trainer in the snowboard, bike, and ski world for the past 15 years. And currently ⁓ Jake is ⁓ coaching high-end junior free ride and race programs with the Whistler Valley Snowboard Club, working with athletes who have ambitions of going pro ⁓ or may have their sights set on the Olympics. So ⁓ lots of knowledge in the industry, both of these guys. ⁓ so welcome again to the show. Excited to get into this here. As we
speaker-1: sit in the off season, what do you feel your time with? Like obbies, employment.
speaker-3: Tate, why don't you go first, man?
speaker-2: Well, for me it's ⁓ full bike mode all summer. I'm coaching open mountain biking and running courses and then just finding as much time as I can with my family. I have two young kids, ⁓ six and two. ⁓ so that keeps me pretty full on ⁓ after the summer. ⁓ yeah, and then just filling it out with some other kind of coaching and pursuits, whether it's through the text with Cassie or ⁓ some performance coaching online. Just a bit of everything really.
speaker-1: You John.
speaker-3: I mainly recreate in the summers, ⁓ to be honest. I I've been a avid mountain biker for a long time. I've riding less this year than I have in the past. I've had some niggly injuries that have sort of prevented me being too putting myself into risky situations. ⁓ but I fill my what was my bike time now with golf. I play a lot play a lot of golf, which is fun. ⁓ I d you know, provide a lot of support, as much support as I can to my kids. They're 19 and 16. My son races mountain bikes, ⁓ kind of at the World Cup level. And my daughter's a budding border cross racer herself. So I I I spend some time traveling around with them. Last last year I was away for 60 days. This year I I took Sammy to ⁓ France for twelve days and I'm taking her down to New Zealand ⁓ for another training camp. in August. So little little bits and pieces kind of staying around sport ⁓ and staying connected to my family, like they said. It's it's it's pretty easy to lose track of that. Nice.
speaker-1: What sport came first in your like you starting your sporting career or like love for sport?
speaker-3: I first spore for me for sure was swimming and it's a pretty interesting story as to why. Apparently I don't remember this, but before I was two, I drowned and was not breathing, no heartbeat when they found me. I sank to the bottom of a swimming pool. My dad swam laps in the morning. I went out and he didn't know I was there and he came back inside and I wasn't with him. So our neighbours We're a do ⁓ one of our neighbors was a doctor. He came over and saved my life basically. This is before I was two. So when I was two, I started swimming lessons. So literally the first sport I could ever remember doing was swimming. ⁓ I loved it. Well I I don't love it so much now, but I loved it then. ⁓ and that opened the door on surfing and and then every other sport. My parents played ⁓ tennis, so I grew up playing tennis. My dad was a golfer, so I played golf. Like it was But the answer to the question is swimming was the first sport I did. ⁓ but as a Kiwi and I think Jake is gonna say something similar, we we play all the sports in New Zealand, like everything. Like if you're not a good runner, you still do the running. And if you're not a good tennis player, still play tennis, you know, like no one really cares. It's pretty cool.
speaker-1: Good play playground for variety as well.
speaker-0: Yeah. That's a heavy intro to sport.
speaker-3: It's just the story of my life, man.
speaker-1: Thank you, Jake.
speaker-2: ⁓ yeah, I mean, kinda I didn't drown in a pool as a baby, but for me it was you know, we did swimming lessons as kids. Like I think everyone is very can swim, it feels like. ⁓ just we're all along with posts, but I don't know, I think I probably played fifteen different sports by the time I finished high school. But I think the the biggest ones for me, ⁓ was soccer. I played soccer for ten years or so and I actually grew up playing ice hockey in Australia which was ⁓ a bit different. ⁓ so I played that right through till I was like early twenties. But then snowboarding. Snowboarding was really started snowboarding when I was seven and that was although it was a kind of a luxury sport. It was a week or two every year and it was this thing that I look forward to all year. And then essentially as soon as I was able to, it was like, Cool, where can I go and snowboard for a really long time? And that was when I moved over here.
speaker-0: What resort did you learn on?
speaker-2: back home it was a bit of everything. ⁓ there's like six or seven big resorts in Australia. Say big, they're kinda like east coast resorts here. that are low elevation, pretty spread out, ⁓ very like melt freeze kind of cycles. And so we kinda did Falls Creek and Mount Hoffman a lot. ⁓ my aunt had a place just out of s outside of Mount Bullock so we'd go there every now and then as well. But you know, I think over the over the whatever it is, twelve years or so. tried out every resort at least once.
speaker-1: Okay, so we'll move into our next block, ⁓ which will focus on our a little bit more on our guest backgrounds. so John and Jake, we would like to know more about your journey and your evolution into the coaching world and also the specific impact your Cassie certification and foundation add on your professional path. ⁓ Rob, would you like to take us back to the spar spark and the Cassie Blueprint?
speaker-0: Let's let's get into the spark. So you know ⁓ our world starts with us as instructors and then some people choose to stay on that path ⁓ and then others transition into coaching. So I guess the first question here is when did you know that you wanted to take the coaching route versus ⁓ staying ⁓ in the instructor pathway?
speaker-2: I guess I never really decided. It just sort of happened. Kind of I you know, I came into the sport very different to John. I sort of you know, as a nineteen year old Australian kid came and just was like, How do I get a job where I can snowboard a lot? I was like, ⁓ well, if I teach people to snowboard I'll just be getting paid to do it. So ⁓ and so I kinda came in at from that side and The more I did it and kinda I worked through the Cassie levels pretty fast. ⁓ a lot of trial and error for sure. and you know, the more you do it and the more you're growing in yourself and especially training for level four, you know, you're wanting to work with higher level students so you can practice and you know that that for me that really started with ⁓ five programs with kids, you know, I think most resorts have pretty good kind of season long programming for kids. ⁓ and it's still sold as in you know an instructor based product. It's very recreational. you know and so I had a group of kids that started at six years old and I taught them every year for three or four years. ⁓ I've taught both of John's kids at different periods through throughout the years. and so my kids kind of progressed from they're learning to turn for the first time through to they're moving on to a club like Worcester Valley and starting to look at continuing to work on their snowboarding and what they can do with their snowboarding, which tends to be competition. ⁓ and so I think I just sort of followed the kids that I was coaching, essentially, ⁓ and kind of grew with them into working towards how they can use these skills towards competing. ⁓ so I think as I've developed ⁓ into that it's definitely become where my passion is. and I think a big part of that is just the ⁓ the motivation, you know, the the when you have young athletes or old athletes that are they have a target that they're aiming for, you know, it's very different to that regular lesson where someone goes, ⁓ I just kinda just want to get better You know, it's I want to win this race or I want to do this thing. And so kinda helps everyone focus where they're trying to get, both the the athletes and the coach. So I think that's kinda how I ended up just falling into it.
speaker-0: That's a really neat, like natural progression, at least like in the beginning when you had the same athletes up until the coaching phase. ⁓ now I would imagine that you're not seeing that full spectrum, right? You're just having the higher end athletes, you're starting with higher end athletes versus having instructed them to the coaching level. ⁓ how is that transition?
speaker-2: Yeah, for sure. I think it it still feels kinda similar, you know, like the when I started with the athletes that I've been working with more recently, it kinda feels like they're at the beginning again because it's just the the scale has changed a little bit. You know, they're not learning to s learning to turn up to learning to compete. They're now like brand new at competing. Right, which, you know, we've all raced. a snowboard or something before, you know, and the first time you race it's like, I just completely forgot how to do this thing. You know, I held my breath for thirty seconds and, you know, sliding all my turns and you know, it all falls apart and so it still feels a bit like that. You get these kids or these athletes when they're kinda new to that competitive journey. And it's kind of that same progression just sort of scaled up to a higher level.
speaker-0: Mm-hmm. That's super interesting. What about you, John?
speaker-3: ⁓ I honestly never wanted to be an instructor. ⁓ I started out as an athlete. ⁓ you know, I started snowboarding and within eighteen months less of starting snowboarding I was competing, racing, ⁓ riding outpone equipment. It was just like I was hooked. I'd found my thing. ⁓ and I had the opportunity to train with one of the if not the first, certainly one of the first ever snowboard coaches in the world. He coached a bunch of ⁓ Canadians, actually, JC J. Anderson, Mike Fawcett. ⁓ I well, these are friend you know, these are guys I trained with and I I rode with these guys for three years. So ⁓ I very much the coach. ⁓ the coach's name was Jerry Master Paul, and here's the cool part. He never snowboarded. He was a skier. ⁓ Burton hired him as their first ever team coach back in the I guess the mid nineties.
speaker-0: You want a name drop?
speaker-3: And he he I ⁓ maybe he snowboarded one time on a board fossil entum or something, but he was a skier. and so anyway, fast forward to like I retired out of competition and and I was friends with a lot of the New Zealand team coaches and and ⁓ administrators and one of the coaches, Tom Wilmot, ⁓ invite he said, Hey, you should, you know. come and coach ⁓ halfpipe guys, they need some work on their turning, because we think, you know, half pipe and turning are ⁓ related. ⁓ you wanna come and do that. So I work with those guys a little bit, you know, four or five days here and there every now and then. work with some great athletes. Mitch Brown was a I think he was top three at at ⁓ junior world champs in halfpipe, maybe once, maybe twice. ⁓ Julianne Bray went to a couple of Olympics. So I got a chance to work with really high end athletes. And all I could do was tell them what my coach told me. Like I just knew it worked, but I didn't really get why it worked. ⁓ and anyway, f fast forward another couple of years, I'm in Canada and a friend of mine, Christian Raab, who's historically in the in the Cassie system as well. We used to race together. Anyway, he caught up with me out in Whistler maybe ⁓ seven. And he advised me to sign up for the NCCP comp. ⁓ comp dev on snow course. And I went to that course and I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Dave Ballin and Jeff Chandler ⁓ at that course, as well as Mark Ballard was running it. So this, you know, this there was a strong theme of Cassie in the background of the places I'd ended up being. ⁓ and Jeff and and Dave through the week I made friends with them and they encouraged me to follow, you hey, check out one of our courses, let us know what you think, kind of thing, right? You can start at level two, they said I I ended up not doing that, but I I've through that process, somewhere I framed what I was doing as I'm gonna use this Cassie system as a way to unpack what worked about my the way I was coached. I mean I I went to that team Cross ⁓ Jerry Masterpool and I trained with them for well let me tell the story this way. I one year in New Zealand I came second in our nationals by half a second over two GS runs. Then I went in chain with CrossM for three weeks and I went back to New Zealand and I won our nationals by fourteen seconds. It was just what happened to my riding in this moment or in this three weeks that had me like that is a quant that's not even a quantum leap. I don't know what that is. That's like way different riding. ⁓ you know. ⁓ And so, you know, as I got to Cassie, I was like, okay, what was it that worked about this stuff? Because Jerry used to I had three pieces of feedback in three full years of training. Early pressure, late pressure's killing you, which is early pressure, patience, you know. That's it. That's that's all this guy ever said to me. We I mean we talk about other stuff or whatever, but when we're on snow, those were the three pieces of feedback that I got. And they were the same pieces of feedback that everybody got. And so the question became for me, why is that what worked? You know? ⁓ because we all rode the same fossil, you know, I don't need to explain JC or Fossey's record, Fawcett's record, they're two of the best riders of all time. ⁓ you know, so anyway, Cassie offered me an opportunity going through the courses and learning to meet some interesting cats who had some good knowledge ⁓ and begin to unpack this ⁓ extremely simple. coaching technique that Jerry had used. ⁓ and I like Jake. I, you know, I moved through the levels pretty quickly, met some really good riders along the way, Jake among them. ⁓ Jen among them. Rob, we haven't ridden together yet, but ⁓ but ⁓ yeah one one day and you know obviously Chandler everybody loves how Chandler rides and ⁓ like just a really cool experience to be able to unpack it in in that way. So that's what got me to Cassie and then from there that understanding that I unpacked really helps my coaching day to day on snow. Like I I can understand what I am trying to say in so many different ways from so many different angles. And I I think Cassie has a lot to like that the reason for that is because of how I learned to use the Cassie system and language.
speaker-0: Well, it's really interesting that you kind of segued naturally into the next thing that I wanted to ask so you can kind of both speak to it, although you kind of just did, John, but maybe more specifically, how h has your kind of journey with Cassie and learning the the skills concept and using the competencies how has that affected your your higher end coaching?
speaker-3: ⁓ cool. Actually, I finished my level four before the competencies were a thing. They were just beginning to percolate in when I finished my level four the level four. ⁓ so I I have a conceptual understanding of them, but I don't really relate to them in the way some of the newer level fours do. I did like some of it is easy. I I see those those concepts very much as a competencies very much as a As a framework for analysis, like a are they steering with the lower body? Exactly. Are they balanced over the edge? Is there strength and flow in the riding? I don't remember what the other ones are. sorry. They were never in the ma I never got the chance to memorize them because they were never in the manual. You know, like when I was doing it. They just weren't something that I could like absorb. ⁓ but it but in all of that, like The way Cassie really helped me, and I think this is actually really important and ⁓ for Canada Snowboard, I think, could utilize certainly a component of and perhaps the whole of the level four course for their ⁓ coach training. Not so much for certification, but just here's some information that's really gonna help you put together an excellent session or an excellent week or an excellent ⁓ season. And And the parts that really were helpful for me were the PED stuff, understanding lessons like is this a whole part whole lesson? Is this a building block lesson? Is this a a guided discovery lesson? I was already using those tools, but to come in and have them presented in a format that was just like building block, basically, really helped me understand how to pitch what I'm pitching to the rider. There are the majority of high end riders, and I think Jake would speak to this too, they're somewhere in whole part whole guided discovery most of the time. but in a in a season, in a year round high performance program, it's I believe it's important to building block a portion of that season as well on the movement patterns. ⁓ you all good riders end up having the best fundamentals. And and you know ⁓ Bar none, they all stand beautifully on their snowboards. You know, when you just see them standing riding a cat track. And I and I believe that deliberately breaking down the very important phases ⁓ every year gets the high-end rider the chance to go back and and repair or replenish or make an a another little shift ⁓ in their writing. So I I use all of those formats a lot and understanding. that they exist and then how to use them has probably been the most beneficial thing. ⁓ and also how you guys use questions. The presentation of how you guys use questions in the level four was very powerful. I was actually able to share that with one of the coaches that worked for me when I was running my border cross team. He was his head was exploding as the athletes just couldn't do what he was asking. ⁓ and I was like, well have you thought about like not telling them what to do? He's like, well then they won't know. I'm like, well how do you know? Why don't you ask them what they think they should be doing, and then you'll know what they think they should be doing, and that'll help you coach them. ⁓ I didn't say it like that. I'm being much more glib. I was being much more constructive with him. but yeah so there's an example of a few of the tools that you guys present that ⁓ that I really use intuitively but also quite consciously. I'm very deliberate, especially about the questions I ask. I really try to ask questions that are pertinent and that hone the awareness into where I think it needs to be.
speaker-2: Mm-hmm.
speaker-0: Good teaching tip for the ⁓ listeners out there. So, Jake, in your instructor pathway up to the level four, I would imagine the competencies were in place by then. how do you lean against the competencies and the skills concept in your coaching?
speaker-2: Yeah, I mean level four actually changed a bunch when I was doing it. ⁓ was it right in that period where I think I started it just after John finished and it kind of went through like three or four iterations of we're gonna do it this way and then I actually this'll work a little bit better or this will it felt like it changed every year as we went through and ⁓ so I think we'd started talking about kind of the core competencies through when I started the process and by the end the advanced competencies were kind of a big piece of it. ⁓ but I definitely started that process really early, you know, like I I did my level four course for the first time at the start of my third season teaching ⁓ as a twenty one year old that didn't know anything. And so I think a lot of it went over my head initially. but I think a big part of what the chassis system and training for that level four. I think it's one of the most valuable things I've ever done in just communication and working with people in general. ⁓ but one of the things that I think it ⁓ helped me with the most was just first just understanding snowboarding. Right. I guess I could snowboard. I you know, I was always that that kid that, you know, ended up with a private lesson in a group product because I was a bit better than all the other kids my age and you know I'd been in been instructed every year that I went snowboarding and I'd been around it the whole time and but kinda like John and I think like a lot of the people that come into instructing as a good snowboarder ⁓ y you can do it. Just like not really sure what how I do this thing that I'm pretty good at ⁓ or how I explain what I'm doing. I just I just kinda do it. And so for me I think the biggest thing one one of the biggest things level four did was just help me understand what's actually happening. You know, like, you know, what are the the physics and the biomechanics of how the my body and the mountain and the snowboard all work together. and then having that framework of well, so now I understand a little bit of what is happening, but how do I see that in the people that I'm coaching or or instructing and how do I look at someone who's really good at this thing already and work out well how do I make that person better? You know, and I think that was a big stumbling block for me initially with the level four process 'cause I was so new to to teaching and doing that that process that you know I was training in my exams people like John. You know, people that were, you know, former professionals or who had been teaching snowboarding as long as I'd been alive. Right. And I'm going into this lesson, being like, okay, how do I make this person who has so much more experience and is really good better? ⁓ and at the start of that process it definitely felt very like I have no idea. ⁓ but as I started to understand kind of the competencies for sure, and just how the pitch of it, the seeing related to those physics and biomechanics kind of plow to then you you started to see more. I think that was a big thing that the level four showed me was started to see more in the rider. They're like, ⁓ like they're doing that really good. But if they did it a little bit earlier, this would happen. Right? Or if they just made that turn on that bank over there instead of ten feet before it, they'd use way less energy and get the same performance out of it. ⁓ so that was kind of the first big thing I think was making those connections between what someone that's really good is doing and what's actually happening in good snowboarding. and I think the the biggest thing that I took from that process was just how to take this big thing that you're thinking in your mind of how you're explaining something, you know, and And essentially getting to what John's coach was doing, which was just you need more early pressure on your board because the late pressure's killing you. Right? and it's I actually wrote a bit of an article on the evolution of my lesson plans. I kinda kept them all throughout that level four process and it's the f the first one's a you know, a three page script. It's almost like a screenplay of Okay, we're gonna ride this far and I'll say this thing and I'll ask these questions and you know, the goal is this big long, you know, rambling sentence. And then by the the time I was passing the teaching exams or the pedagogy exams, the it was, you know, you could fit it on a napkin. The goal is, you know, one short sentence and it like, ⁓ I'm gonna say talk about this thing here and that thing there and maybe this'll happen. Right, and I think th that's what the level four process did for me was help me just understand it and then get that understanding to a point where you could explain it in you know, really simple, concise terms. Because it's it's a little that complicated, you know, we kinda just stand on the board and then lean over a bit or move up and down. You know, like there's technically and you know, from a physics point of view a lot going on, but The actual movements we're making or the things we need to adjust are often quite simple, but it takes a good in depth understanding of it to be able to see and articulate those things simply, I think.
speaker-1: Mm-hmm. You both talk a lot about the level four process and the level four journey and and that just made me think like to my next question. Do you think that great coaches need to be instructor first? And does it necessarily involve being a level four or any of the more foundational ⁓ levels in Cassie could could help coaches according to what they're coaching as well? Like whether we're talking about the park, park one, park two, ⁓ for example.
speaker-2: ⁓ I guess in my experience, coming from you know, I've done all the most of the Canada snowboard coaching certs as well and done, you know, BC and Canada cycling coaching certifications and followed that pathway as well as the kind of instructor pathway in in kind of the different industries. ⁓ and I think one of the things that the instructor certifications do really well is just give you the the framework for simple presentations. Right. And I think that starts with a level one. Right? It's just we give you a recipe of like this is what you need to say because we know it works. You know, if you teach turning like this or you teach side slipping like this, it will work. It's not the only way to do it. You know, there's twenty different systems around the world that all do it slightly differently. But if you do it like this and you just follow this framework, it'll work. Even if you change the content a little bit if you just follow the framework, it will work. And I think that that's something that the instructing certifications do really well right from the level one. And we kind of from a teaching skills point of view, that's what really builds through the the levels within Cassie and and the bike industry and all of that. It's the You know the the actual the skills or the fundamentals of what you're doing don't really change. It's just how good you are at using different ways to present it or work with someone that knows more already. You know, I'm not telling you this thing is a brand new. Like you know a lot about this topic already and I'm gonna help you understand that more. And I think that's what the instructing systems do really well, which the coaching systems ⁓ I think could take a lot from. They do a really good job in terms of looking at the sport a bit more holistically. Like how does the equipment play into it? How does the you know, the preparation physically and mentally play into the outcome of what you're doing? or I don't know, what does it look like if we take the person now and we want them to be at this, you know, this point by the end of the season or by a certain race in three months time? Right. I think the coaching systems do a great job with those, kinda more ⁓ bigger planning and other factors. ⁓ but they could do better with the just how to present those things on so a little bit clearer, ⁓ at every level. And I think even if you took a well up level coach that had done no instructing and they did their level one or even their level two, They would take tools from that process. ⁓ and maybe John can speak to this 'cause, you know, he started at level one while he was already coaching high end athletes.
speaker-3: Yeah, I like I I agree with everything Jake just said in terms of the formatting and and and the differences between the the maybe the NCCP coaching pathway and the Cassie instructor pathway education. ⁓ and I agree that the about the strengths that he highlighted in those two systems, right? Or in the rel relative ⁓ let's call them like gaps ⁓ that each system might also have. Although the instrument I think Cassie, the Cassie system doesn't really have any gaps as it refers to coaching because that's not what it's designed for. ⁓ but on the coaching side, all on snow coaching sessions end up being like lessons. I mean, that's what it is. It's a different version of a lesson than a customer might pay for at a mountain. But it's still a two or a three hour block where you go and you work on a specific piece in a specific environment with, you know, th there's people trying and there's someone telling those people what to do. That that format is true regardless of whether you're coaching or teaching. And so I think going through some teaching education really helps everybody do that. ⁓ and and ⁓ what I will say is I I also think it's a little bit horses for courses. I think my opinion, my personal opinion is that the best coaches are former athletes who have instructor training. I think because they've Being athletes at a high level, and and maybe I'm blowing my own horn a here a little bit because that's what I am, but but I because the athletes, especially if they've been at quite a high level, have a very good understanding of how to do the sport. And then if they take the time to go and learn how to convey the message of how to do the sport, which is teaching, now you've got this person with a very deep understanding of how they ride and a language that allows them to articulate it. such that other people might be able to understand it, you know. ⁓ so I really think there's a lot of power for ⁓ coaches in in in going down that ⁓ instructor training pathway, at least a little bit. you know, I and I think the like I think Jake's in my experience you know also shows like the further you go, the better you get at coaching, for sure. There's no doubt. Like so yeah, I think in short, you know it d it's There are great coaches out there who have no teaching experience. but I think ⁓ the coaches that have teaching experience ⁓ and were former athletes, they become very, very good, especially if they've taken the time to teach some beginner lessons as well. There's a lot of high end coaches now who are great coaches, who've had a lot of success. ⁓ they don't have a great understanding of how a person goes from not being able to do something. To being able to do that thing. ⁓ and I you I see that all the way through, right up to riders who want to bridge up to the World Cup level. There's some moves that World Cup watercross riders have in their bag that they just do that aren't intuitive and so have to be presented like in isolation almost as a thing we need to learn. ⁓ and and that's a I mean I would s I would argue that it's certainly the free ride and turning portions of the level four course, every Noram rider, Noram level rider, which is mi mid level in the FIS hierarchy, would pass the level four free riding and turning. No trouble. They have those skills like on lock. ⁓ they the freestyle maybe not, some of the teaching demos maybe not, but where it's just them allowed to express themselves through their own writing, they would adjust to that level really quick. And so even at that level, there is still the need to be able to present a building block approach to a new move that these guys don't yet have. A lot of coaches fall down there. They they're just like, Why can't you do this? And the like the example I gave before of the guy that was w who used to work for me. ⁓ and I you know, he was a great coach and he ended up being the US national team coach after he finished working for me. His name was Rob Fagan. He's a former Canadian national team athlete and a wonderful writer and a great, great coach. ⁓ but he would get so frustrated in the process of having of watching these great writers not be able to do something that he thought was really simple. and that is literally the experience of teaching a beginner lesson. That that's exactly what it is to any person who snowboarded and taught beginner lessons, they're a better writer than the person they're currently teaching by quite some margin. You know what I mean? It's like not even close. And they have to find a way to explain to this person who's never snowboarded before what they need to what what they're trying to accomplish, how to move their bodies to do that. And then they need to give them the space in the environment to figure that out on their own. Rub up against a little like full on your bum, full on your face, hopefully the elbows, you know, ⁓ kind of thing. And and I think that process really helps high-end coaching. Just being able to understand that the person you're talking to doesn't have that knowledge. The the neural circuit doesn't exist in their brain to do the thing. So they can't do the thing. If and if they do happen to do the thing, it's probably luck rather than anything else at this point. And just being able to be patient, so I really think that's where the all coaches would benefit is a little more understanding of how that the beginning of each Learning curve moves. Does it make sense?
speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Totally. Totally.
speaker-2: I I really like I like what you're saying about ⁓ like I agree with like former athletes often have a bit of an advantage for sure. I think I don't want to I don't want that to discourage people from who haven't come from that. Like it's not if you weren't a former professional, semi professional, you know, high end athlete in your youth and you're in the snowboard instructing system and you're like interested in coaching and competing and training people to compete, like it's not too late, you know, the but one of the things that is important is it's really really fun to coach competition if you don't understand personally what it feels like to be in competition. And you can do that at any age. Right? My mum raced in a bank slalom last year at sixty five. Right? Like it's not you don't have to be new you don't have to be in that pathway from when you're starting off. Like you can feel the the the adrenaline of being in a start gate or of the top of a you know slopestyle course or whatever it is. Like you can feel the nerves, you can see how ⁓ that person who's just standing still on their snowboard just blew past me on this flat section of the track because someone made their board faster. Right, like you can you can understand what's happening, and you don't develop that skill set, you don't develop the understanding and kind of the empathy of how to of what's actually happening within competition and around competition without experiencing it yourself. ⁓ and I think the partly why people can pe as you move through the level the the classy system, and especially into the level four, you get better at coaching. is because the level four in a lot of ways starts to become more like a competition. You're only competing with yourself, right? The other results are relevant to you, but it in the way it's structured, you know, it's a cool, you've got the microphone for an hour, do the thing. Right? Or you're standing at the top of this this slope in a bib, and there's People with notepads on the side judging you, like that's competition. You're having to perform on demand under pressure, you have to do it multiple times in a row throughout a day. ⁓ and so I think if you've gone through that process and you've passed the writing, you've passed the teaching, that kind of thing, ⁓ you're starting to get a better understanding of if you'd not been an athlete in the past, what it feels like to be in competition. And so what I've seen working with a lot of instructors that are working in a kind of a coaching role, you know, like the the club that we work at very lucky in that, you know, there's what, a hundred ish level fours in Canada in the system. And I think we have twelve or thirteen working in our club or SAD side working in our club and and you s and I've seen lots of them go through the process and pass that certification while working as coaches and you can see how much better they are getting as they're going through that process because they're they're understanding it more and it's not just the skill stuff, it's just the they can connect more with what the athlete is feeling because they're going through it a bit themselves. And the more that they put themselves in that, whether it's signing up for a free ride event or, you know, a local rail jam or whatever it is, the better they get. And they don't have to draw from this past experience as an athlete. They're actually seeing themselves as an athlete now, which can also, you know, John still competes in races every now and then, right? And probably learns a lot from that because he now has the toolkit to break down and understand his performance better than he did when he was an athlete after the fact. You know, like I w after the race I wasn't mentally prepared properly. I didn't do what I needed to do and that's why I blew that first turn and lost the race or whatever it is. So ⁓ if you want to be a coach, I think you need to compete at some point in the sport that you're coaching. It doesn't have to be that you used to do it. You just you gotta start. I think
speaker-0: One of the big things that you take with you ⁓ from being an athlete and having competed is the kind of psychological side of things, like mental preparation you just mentioned there, Jake. ⁓ how can people train their brains to be good at that aspect without having been a former competitor?
speaker-2: But you make yourself feel uncomfortable. You put yourself in situations which are hard, which scare you a little bit, which you are nervous, you have to perform, right? and that that could be anything. It doesn't even have to be on your snowboard. That could be going and, you know, asking for someone's number at a coffee shop or starting up a conversation with a random stranger, you know, that you're sitting on the bus stop with, or it could be putting yourself in you know, teaching a different role within the snowboard school or or signing up to or trying to get into the space to, you know, work as a trainer on a morning session, right? Or whatever it is. But putting yourselves in situations where like you feel nervous before the fact. ⁓ and having to start to work out what works for you. You know, there's so much great information available in terms of different ways that you can help manage some of the the nerves and anxiety and build self confidence. but you you can't do it just in theory. I think you need to put yourselves in situations which could be could be competition or it could be just, you know, finding opportunities to do something that makes you feel uncomfortable and realise, ⁓ I just tried to start a conversation with that person and it didn't go very well but I'm alive and may never see them again. And it's okay, you know. ⁓ practice.
speaker-1: And those are also advice that that that's really good what you're saying. Like those are advice that we give at all level really for like 'cause this the stress can be there at all level. I would say there's more you go up, more it adds up. Like if you're thinking ⁓ exams at level three and level fours, there's gonna be a probably a greater amount of stress, like typically as an average, because there's just the the exam word itself is as a bit of a competition. signification, right? So like this those are things that as evaluators we're promoting ⁓ or candidates or people going up the system to just like go out, put yourself out there and do some stuff. And out random compliments to strangers, for example, right?
speaker-3: Yeah. A hundred percent echo what Jake said. There's only one way to gain experience, it is to do something like the thing, if not the exact thing. ⁓ what I will add is I find it useful as a coach when athletes are especially newer athletes that I begin working with, say at that like ⁓ continental cup level, often they have in their heads that nervousness is a bad thing. that that kind of projected anxiety is a is not what they want to be feeling. And I, you know, physiologically speaking, the opposite is true. Actually that nervous is a good thing. and you need a bit of that, especially if you're going to do something physical. and and I think as Jake suggested, you know, putting yourself in the situation allows you the chance to practice being with those feelings. Noticing what you notice, especially if you can be supported outside by someone else like a Jake or somebody that can kind of guide. And that's what you guys do with the level four, level three and level four courses. It's like actually here's some tools that'll help you develop the skill that you currently feel uncomfortable with, you know, going and talking to somebody or whatever. And then, you know, you guys check in as they go, right? Or they'll share with you. And and letting everybody know that this is normal and it's okay, I think is a pretty important ⁓ Pretty important piece of the puzzle for personal development. Like, hey, yeah, you're not going to get better if you're not taking some kind of risk, whatever, you know, personal risk, emotional risk, physical risk. ⁓ and along with that, your body's gonna do some stuff that you're gonna sense that you may not want to feel those things. But you know, I was just listening to a podcast the other day about ⁓ Bill Russell. You know who Bill Russell is? So Bill Russell's one of the greatest American athletes of all time. ⁓ basketball player. And I can't remember the stats, but it's astr astronomical. He won so many NBA titles, high school. Anyway, he apparently vomited from nervousness before every single game of basketball he played. ⁓ and he's one of the greatest athletes of all time. So the nervousness is not necessarily something that will affect the performance negatively. And I think that's an important thing for newer athletes or newer people who haven't competed before, who are now Go into their first bank slalom or first soap style or whatever, even as adults. Hey, that nervousness is meant to be there. It's good for you. ⁓ and it's more functional to embrace it and welcome it and let it be part of the experience. And that takes some practice. ⁓ and so you have to go and do the you've got to put yourself in those situations to experience it.
speaker-2: that the like working with like the fruit like kids a bunch, you know, you're you'll be standing on top of a cliff and they're like, I'm nervous, I'm like, sweet. 'Cause we're standing on a cliff, right? Like we it's it's intimidating. Are we but are we nervous dead or are we nervous excited? Like can you can you see the outcome happening in your mind, how you want it to happen and you know, like you do you know how to do this? Do you want to do this? Sweet. If you those are both yes, then let's work out tactically what we need to do. And that that nervousness is okay because we we understand what we're doing, we understand we know how to do it and we want to do it. So let's do it. Right? you're always gonna be nervous. You know, nervous before you start a podcast. You're nervous that this is gonna go right or or whatever. ⁓ but yeah, I think you're What's happening in the brain when you're nervous is a lot of really good things in terms of high performance. ⁓ it's just that framework like John's saying of switching from I'm I'm nervous because I don't think I can do this to I'm nervous because I want to do well. I want to perform at the level that I know I'm capable of. ⁓ you know, and I think putting yourself in any situation where you can have that conversation with yourself. Even if it's just a little drop on the side of the the run and or whatever it is, like that's that's how we get better at that, sure.
speaker-1: Yeah. That's all really cool. And we naturally merged into where we wanted to lead this show at this point, which is awesome because we touched on some of the points. ⁓ I'd like us to explore a little bit more the differences between the instructing, t teaching, recreational snow sports or riders in c in private clubs, for example, but recreational versus coaching competitive athletes. Whether it's across tactical, physical, psychological approaches. And ⁓ we can start with a bit of the tactical and terrain adaptation you guys started to touch on.
speaker-0: Yeah, we did sort of go down that road already, but like kind of specifically, you know, when we're comparing ⁓ how you would teach snowboarding versus how you would coach snowboarding, when it comes to terrain, what are your tactic like how does your tactical approach change to terrain adaptation?
speaker-2: I guess I can sweep to this a bit. I do a bit more instructing when Done does these days. But ⁓ I think in general just instructing versus coaching, like if we're gonna break those two into two separate things, ⁓ because they do overlap a lot, right? Like the coaching generally, the student knows more and I'm able to work with them collaboratively on getting better. Right. So they have a skill set that I am working with and I'm asking questions and they're trying things and they're giving me feedback as well as I'm giving them feedback and we're we're kind of growing that skill set together. ⁓ instructing I'm giving I'm giving them the information. Right. I'm I'm telling them what to do and how to do it and why it works and when they should start and how much they should move and I'm giving them all the skills they need to be successful in trying it. And that that person, you may end up in more of a collaborative kind of teaching style as they get better at it because they now are better at it and they know more. ⁓ and so I think if if we're just talking about like the two different teaching styles, I guess that's how I would differentiate them. If we're talking about the job of being an instructor versus being a coach, I think working as an instructor with recreational holiday makers, essentially. ⁓ we're just looking for quick wins more often than not. You know, like what's what's the thing that I can give them that's gonna have the biggest impact today? You know, whether that's riding improvement or ⁓ guiding experience or, you know, a secret stream run that they wouldn't have found without you or whatever it is. ⁓ with because their goal almost always is to have a good time. Right? They're here on holiday to snowboard because they love snowboarding or they want to learn to snowboard or whatever. And their goal is just to have a good time. ⁓ you're training for a ultra marathon, your goal is not necessarily to have a good time. Your goal is to complete the the run, right? The to embrace the suffering to whatever it is like your your your goals are different and so, you know, when it's six in the morning and it's raining and it's cold, you still go out and do the work because you know why you're doing it. ⁓ and so I think in coaching doesn't mean suffering. But what I what I think it it does mean is for kind of separating those two jobs as instructor versus coach is ⁓ I don't have to make you better today as a coach. If what we're working on today actually feels like you've got worse, that's okay. 'Cause I don't care about today. I care about where you are when you need to be performing at your best. And that you know, that might be in a month's time you've got this certain event and I know that we've got enough time to work on this specific thing that you've been just hiding. or or dealing with, you know, and you know, playing golf, you make a change to your grip or whatever, and suddenly everything feels really weird. And you start getting worse scores and you're hitting hitting bad shots that you'd never get before. Be like, cool, I know that I want to make this change and I need to make this because it's gonna help in the long run. ⁓ and I think that's how I see the the two different jobs being kinda different in terms of the the tactical approach. Coaching, I'm looking to get them to where they want to be in the future and instructing it's like, how can I make you really good today? And then terrain wise, I think it kind of does the inverse in that instructing, we're really looking at progressing terrain because people want to tick boxes. I want to do that cliff or I want to do my first black line or whatever it is. ⁓ more often than not if I'm working with an athlete coaching, I'm making the terrain easier because I want to give them the capacity to think about something small and actually work on it. ⁓ so just the yeah, I guess the why the why I'm using the terrain or the why I'm what I'm choosing to work on that day changes just based on what their ultimate goal is, whether it's competition or just having a good time. And
speaker-1: That that's probably gonna change and evolve as well, depending on what type of students you're teaching. So like you say, like it's it's hard to separate those all the time because ⁓ an instructor will tap into their coaching skill or their guiding skill, even depending on the students that they have that day or for the seasonal program, for example. That's gonna be a little bit different, like the goal will be will be different than a one day more.
speaker-2: Yeah, for sure.
speaker-1: touristic lesson or someone like there's some people that come to ⁓ private lessons with like very specific goal like you say like taking those boxes and you're gonna first adjust expectation to make sure it's realistic before you you reach a certain goal during the day. ⁓ so I think those are really complementary, vice and versa. That kind of come back to what we touched on a little bit earlier in the show where we talked about the the background in the foundation, how Cassie ⁓ teaching knowledge can help the coaching and vice and versa, I think it's true as well. Kind of come back full circle.
speaker-2: Yeah, for sure. Like I watched John coaching. John picked up a group last winter of ⁓ some younger, newer to competing athletes, which was really cool to see in going back to doing working with a group like that. And ⁓ you'd see that. You'd see like you know, in the morning they're on a green run doing the same thing over and over again. And then in the afternoon they're writing pow in the trees. And it's like, cool, they've done the work. We did the work this morning. they focused, they were engaged and now my goal as the coach is to have fun and love snowboarding and, you know, feel that on you know the terrain where they want to be right.
speaker-0: I think this all speaks really well to we keep coming back to this idea of like fundamental knowledge ⁓ and how that helps the coach. ⁓ you know, this idea of okay, well, we have a specific goal for this athlete. ⁓ and so from a terrain perspective, we can use a lot of different terrain over a longer period of time because we understand what we're trying to get that athlete to do, versus like you said, Jake, having you know, a private lesson one day and you just wanna show them the mountain and you know have a good time. You're gonna take them to cool terrain that they're gonna enjoy, period.
speaker-2: Right.
speaker-3: Hmm. Yeah, like ⁓ I love what Jake just said. It's so, so true. I like the the difference between an instructor who has this opportunity, maybe ongoingly, but you know, once or twice a season to ride with the same rider, they're really delivering based on that rider's current experience. ⁓ whereas a coach is really delivering based on that writer's long term goal and maybe medium term goal. And those the path starts to diverge there. ⁓ and the one thing I would add that Jake kind of intimated but didn't r ⁓ didn't quite get to is ⁓ well two things really. First of all, the definition in the dictionary of instructor and coach is the same. Like they are the like when you look up the definition of instructor, you see coach. And when you look up the definition of coach, you see instructor. So definitionally they're quite similar words. And that and that speaks to how much overlap there is between the two. But where I see a really, really big difference, ⁓ and I think this is true if we think about coaching in general, in all sports or life coaching or whatever, part of the job of the coach is to help that person that they're working with learn to get the best out of themselves through the medium that they're teaching if it's baseball, a baseball coach is gonna have that athlete not only get better at the sport, but learn how to be at their best in a moment of their choosing. And the only way you can get there is by helping that person or supporting that person while they find out how to get the best out of themselves, which, as Jake intimated, like that includes getting up at six AM on a rainy morning. If you want to be an ultra marathon runner and it was scheduled to go for a run. The only way you're going to get your best out of yourself in that context is to get up and go for a run. You know, like it's that's it. Otherwise you're not walking towards your target very well. Now, there may be reasons why people choose not to do that, and a good coach will also create a space that's safe enough for that person to not be at their best today. That's part of the process. ⁓ but I I'm a firm believer and I I bring this into my coaching, even at the level of the nine and ten year olds I was riding with last year, where part of my part of what I'm trying to do is to help them learn how to get the best out of themselves. So you know, like challenge yourself a little bit here, back off a little bit there, turn those dials, learn how to turn those dials as a human being. ⁓ and I think instructors, the best instructors do that and that's why they have those return clients all the time. I feel good when I'm skiing with X or I'm snowboarding with Jake because he creates an environment where I feel safe and I like I take risks with him that I won't take with other people kind of thing, you know? ⁓ and and and that comes back to the instructor or the coach, understanding that it's not just about the sport. It is about the experience. And this person is there's an opportunity even in a lesson to help that person get a little better at being themselves. ⁓ and I think coaches are just much more heavily on that side. ⁓ you know, the you you don't find out much about yourself when you're having success. There's a little bit to learn there about how you deal with success and stuff. You find out an awful lot about yourself when you're being challenged. ⁓ you know, and in life in general. Like we find out way more about ourselves and there's way more learning in that space as well. ⁓ so I and I think coaches ⁓ by definition have to dwell much more on that side of the ledger. ⁓ because as Jake said, you know, your your writing right now isn't gonna win that race, but we got six weeks to get you much closer to winning that race. and it's the patience th ⁓ that you have to bring to that situation, as well as the, you know, holding the focus. When the athlete's focus wants to go away, the coach will hold the no we're this is the target. You know? ⁓ and I think that's that that alone just Not so much that they're indistractable, but that they can return their focus to the task. ⁓ and that's very much a process that coaches go through like with nine and ten year olds, it's like twice a run. ⁓ and with with World Cup athletes, it's maybe more, you know, maybe every run. You're returning them to the focus. You know, just every single time. ⁓ because the focus is so specific, because the the Consequence may be a lot higher for the high end athlete as well. and also their ability to have a high level of focus is much higher. You know? ⁓ and then how do I how and that kind of segues into how I think about terrain adaptation? I'm I'm exactly like Jake for in a regular lesson or even coaching those nine and ten year olds, there's a terrain building rock progression that I'm gonna go through. ⁓ I'm definitely gonna, you know. If we need to bend our knees more, I'm gonna make them ride in the bumps. If we need to be smoother on on and off our edges, I'm gonna make them ride green runs. But as I start to work with higher and higher level athletes, the terrain gets much simpler for the same reason as Jake. I want them to be able to focus their awareness on a very specific piece. And the more complicated the environment is, even to the point of riding in a border cross track, like They've got to deal with so much more external noise that it makes it hard to hone in on the thing ⁓ that that I want them to hone in on. And so as a coach, I will use very deliberately, much simpler terrain, or very specific shapes in the terrain that I know produce certain feels or cer require certain movement patterns to be ridden smoothly or to generate speed on it or whatever like that. ⁓ it's much more specific. ⁓ and it requires I think and maybe Jay can speak to this more, I think it requires a lot more knowledge about what the outcome is you're trying to produce and the different maybe pathways to get there. Yeah.
speaker-2: Yeah, for sure. I think I my I'm lucky, like and ⁓ my riding style and how I like to ride the mountain, ⁓ and you know, working at a resort like with the Black Home, which is some of the best terrain in the world, ⁓ for pretty much any avenue you want to take in terms of competition. I tend to lean on the terrain a lot. ⁓ and I think with the instructing, you know, we're using the terrain as a tool to give them the space to work on their skill set or to ⁓ challenge them a little bit. I find the terrain becomes a tool with higher end athletes to help them really identify what their input is having on the performance versus what the terrain is doing, in terms of where where the speed is coming from, or how to you know, how to feel strong and stable and safe despite the fact you're going eighty kilometers an hour, you know, or how to land a drop in choppy, bumpy snow on a double black run and have the confidence you're gonna ride out of it safely and I think so the you know the there's a lot you're doing in that situation but the terrain is also doing a lot in that situation and so the terrain becomes a tool to help them help the athlete understand what they need to do to manage that. ⁓ and I think it becomes a tool that I use for sure in terms of developing their mental skill set and that psychological performance factor ⁓ in their riding, you know, in with a you know, you come to me for a private lesson because you're on your holiday, whatever, I'm not gonna take you to go and ride some pretty sketchy, challenging, semi high risk alpine run that you're not gonna enjoy, right? But if you're an athlete training for a free ride event We're gonna use that terrain, use that high consequence, challenging environment to, you know, stretch the their capacity for what is okay and what feels safe. You know, if I can navigate this super challenging, scary, icy run today, what's that slightly easier run in good snow gonna feel like when I come to competing in it? Right. And so ⁓ the terrain just becomes another skill essentially that we're working on in terms of their their kind of comfort zone and what they feel safe and able to perform in. ⁓ and so yeah, I'm using it, just using it differently as a different tool to work on a different skill set ⁓ with with athletes versus recreational snowboards.
speaker-3: I would add to that as well, there's and and Jake touched on it just then too, you your freeride athletes, they are, you know, you're gonna be presented with this challenging terrain at every event you go to. So they they have to get into that ⁓ in order to be able to perform when they need to. ⁓ whereas an instructor is you know bringing a client to that type of terrain only when appropriate for a completely different reason. They don't need to perform in that terrain. They just want to go and have a good experience in that terrain. and and the way like that translates that what Jake's talking about translates into border cross training, especially here at Whister Blackham. ⁓ a border cross track is a minute long. It's got booms and jumps and rollers and and so putting riders in a situation and you've got to hunt speed in border cross track. So riding terrain where they have to hunt speed, where there are, if not shape booms, at least banks to ride up and down. where there's some places to jump, s even side hits. All of these things mimic the competition environment. ⁓ and that's a consideration that we don't have as instructors. You know? As I like Jen, you rode with me out here and we ripped around my like ⁓ like homemade border cross track. Right? You know? ⁓ and and if I had a client I might take them there to that terrain 'cause it's fun to ride.
speaker-1: Okay, I was just thinking about that.
speaker-3: But a border cross athlete is going to look at that terrain, following me or Jake down there and go, ⁓ I get this. This is as pretty close to a border cross track as you can get without actually being a border cross track. ⁓ so we can as coaches, I think we've got a much more tuned awareness of how to use this terrain right now and how that relates to the end goal.
speaker-0: I like the kind of breaking it down nature of all this, right? Like the the marathoner doesn't train by running race pace every session. You know, so you're using terrain to you know, one day you're gonna be working on if for the snowboard cross athlete, you can you can use just jumps or you can just use some portion of the mountain to train one specific thing so that come race day, you know, they can put all those pieces together and they've got all those kind of nuanced ability to adapt to terrain just 'cause you've given them that opportunity in different scenarios.
speaker-3: Well that's that's exactly the whole part whole format, right? Like that's exactly it. We're gonna work on this part today, but you have to put it together over there as a complete package for the race or the free ride run or whatever, right? But the other thing I will say about training is like that there's so many different dials we can turn as coaches. Like people think about the terrain as a dial and as it gets more ⁓ challenging the intensity goes up, right? We have to have better awareness, whatever. We can turn the intensity up without changing the terrain simply by honing the focus more or riding faster or these things as well, right? Like there's a lot of ways to change the intensity. and the other thing that maybe instructors never have to deal with, well, maybe maybe sometimes, but certainly coaches have to deal with a lot, is how long do I want those riders at that level of intensity? You know, how much time. do I want to spend with them revving it close to a hundred percent in their brains and in their bodies because obviously there's a risk factor to to deal with, but also they have to be in that mode because when you show up to a race, you're the system turns on. You're like at a hundred percent. That's what happens. So and in some cases, for some people that hundred percent actually makes them go flat. Like they can't perform. They're overstimulated, you know, and and Putting our riders into these different scenarios, changing the dial such that they experience the intensity or something like the intensity, ⁓ is really an important part of coaching that you probably don't really think about when you're working with a one day client. You know, you like you're not really thinking, okay, I want to push this person, challenge themselves a little bit here. And you just don't really we don't I never thought that way as a coach. I was mainly thinking about how do I wanna mitigate that intensity so that this person's experience they they feel like they're on top of their experience rather than along for the ride sometimes. And I think with our certainly with my border cross races, there are times of the year where I want them burned out almost like fried. And you know, so that like just understanding that and and how the terrain impacts that on a day to day and then on a week to week. I mean, Jakey, we've Jake and I have definitely had some riders getting injured within a week of competition over the last few years. ⁓ and and n through I would say no mistake on the coaching side. It's just what happens when riders are pushing. And so it's very important that we as coaches are clued into how this rider is behaving and responding. And when we see some good quality stuff, there's a temptation to keep pushing to ⁓ do another one. You like you nailed that, try for three in a row. And and one of my practices is very much to Step back. I saw three real good ones. We got an hour to go in the session. Stop. You know, let's let's go to something else at this point. Like, well, we got two half good ones, but you seem frustrated. Perfect. Now's the time to let you sit with that frustration for a week or whatever till we get to see you again. You know, and think those those dials are so important to understand as high end coaches, people who are working in long term programs and and absolutely n necessary. if you're coaching competitive. Like you have to know how those dials work and what the impact is on each rider, or potentially what it could be on each rider anyway.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-1: think we do a pretty good job in Cassia exploring those ⁓ dials, especially through the level four process. ⁓ as like we're we're assessing people, we're training people to teach with a creative variation level. And the I would say that most successful lesson or pedagogic or instructor training sessions at the level four are people that masterize those dials. Like are able to turn those dials within a frame of one hour and make things happen because they have such a good understanding of what the people that they have in this group right now, whether it's most of the time it's peers that are already expert or advanced writers that you're you're trying to push and challenge within that safe zone that allows them to to grow and and understand the concept that you're trying to to bring them. So the importance of turning those dials as intensity, dynamism, rhythm, whatever it is that you're working on that's gonna make the difference to that during that specific period of time is super important. And that's that's also the same as the terrain as a teaching tool. ⁓ you both say that sometimes you scale down in order to make things a little bit easier for your athletes so they can understand and f take the time to feel better on something that that's easier. And I think that that's something that were also educate our people to use the like there's no other better tool, teaching tool than the terrain. So that's pretty cool that y you guys are bringing this up because this is something that ⁓ we always try to to promote and it comes with experience and that's what you're showcasing with what you're saying there.
speaker-3: I was just gonna say, like I if there's one thing I see from our coaches at Wister Valley, the coaches who coach the under fifteens, mainly the kids that come in and need more general writing. the and and all of them have progressed with this over the last couple of years. They are all much better at using simpler terrain to be more specifically developing a piece of the riding. ⁓ And what we see, you know, as the riders come through is there's there's a good crop of like these these kids know how to ride by the time they're eleven or twelve. They're good little riders. You know, I could feel confident taking them most places, ⁓ at speed or, you know, maybe the trees are a little hard, but that's more because they're little and they're kids. ⁓ it's dangerous, but but but I still take ⁓ in there, but but just I think that's a place where instructors should feel more confident to keep the terrain simple, provided they are prepared to turn up the level of expectation that they want to see. Yeah. Like if if you're gonna have s simple terrain, then better have a good focus and you better be able to stick to that focus and use it to develop the rider in the moment. You know, I think that's 'cause it's it's pretty easy to just be lazy in simple terrain. ⁓ And the ki the the writers can often ⁓ not be paying attention. And then they're not really I mean, the the the system is learning something in the background of our consciousness, you know, the brain is adapting to that. But if we can be highly focused, like the the thing that really progresses learning is deliberate high high focus. That's that's the thing that makes a huge you know, deliberate high pro focus during practice. makes the biggest difference to learning. So creating an environment, whether it's complex terrain or simple terrain or something in between, that allows for that is probably the most important thing in terms of choosing terrain, is that does this terrain allow my student or my athlete to focus close to their limit of what they're capable of focusing on for the time that I have them in this terrain? Mm-hmm. Kind of thing.
speaker-0: We've talked a lot about terrain as a tool. let's change gears here and talk about the tool that they're standing on. How does the conversation change when you we're dealing with high end athletes who know a lot about their equipment? ⁓ how does ⁓ you as a coach, how do you have those conversations with your your athletes about their equipment versus, you know, ⁓ your average ⁓ snowboard lesson where, you know, you just want them to feel good on a board.
speaker-3: I guess ⁓ first of all, high end athletes don't necessarily know very much about their equipment. most of them, frankly, in my experience, are almost as ignorant as the general public. ⁓ at that kind of mid pack NORAM level, they really don't know much about why their board does what it does or what kind of board that so many mid pack, especially guys on the NORAM tour, are just writing boards that someone else is writing and they don't really know why. I don't know, you know. ⁓ so the conversation with it border cross athletes anyway. First of all, border cross equipment is very specific. ⁓ it most of the boards these days have two layers of metal in them. ⁓ Jake's rides a board that's got some metal in it. He can attest to how different that feels. ⁓ Jan U rode a a board that had some metal in it and how different that feels from from a a standard board. And there's a lot of advantages to having metal. It tunes out a bunch of vibration. ⁓ It it it has this ⁓ like three hundred and sixty degree tensile strength. So it's strong, it's the same amount of strong in all the directions, whereas like cross laid fiberglass or carbon is strong along the stringer, but it's not strong between the stringers. So you have this weak, strong kind of component that I feel in a flex pattern that I don't like. I prefer having metal in my boards. ⁓ and so I'm always like the camp I just did in La Dooz out ⁓ last month with a bunch of riders, we bought a bunch of ⁓ Oxess boards in to test. Most of them were on ⁓ one of them was on Kessler, ⁓ the other three were all on Apex boards. And so we got them to try some boards out and what I loved hearing mainly was, wow, that feels different. I like this or I don't like that. Just just having that conversational interaction with the athletes is probably where I want them to be as a coach. ⁓ and And that takes some time to get an athlete to that point. You've got to like they've got to be tuning their boards so that they know what their boards look like underneath and and they've got to be like aware of the damage on their boards or if there's edges that need work. They have to be tuning their boards. And ⁓ even just that familiarity that that breeds really helps. ⁓ and then on top of that, I I believe they need to be able to feel the speed. So they need to f like, did this wax work or not? ⁓ And and that's a conversation that we end up having. And then, you know, does the board feel chattery or settled? That's a conversation. How does it work in this in the start section? ⁓ you know, so many different demands, ⁓ specific demands within Bordercross that ⁓ there's so many little conversation pieces and and ⁓ construction, radius, ⁓ turn radius, side cut shape, all of these things influence that. ⁓ but like I say, most athletes at even coming into that mid pack NORAM level, which is a good rider already, have no idea that these things matter. You know, I was talking to my buddy ⁓ the other day, he's a one of the coaches for the US team, he said some of these riders are coming in on their race board they've got a twenty four inch stance and on their freestyle board they've got an eighteen inch stance. It's like, how does that work? First of all, your twenty four inch stance is too wide and s and second of all, your eighteen inch stance is too narrow. Like What are you doing? ⁓ kind of thing. So and and the specific rider that I'm thinking of here, that guy is a top three Noraim level rider. Like he's a good rider, ready to race wheel cut and no concept of set out. ⁓ so I y you know, I guess the the conversation from a coaching perspective is much more important than it would be from a customer's perspective, ⁓ because the performance requirements are much higher for you know, there's there's a specific If I'm a border cross racer, I want to win border cross races. You know, if I'm a ⁓ client riding around the mountain, I really want to ride around the mountain. you know. I guess there's there's a caveat there in in freestyle, like if if a customer is really freestyle oriented, they'd need some specific equipment, maybe a little more. May Jake obviously is gonna be able to speak to that a lot more, I think, than I can. ⁓ but that that's how I would that's how I see the equipment conversation with athletes.
speaker-0: How do you use equipment on different training days? So you talked about riding different parts of the mountain, you know, that board across board might not be much fun to ride in in different environments. Are you having them on kind of boards with more torsional flex on like training days to work on certain things? So I mean always on their bullets.
speaker-3: No, I'm I'm much more deliberate than that actually. F the first rule I have is you show up on whatever board you show up on. If you if you we show up to a border cross race and you show up with your freestyle board, that's what you're training. I don't have a I don't mind that so much. I mean it's not super practical, but because of how learning is in the brain, learning is just an adaptation to a situation, right? A scenario. So no matter what All roads lead to Rome, you know. I mean, you can get to being a fast racer by riding nothing but freestyle boards for years, provided you focus on making the board work the way a race board would work. And there are limitations to that. You know, a soft, torsionally soft twin, full twin freestyle board can't hold the loads that are one six five, sixteen meter, two layers of titan titanal Board across board. It it'll fold. It doesn't, it's not built to deal with those loads. But that puts extra premium on the timing of the move. Like if you get it wrong on a freestyle board, it's gonna fold, you might break it. If you get it wrong on a race board, it's probably not gonna turn and you're gonna be going real fast. ⁓ you know, ⁓ kind of thing. So I am pretty directive with my athletes. I like them to the one thing that that only raceboards can produce is the speed. You the freestyle boards just don't go as fast. ⁓ they're not as comfortable at speed, so the rider's less likely to go as fast. And I think speed, getting comfortable with speed, is its own skill. Like it you you can hone that skill. I first of all, I believe pretty much everything is a learnable skill, but I would part out speed, getting comfortable with speed, as its own skill that can be practiced on its own. ⁓ and so in that context, I do want my guys on raceboards a lot. And I do like seeing them riding their raceboards free riding, 'cause they are hard to ride and especially grabby snow, grabby off piece snow, race boards are much more demanding to ride. They're not impossible to ride. I actually like the way they feel. But you gotta ride fast and be strong ⁓ to make them work. but like I say, if I had a if I was doing a especially a turning session and I had riders showing up on twin freestyle boards. I'd probably just turn the dial up on how good they needed to be at the move to make the board work. Like I'm sure a good rider like I'm I know that the the great border cross racers of this moment all could make a twin freestyle board that was too short for them work such that you guys wouldn't be able to tell that weren't riding equipment they were comfortable on. You know, like it's not that it's not that big of a deal. Except where, as I say, speed is you've got to feel that speed. And understanding where the limitations are, kind of thing.
speaker-0: Nice. That's that's a bigger answer than I was expecting. like lots of really good stuff in there. Yeah, I'm getting I'm getting the hang of things here now. So we're kinda midway here and one of the things that we like to do on this show is ⁓ we call it our palate cleanser. ⁓ just a quick kind of lighthearted shift ⁓ just to give ⁓ a little break. ⁓ just have a little fun here. So ⁓ I'm gonna let ⁓ Jen kick this one off.
speaker-3: Yeah.
speaker-1: Okay. This question is about what what is one weird or not so weird because really what is weird anyways, but ⁓ yeah, one one snowburn fashion trend that you proudly participated in in your writing career, if any.
speaker-2: I ⁓ I had a couple seasons where I wore women's pants because they were really tight when the ⁓ tight tight pants platform was coming in and I loved it. It was it was red. It was fast, it was they w they were black for sure. But I think the generation of pants before that were like bright yellow double XL and it was a
speaker-1: Which colour?
speaker-2: a very huge shift for me. yeah. I think I've still got them somewhere. But you get rice plants, I think.
speaker-3: Yeah, totally. You should racing it back. Yeah.
speaker-1: You'd save some seconds.
speaker-2: Yeah, good job.
speaker-3: Yeah, I ⁓ I actually was gonna say the same thing. I've always kind of preferred wearing pants that were a little closer to the leg. ⁓ it just it feels better. I feel like I can move well, I feel more in my movements. But the thing that I like I have done in snowboarding that's a a trend or a fad, if you like, is my love of turning, dude. Like it's come and it's gone and it's come and it's gone and my ⁓ I just love the feeling of carving turns at speed or in terrain and and you know, that the trend of turning. It's it's actually coming it's kind of swinging back towards us, you know, ⁓ a little bit and and I love that. Like the the what the Karua guys are doing, what Lars who you guys hand on a few weeks ago, like what he's doing. There's it's it's ⁓ to me that part of the sport is just so ⁓ cool. It's such a tangible feeling. And I I think it's actually the most accessible part of the sport. Like you know, like everybody can turn if they wanna. Like not everybody can hit a sixty foot tabletop. That's that's just not gonna happen.
speaker-2: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
speaker-1: ⁓ that's a cool answer. okay, totally different topic. If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be? Start with you, John. You seem to have a good answer.
speaker-3: Yeah. Well, ⁓ I found or I made up this recipe not long ago. It's like can it be a meal? It doesn't have to be just one thing.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, yeah. It can be ⁓ a few elements.
speaker-3: Yeah, cool. I've I've been making this really yummy chicken pasta like alio oglio, which is a really hard thing to say, but it means with garlic and olive oil. ⁓ it's an Italian kind of sound, I just added a couple more elements to it and man, like I feel like I eat that twice a week right now. And I could probably that's the thing I eat the most, so that's probably the thing I could just keep eating.
speaker-2: every day without without a doubt. Like Arthur's the best for sure.
speaker-1: Pasta with like pesto or bloody
speaker-2: And anything. Like honestly I could pick like any kind of pasta with any kind of pasta sauce and be like, Yeah, that'll do forever.
speaker-0: All right. We got a couple past delivers. ⁓ okay, last one and you can only choose one, golf or mountain biking.
speaker-2: Golf. There's only one radio magic. Trickier than it than ⁓ you would think. ⁓ probably golf, which is controversial, but I'm for sure gonna be able to do it for a lot longer. So Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah, okay.
speaker-3: It's not to say I don't love mountain biking. I love it. I've had a much longer shelf life. Yeah.
speaker-2: And the buttons.
speaker-1: I didn't know you golfed, Jake. I I knew John golfed, but that's I just learned something.
speaker-2: There you go. I wouldn't say I dulk, but I like dolls.
speaker-1: Well, yeah. That's that's a common answer from a lot of us. I wouldn't say I golf either. ⁓ okay. ⁓ we Rob said we were at alpha the show. I don't wanna scare you. We're at one hour forty five minutes. So we're at mostly three quarter of the show. So hang on there. we'll dive a little bit more on a technical focus to a specific scale evolution and transition. And your personal golden rule of coaching, just to finish this show with a more of a technical dive. Yeah.
speaker-0: So I guess one of the the first thing we're gonna jump into here is making that transition from a sliding turn to a carved turn. ⁓ you know, that's that's a big difference maker ⁓ as you become a better snowboarder. ⁓ what ⁓ what's your kind of go to strategy for ⁓ getting people to do that pure pencil line, you know, from the intermediate to the advanced writer?
speaker-2: Yeah, I guess ⁓ you know, we have lots of different tactics that that work well and I think this is one of those things where there isn't a, you know, one size fits all solution. ⁓ because really it you know, there's there's quite a few things in snowboarding or mountain biking or really any sport which feel really hard and awkward initially. And then the second you feel it and you create that pathway in your brain and you and you connect like, ⁓ that that was it, that felt good, that worked. ⁓ you can then start to repeat it and you can start to work on it. And I think carving is one of those things where, you know, we've started our snowboarding career afraid of the fall line and trying to get from slowing down back to slowing down quickly, which is essentially what we're doing when we're sliding a turn. ⁓ and the the shift from that to embracing the full line and having the patience to stand on the edge and let the side cut and gravity do its job and bring you around is scary and it's tricky. I think the ones that work the best for me ⁓ a lot of time getting comfortable just going straight on a flat base ⁓ and progressing f like on mellow cat tracks ⁓ or you know bunny hill whatever. I'm just getting tough ball going straight and then hitting the brakes and then just progressing that into what happens if I'm going straight and I'm picking up a bit of speed and I just flex my ankles a little bit and let my hips move over that tow edge and do nothing else. Right. And just starting to find and help them connect to if I just move enough that I'm now standing on a different part of my board and the edge starts doing its job. What does that feel like? And then you're just kind of going back from there, right? So, ⁓ finding opportunities for them to feel that connection to the edge and feel the speed, but not have to worry about slowing down. Whether that's, you know, turning up towards a bank or doing You know, trying to do it at the end of a traverse or whatever. Just taking away the fear element as best we can. ⁓ building comfort with the fall line, I think. So lots of different tactics and it'll be this one for every person really. ⁓ but that's sort of the the goal that I'm working towards is comfort in the fall line and the patience to let the edge do the work.
speaker-3: Yeah, like that. Yeah. ⁓ for me, I I look at it and maybe this is definitely how my brain works. I look at it from the perspective of what does the board need to do to carve or to skid or whatever, right? And ⁓ intermediate riders ⁓ tend to not want to engage the edge clean. They're still engaging the edge 'cause they're turning on it, but the edge engage edge set at the top of the turn isn't very clean. And so it it makes it very hard obviously you can't carve if you don't set the edge correctly to begin with. ⁓ so the the place where I think intermediates where the gap is between intermediate and and and a person who can carve, intermediate sliding turns and a person who can't carve, is in that realm of just understanding how it feels, ⁓ what the board's meant to do and what it feels like when it does those things, which is, you know, what Jake was talking about just putting them in scenarios where they can feel this over and over again. I try to work because carving's a feeling, right? Like yeah, it's an outcome that you can look back on and say, ⁓ yeah, look, I was carving the pencil line and the nose spray or whatever. ⁓ but when I'm doing it, when we're doing it, it's it's a sensation that we're working with. The only thing that's really noticeable is that sensation and the direction change that happens. Right. ⁓ And so giving the riders the opportunity to feel that sensation, like Jake's talking about, uber flat terrain, I also build it all off ⁓ being able to ride a flat base properly, stand really neutral and calm on the flat base while the board's moving. I think that's a I think that's the fundamental skill. ⁓ not so much to hold the posture while you're standing still, but to be able to hold that posture while you're moving, because everything builds out of that. ⁓ and then like Jake was saying, you the first half or the first part of a beginner's progression, I don't know whether they're afraid of the fall line, but the teaching is predicated on getting them through the fall line and controlling their speed as a way to stop them running off down the hill going straight. Then they'd be scared. ⁓ you know, so a lot of the teaching movements hurry the first part of the turn. They don't let that turn build. And that that's ⁓ it's a good place to be teaching from. You know what I mean? You want to be teaching safe You want to be teaching something that's reliable, that the person can do easily, ⁓ that's more obvious as a movement. And I address it the same way as Jake does, with simple terrain, really simple drills, feel based, rather than focusing on a movement pattern, just focus on feel like you're standing on this part of the board. Notice how the board responds when you do that. Do that a bunch. Try to bend the board a little more. You know? Like that's kind of the progression I go through.
speaker-0: been a really common theme throughout this whole episode, i which is develop the fundamentals, progress towards your the outcome you're looking for.
speaker-3: hundred percent the the the best riders, the best of anything in the world, any sport anyway, absolutely have the best fundamentals. The most the fundamentals that are least likely to break down under pressure, the fundamentals that are the easiest to execute without thought. You know, like e even even in golf where the swinging of the golf club is so, so different person to person, there are certain things that a good golf instructor Or a good golf analyst can see that all players do, and the best better than everybody else at these couple of things that everybody needs to do, and the best of in the world are the best at those things. And you look at slopestyle, the best slopestyle riders in the world have the best awareness in the moment of that nineteen hundred they're spinning. And that they, you know, they're not thinking about how to move in that moment, they're just doing it. And that only comes from practicing and developing extremely strong fundamental movement patterns and awarenesses, my opinion.
speaker-2: It's funny 'cause you ⁓ you know, you think about like the the biomechanics behind a turn, calve turn, especially a beginner calf turn, is significantly easier biomechanically than a sliding turn. Much. Right. And ⁓ yeah. And the you know, if we look at really high end snowboarding
speaker-3: Much simpler.
speaker-2: or biking or whatever, like the people that we often idolize or look towards, the you know, you think of like some of the best rail riders in the world, you know? and part of what we love about their the way they do it is they look like they're just standing there. Right? They're then they're just stood up on their board, locked in, they're just they're connected to it. Right? Or you think of like, you know, a a Seb Toots or Mark McMorris or something in the air, it's like the spin snaps and then they're just kind of in the right position, they've done what looks like the bare minimum and this great outcome happens. ⁓ and I think for carving is kind of the turning version of where the fear comes in early, you know, in that We're starting to deal with speed and almost always with athletes and high end anything, it's that psychological side, it's the fear that's we're getting in the way of the performance. ⁓ and so, you know, to climb a snowboard, literally you just stand on it and then you tip over a little bit and you just stay there and you let everything happen. What's hard about it is that you start picking up speed. And now sud now you're going twice as fast as you've ever gone, standing on this like little knife edge, trying to balance. Right? And so we start doing weird stuff. We lean back a little bit, we start to face where we're going, we start to make all these movements that are not what we're trying to do and end up fighting it. Right. And so I think like like John does ⁓ like Alf was saying, really if you can do a good intermediate sliding turn on kind of a blue run, you can tell for sure. It's just about gaining the capacity mentally to be comfortable letting that happen and having the patience to feel the speed increase and not get in the way, basically.
speaker-3: Yeah. I would I would add to that actually something that Lars touched on ⁓ in in the podcast he did with you guys that I think is overlooked in snowboarding instructing and the way we talk about carving. Carving, riding a clean edge, is the way all good riders get around the mountain. You know what I mean? Like if if we all went riding together and I was showing you guys around some resort in New Zealand that I've ridden. I'd be riding pretty fast and you guys would just be riding the clean edge. You'd make a turn somewhere near where I made a turn or whatever. But you'd be riding it, you wouldn't like skidding around the cat tracks or skidding down the green run or whether you'd be getting down the green run or the cat track or whatever, riding as clean as edge edge as possible because it's efficient, like Lars said, and the equipment's designed to do it. and so I think one of the places where ⁓ intermediates can benefit, ⁓ in terms of their progression towards carving, is to notice actually that carving is what good riding is at a baseline. Like that's just how you get around the mountain efficiently and get over there to hit that side hit or ⁓ you know, make that pencil line in the b on that bank or whatever. Carving is the like where everybody kind of can get to and where all good riders are.
speaker-2: I've been thinking about this a lot the last couple of seasons actually and I think we within Cassie we often talk about the sliding turn as being like the fundamental of Cassie snowboarding. and I've I don't think I've really thought that way, especially as I've got ⁓ you know, through the level four process and all my writing and coaching now, I think every every turn that I make and working with the athletes last season I was doing this quite a lot. Like I think every turn starts with the intention of it being a carved turn. Right? I'm stood on my board and I move across the board as if that turn is going to be just locked in on its edge. And then a decision's made. And you know, often that's subconsciously, but a decision's made to either stay there or displace the board in a certain way to change the outcome. Right? If I'm in really steep terrain I'm getting onto that edge as if it was going to be a calve turn on a green run, but then I can't stay there because I'll go too fast. So I then make a movement to get the board to bend more or to start to slide and break that calve to control my speed a little bit. ⁓ you know, running up a bank or even doing a rail. ⁓ I'm starting that turn as if I'm making a tarb turn to lock in the edge so that I've got a stable platform. to to push off, to get up onto that street style rail or whatever it is. And ⁓ I think that especially with some of these athletes, that shift to every turn starts as if we're just gonna tip on edge and let the board do its job. And then I change based on what I need to do after that. ⁓ has had a hugely positive effect on my writing for sure.
speaker-1: Yeah, totally. I it makes me think of ⁓ I'll quote my colleague and your colleague as well, Adam Gardner, who at the top of ⁓ I think we were teaching a level four module together or I can't remember exactly what it was, but he said a c a sliding turn is only is always a carving turn until it's a sliding turn. So I very much agree with that as well. I think ⁓ I don't think anybody's argue with this here.
speaker-3: No it's
speaker-1: Yeah. That's a cool way to think about it. It simplifies a lot the the the full-turning motion.
speaker-3: I I totally and I love what Jake did with his crew last year. My daughter happened to be riding with Jake when she was on snow with Wister Valley last year and I heard a lot about that particular focus last year. I love it. It's ⁓ one I use myself ⁓ a lot. ⁓ when I'm teaching and for my own writing. ⁓ it's kinda how I see it I see it as well. And the one thing I would say just in and th Jake maybe you can speak to this having done way more intermediate lessons than me. but But there needs to be, yes, rolling the board on edge like we're gonna start a calved turn is a great way to to begin any turn. ⁓ but as you were saying earlier, for a lot of intermediates, there's a fear factor there. And so giving them the space and the time and the terrain to be able to hone in. And this is why I use simple terrain. Once things get higher end, simple terrain is better because if they're scared So scared that they well, what happens when we get scared is we get a bit of adrenaline in our system, bit dopamine in our system, a bit of acetylcholine in our system, the focus narrows. My brain actually, the prefrontal cortex part of my brain shuts down and I'm more riding on intuition and instinct. ⁓ and if the instinct is to be a little bit afraid, then that is the thing that shows up. And so something that helps, I think big ⁓ intermediate would help intermediates is just a a really patient approach and and and and r reminding them how to focus in into that part of the tune that we really want them executing correctly. I don't know, Jake, how do feel about that?
speaker-2: It's all I think you just you just celebrate the success where you see it. You know, like the a turn is a turn. It doesn't have to be sl carving the whole way or sliding the whole way. Like you can start that term sliding and then when you hit the fore line it kinda lops in and carries you across the hill. You might even just carve the traverse across the hill. Right? And it's just embracing and trying to connect the positive feeling of did you notice there? a board locked in and you picked up a bit of speed but you felt stable and safe? Sweet. Mm-hmm. Let's just try to do that again. ⁓ and now we're doing it consistently. Yeah, now we're doing it consistently. Let's can we can we try that a little bit earlier? Right? Can we try to get to that feeling that we know and we like, but just a bit sooner in the turn. ⁓ yeah, no, the time's a turn. I think we're just ⁓ the the outcome and the feeling of Sliding the turn versus starting the turn are different and ⁓ by necessity we learn to slide first because otherwise our brushes are huge and numerous.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. Totally. One step at a time. ⁓ we'll finish with a question. ⁓ your golden rule. ⁓ every coach has a golden rule or sets of principles, right? And so what both of you individually would be your personal coaching philosophy or golden rule that you find yourself repeating to your writers, your athletes, ⁓ season after season. Regardless of their levels. Is there anything that you
speaker-3: ⁓ yeah, there's some. I got I I know, I know, I know. So I'll go first. The golden rule, the thing that I most say, is the thing I say to myself. And I've been saying it to myself for 20 something odd years, the start of every season and throughout the season. I really focus on early pressure in the turns. That it's like it was my coach's first thing he ever said to me, it was the thing he said the most to me.
speaker-1: One.
speaker-3: It's the understanding that principle through the Cassie system is how I got to where I got to as a coach. And and even to the point where ⁓ writers that I've worked with at various times in various contexts unrelated to each other have all made it the running joke about what I coach. Like everybody has the same joke. ⁓ I first worked with Paul Howard when he was ⁓ Before he got us level four, he did the level four carving and we did about I just met him and we were making friends, you know, and I was like, ⁓ I'll help you learn how to carve better. ⁓ so we spent about six weeks just him riding hard boots and and he I remember him saying when I like Shelly, all you say is early pressure. It's just you bang on about it constantly. I'm like, Well, that like, yeah, it is, man. Like that you need to be able to bend the board at the top of the four line to be able to control what the arc looks like after that. ⁓ if you can't set the edge with a bend in the board, ⁓ then you don't have as much control as you could have. And the other thing about early pressure that's really important, I think, is it's very hard to do. And it's a subtle but quite significant different feeling from when the pressure builds at the end of the turn, which is very easy to do. Gravity's helping, pretty much just need to stand there and resist. It's going to happen. Bending the board at the top of the turn requires a lot more subtle direction of move movement, a lot more patience, a lot more feel. ⁓ and so all of these qualities by setting that as a target, all of these qualities really ⁓ help the writer develop outside of that context as well, I think. ⁓ because you have so much better awareness of what the board's doing. ⁓ you know, so then I start my ⁓ my border cross team and in border cross the base is the fastest part of the board. Well not in border, snowboarding the base is the fastest part of the board. So you want to be in border cross on the base of the board as long as possible. Which means you've got to wait as long as possible to start the turn, ride the flat base as far as you can into the perm, if you can, right? And when you throw the board on edge or roll the board smoothly on edge, I guess, you want the board to respond. That's what allows you to ride further before you start the turn. so that is also early pressure. and ⁓ and then in in that same board across context, my old team, Ross Dunlop, was one of my coaches, Rob Fagan was one of my coaches. All of the athletes, they would just heck on me mercilessly about early pressure. That was their joke to me, ⁓ more early pressure, whatever. Anyway, I was just in France with that crew I was telling you about, and after three days of working with me, they were making fun of me about the same thing. They sat down to dinner one night and someone dropped a fork and my daughter Sammy said, ⁓ not enough early pressure. And it was just like So it's it I love it. I think it's cool. It it speaks to it shows me what I'm saying and it shows me that they're listening. ⁓ and it shows me what really matters to me as a coach, ⁓ the in the writing that I want to see. And as I said earlier, the very, very first turn I make every year, I say to myself, early pressure before I make out, every time for I don't know how long, since nineteen ninety seven. That's cool. Yeah.
speaker-1: Early pressure. Mm-hmm. What about you, Jake?
speaker-2: So Murphy's just let the mountain be your guide, really. Like I think we the mountain will tell you where to turn and how to turn to get the most out of it. And I think at any level we when we focus too much on how we're making the movement and trying to force something to happen when sometimes, you know, you're you had a really hard time making that sliding turn on the you know, scraped off Blue Run at the end of the day. If you'd have just made it three meters to the left in that sugary snow, the mountain would have s done half the work slowing you down, it would have felt softer, it would have been easier, you'd have avoided half the people. You know, and watching watching the level four exams this year, watch four people in a row flash in their carving exam because they just turned at the wrong spot. They're trying to make a turn and have that loading happen right as they're testing a roller and so they're all airborne when they're trying to feel the most grip. Well if you just started that turn earlier and planned based on the mountain, the turn would have been easier, the outcome would have been better. ⁓ well just let them mountain. It we're just there to experience how sliding on this piece of plastic down a mountain works and feels and make it feel good. And so I think most of the time we just get in the way. Just it'll tell you where to turn and it'll do a lot of the work for you if you just learn to look for it. Mm-hmm.
speaker-1: Very much agree with this as well. Cool. we reach ⁓ the finish line of this episode. Good job. A huge thanks to both of you. It was really good discussion. I think we could keep going forever. ⁓ we could ask you questions, and I feel the discussion could just continue and it and it's awesome. So maybe you'll be reinvited to this dropping next podcast in the future. ⁓ Thank you for sharing your time, your philosophies and your expertise with us today, your passion for the sport and your commitment to coaching excellence and everything you do to contribute to as Cassie members, consultants in the industry or as technical consultant for for us, Cassie, and passionate advocates is a big, big part of what keeps our association evolving and our snowboarding community as a whole as ⁓ always seeking to push boundaries. So thank you and thank you everyone for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dropping Neck podcast or on Snow This Coming Season.
speaker-3: Thanks. Thanks guys.
speaker-2: Thank you.
speaker-0: Thank guys. That was great.
