my name is alastair smith i'm ceo of proteurn.io welcome to the train smarter improve faster webinar series this one features brandon dexter house talking about terrain and sort of how to work with it and stories that he has over the time when he was coaching the us women's alpine team as well as michaela schifrin um you can get notifications for these upcoming webinars we're doing them on a somewhat frequent basis or give or take every few weeks month or so you can sign up at pro turn dot io slash webinars that's one place you can subscribe on youtube clicking that little subscribe button uh or you can follow us on social media we're on facebook uh we're on instagram and twitter so just search for proturn.io and uh and then we'll make sure that the notifications get out there lastly if you do sign up on the website you can also request a demo it'll be with me or with someone else from our team and we can show you kind of through the system and how you use it this talk touches a little bit about parts of pro turn but it's largely focused on sort of different training ideas around terrain so i will hand it back to the session to brandon dykstra house thank you enjoy great thanks aleister uh nice to see dwayne and frank on it's been a long time guys hope you're both doing well um so our talk today originally our talk today was going to be transitioning from steep to flat and as i started to prepare for this i'm like well transitions can mean a whole host of things going over terrain getting light on terrain going from flats to steep steeps to flats so i decided just to make it a bit more broad to capture more scenarios so i'm going to go ahead and share my screen alistair so i thought it was pretty relevant in today's day and age to talk about progression so often we get fixated on perfection and not progression what does that mean well in ski racing for instance it quite often means 100 percent finish ratios um it means always landing on the podium you know we've been a bit skewed by today's superstars uh in their performances because in most cases it's unrealistic for our athletes to try to achieve this and more importantly i think as coaches and as as athletes we very very rarely allow our athletes to make make mistakes it will ultimately allow in meaningful growth down the road so what is perfection well i asked webster that exact question and webster told me perfection's the state or quality of being perfect and as some of you know from 2014 to 2016 i had the amazing opportunity to work with michaela schifrin and at the end of our first season uh i thought it was perfect she was ranked number one in the world in swelling she was ranked number three in the world in gs and i thought wow this is just great um two seasons prior in the 2013 season she was ranked 19th in gs and i thought this was extraordinary improvement well what i quickly learned it was extraordinary for any athlete not named michaela so at the end of the season we met as a team and we discussed how can we create an environment that fosters continuous improvement how can we make the jump from third in the world to first in the world so that led me into a world cup analysis deep dive to start that deep dive i went on fisky which i'm sure everyone in the group has gone on and i pulled all the data um all the splits all the timing from every race uh first run second run compared to competitors and tried to see if i could find patterns what i quickly learned is that ski racing like most aspects in life should never be viewed as a snapshot why is that because ski racing is never static time is always increasing or decreasing relative to your competitors and i can guarantee you that i can take any snapshot in time and make it look good or bad and quite often we see it on social media i see it in the ski racing forums on facebook where someone will take a particular athlete and say oh this is horrible because and that athlete had just won the world cup and you're going well this is kind of crazy that you're pulling out a snapshot in time um what we all know as coaches and even as athletes that there's so much to every single run and every single performance how was the sleep the night before was there any family stress how's your diet are you sick are you recovering from an injury on any given day we can have changes in weather we can have changes in course conditions and all these things impact how that athlete is going to perform and what they're capable of doing during that moment in time so after reviewing all the splits the race analysis data from 2015 i realized that that wasn't going to give me enough to make a substantial change in our approach going into the 2016 season so i started taking all the video feeds from each world cup um michaela first run michaela sackett run versus all her competitors to see if i could get a bit more granular this next clip i'm going to show you is a four gate clip from kutai a gs section against stone vinegar [Music] [Music] so [Music] so it looked like the clip um paused for a second but i'm sure everyone could see that coming over the terrain there was a bit of distance and width between michaela and fenninger what you probably didn't see was the four tenths that was lost in those four gates now depending on where splits are set up on the course and how you're actually videoing the run you may not even have known that it took place over that single piece of terrain so as i started to dig deeper um into the videos comparing with the split timing i i started to understand that hey this is there's so much more going on in a different view of what we need to look at in terms of going into the 2016 season it was unquestionable at the time like michaela is one of the best technicians that the sport has ever seen she's never had a problem turning her technique is one of the best if not the best ever um and so understanding that there was more to ski racing than just winning splits or making great turns was how we directed our our off-season training um we also learned that through this analysis on videos um there was a considerable amount of braking going through terrain from steeps to flats from course changes that we weren't always able to capture in the video or in the splits so during 20 the 2015 season i just want to explain the differences the technology we use to to analyze our training and what is available now so on any given day in 2015 we had multiple cameras so i was pretty particular of always filming from behind from the front and then from the side anyone who's watched a world cup any event on world cup knows that it's very different from the tv camera to the actual coaching camera and it's funny those similar forums on facebook where people will will become virtual coaches or quarterback coaches and they'll say oh they did this athlete did so and so and that's why they were slower that's why they won and and then you actually watched the run from the coach standing on the hill and it looks like two different sports so that's why we use so many different cameras we also had an optical timer every single day we would use uh one two yeah probably not more than two splits each day and then within those after after training we would review the training on either dart fish or video loop i'm sure everyone's familiar with both dart fish allows you great overlay features and video loop was developed from my roommate in high school and allows you to do side-by-side and do a virtual timer within your video so how is that technology change from 2015 to 2020 well i can tell you that we're still using multiple cameras per run i don't think the camera is ever going to go away probably still going to use a optical timer in each training session and we're still going to use the software to compare the videos where it has changed is that now we have real time speed analysis which is super cool so i can see out of the start how quickly an athlete's getting up to speed where they're braking how much they're braking in the speed event super g and downhill even in gs to an extent i can see changes in line through gps tracking and probably the most important change in 2020 and beyond is the new data point so right now uh with the pro turn gps system i'm able to get 5 000 new data points what does that mean that means that from from the start to the finish i can chunk any section and look at it in numerous different ways whereas before i would have my upper split my lower split and just my video camera no real meaningful data in between so pretty exciting where we're going in in the technological space i've always been a big believer in technology and what it can bring to an athlete and coaches preparation and ultimately in their performance i think in many sports we're pretty far behind obviously f1 we're really far behind but if we take our standard strength training for instance um there's some great changes in technology that have allowed us to become better coaches and better athletes currently i wear i wear a woof band 24 7 and i have all my athletes wear it as well so what that does it allows me to see how much sleep an athlete's getting what their sleep looks like what their resting heart rate looks like what their hrv looks like um probably more more important during covet times but two years ago i was preparing for this bike race in february uh february 10th and three days before my resting heart rate went from 38 to 43 and i thought oh that's that's a little bit of a jump um day after that it had jumped to 48 and i told my wife i think i'm gonna be sick day after that which was race day i was up at 58 and i was sick so just tools in our toolbox to give us more information how the athlete's feeling and ultimately how they can perform many in strength training now are using accelerometers and gyrometers b center is one that allows you to measure power and velocity similar to what we're doing with gps and ski raising and another great tool that i've used quite recently is katsu blood flow restriction device i had my knee rebuilt in 2018 and use that in the stedman clinic and it increases blood flow it floods the limbs with metabolites and hormones and really a great tool so ultimately what i'm trying to say is as technology improves and we have better access as coaches we're able to make decisions on load on sets on reps and at the end of the day i think our number one task and our number one priority is to keep our athletes healthy so how do we incorporate all of this into on snow training well i'll tell you what we did in 2015 at the end of the season and how i would do it now with the new technology so as a as i mentioned looking through the video and looking through the splits we realized there was a ton of opportunity um to work on terrain and features and terrain so that spring uh i want to say early april we toured all the all the terrain parks from vail to summit county um in an effort to learn how to arc through terrain to carry speed from steeps to flats from flats to steeps and ultimately to moving with intention both in the air and on the ground so this next clip i'm going to show you is kind of where we started and the tools that i had available at the time and how we made that progress [Music] don't snowfall [Music] no poles [Music] so [Music] [Music] park [Music] my run four with speed [Music] so probably the most fun i've ever had in ski racing just going going in and out of jumps and moving through terrain um what i learned through the whole process was that obviously strategically approaching different elements whether carrying more speed whether getting light obviously we had to do it uh make no no doubt mikhail schifrin is the franchise in ussa and probably in um fist alpine ski racing so to hurt to hurt the franchise would have looked very bad so everything we did was very slow and methodical and you could see from the first jump there she jumped maybe two feet in the air and then the next jump was maybe three feet and over the three week course we learned how to go a little faster and jump a little further unfortunately at the time i didn't have a tool to really measure it so we had to baby step our way to confidence now if i could do it all over again to go back in these parks and say that the a-line or the the small line takes a 10 mile per hour run in and the medium line takes a 20 mile per hour run and and so on and so forth i think would have really expedited our progress throughout this whole learning phase we didn't have that so we made the best with what we had um and obviously she's a phenomenal athlete so she's gonna be great doing whatever she wants but um i think of the athletes i work with now i work with two uh u16s who are don't have a whole lot of experience in the air or moving through terrain and being able to give them metrics you case that jump you were going 15 miles per hour we know that at 20 miles per hour plus you safely make it to the landing we also know that going over terrain this is where you lose time and this is what the consequences are so this year uh at loveland ski area where we typically train we would often set different splits through rollers and try to calculate our speed and see if we could take different lines to enhance that speed this is an example over the second roller this gate was quite straight and a little awkward for the athletes and so there was some hesitation coming in and you can see from from the red run to the green run which is run seven to run ten there was a significant improvement in speed and steph levy who some of you may know she's a dartmouth ski racer next to a ski team athlete quite skilled but even through the last run of the day she was able to find a huge chunk of speed just by altering line and understanding what was possible so what do i love about technology well first of all it gives us so much more to look at right now in any given run i can unlock 5 000 new data points and focus on progression right so looking looking at a pitch or jump i don't have to get fixated on did you finish and was it fast i can look at did you carry more speed and how did that feel do you think you can bring more speed in or can we move the line a meter and a half in or out depending on the different variables so we're really stopping what we used to do is measuring um improvement between the fixed points between the start and finish and being able to dig in and get really granular in what's happening in every aspect through the run the other thing we're able to see is that i i can encourage tactical changes without discouraging progress so i can have an athlete come in bring their line in a meter knowing that they're going to blow out but being able to show them that that line translated into a significant speed improvement over the previous line and then working backwards to say okay if you can go 10 kilometers faster on this line and you then on on your first line but you weren't able to finish then maybe we can massage that back a bit and learn how to generate new speed and still make it down the course um it's incredible with athletes in the terrain park now i can go down with my phone and know exactly how fast they're going into elements and into features and so i can understand what it takes as a coach to get them safely through terrain and acquire new skills and then they can look back and say i know that in the medium line i was having trouble getting over the backside of the jump and this is the speed i was taking in if i push that a little more i'm going to have greater success so we're just really understanding how to monitor what we're measuring which is fun um and then lastly understanding the entry and exit speed so often and alistar can share a story so often athletes can be faster by backing off a line coming in rounder and exiting with a more direct line through the through the exit and i think it's hard for athletes to understand that without being able to quantify that and obviously especially male teenagers you know they want to push the envelope and push the line and quite often that that it's hard to understand that being conservative can actually end in a higher top speed um so that's pretty much what i have on this alistar great thanks brandon i'm just going to quickly just launch the poll here just if you guys can get some feedback um let me get them while you're doing that and just or what you guys are doing now i'm just going to ask just a quick question here brandon like so you know you and i we've talked fair bit about this about how you know there's sort of a few situations and i've seen this like i come don't come from alpine skiing but i've had now the benefit of the last few years sort of looking at the sport from that external viewpoint and it's what's been interesting to see is where you have the coaches are often a lot of the stuff that the data can show in the coaches already have a pretty good idea like they know which athlete is losing speed over breakovers they know you know where the weaknesses and the strengths are for each of the athletes um and so you know one of the benefits i find with this tool is that we can kind of help and we can engage the athlete so i guess on this and related to the terrain like what you're doing that whole terrain park idea um how how would you structure that like is it are you looking at making it more sort of a uh play like play like you know free form in the sense of okay just get used to sort of the terrain or are you looking then i'm going to engage the athlete in terms of okay try different tactics and let's look at some specific data points like what i guess maybe the question is is it structured is it unstructured if it's structured how do you structure it like that training session in the park right right great question well i think first of all um i'm hyper sensitive to keeping athletes healthy and approaching it having some freedom in unstructured play is great but also understanding the consequences so when we started in 2015 in different train parks we were still inspecting the terrain and going slow from the first run and building up speed what we weren't able to do was understand okay we saw mchale going to come down the vale uh the vale terrain park you can carve it 20 miles per hour can you carve five miles per hour faster and what does that do to you as you're moving over terrain you're gonna get light is that gonna change the turn shape going over obviously anyone who's hit a piece of terrain without building their turn before the terrain knows what happens afterwards you get pushed down the hill and you lose your elevation so um there are so many ways to structure yesterday we were i was working with an athlete then we removed their poles in a stubby gate section so athlete felt great was making progress with his poles and then i removed the poles to add a different level of instability to skiing and blew out the first run so obviously he was a little discouraged because he didn't finish didn't feel as good because we removed some of the balance coordination points second run we went down again blew out again but it was significantly better and the athlete wrongfully or rightfully so was a little discouraged but i said hey look at your data i mean you were so much better in the gates that you've managed to complete now we just make an adjustment for the the different rhythm changes and such going down the hill so we were able to take a negative situation and really turn it into a positive situation that's what i love the most about this tool is that it's not just about a start and a finish you're able to take the good and the bad that's happening all the way in between and make adjustments throughout and as i quickly moved through uh the split data from michaela's 2015 gs season but she very rarely and most athletes very rarely win every split all the way down the hill so no matter if you're best in the world or new to the sport there's always areas you can view for improvement i was sharing a story with you yesterday how we skied 75 days in the prep period in the 2015 off season and over those 75 days we skied with multiple national teams we skied every event and during that time she never lost a single training run and um as a coach that's tough because well athleted stuff too if you're not being pushed by the timer how do you continue to find motivation thankfully for the the greats of our sport they're always going to have that motivation but if you have a u16 that's dominant and i see it all the time in vail where you have these superstar athletes come through you 12 you 14 u16 and then they get pushed out of the sport the second they're getting beat and i think it's a fault um definitely i laid blame to some of the coaches and the athletes for not looking for opportunities for continuous improvement so if you have an elite u16 and they win everything this would be an opportunity to say well from your first run to your fifth run you did get faster but you kept losing time through this rhythm change or this piece of terrain and you can start to build trends and create new focuses for continuous improvement regardless of what that finish time says all right great well thanks brian um yeah so i think for some of you guys or i think a lot that might not be too aware of of exactly how protern works you may have seen some of our videos uh feel free to on our website you can click on talk to an expert and then sign up for a demo happy to to show you more info because a lot of what brandon's just talking about is using speed um and we saw actually if you want to just quickly go back to that one slide with steph libby you can see the the speed throughout the whole course and so a fair bit of what brandon's talking about too is about um kind of looking at for each section kind of where it is i think the the instant speed so their point when they're entering a specific section a point when they're exiting um so as there's a lot of sort of playing and working with that so anyway happy to give demos if you're interested um again in the chat if you want to sign up for future webinars we have some coming up i think the next one will probably do end of may and please send me also post my email here if you have any questions please send me a note if you have any ideas in terms of what it is that you'd like the topics you'd like to have on we purposely at this point have not made these very specific on how to use features in pro turn it's more broadly around coaching but if there's something in particular that you're interested in and how you would actually kind of leverage the tool more than yeah maybe either i can help or we can get brandon or so on so awesome um no other questions so i don't want to take up too much more of your time but thank you very much everybody and uh yeah hope you guys have a well everyone in europe have a good evening and us here in north america have a good rest of your day thank you thanks happy spring training okay bye
2021-05-03