Team Killington Freestyle Mid-November Training Group

Early season training, lasting the month of November, brings the athletes back to the top form with which they finished the previous year. This is an exciting time for them as they are introduced to each other and brought up to speed on the new developments in the sport. New tricks are introduced; this is the time that they can try something without the immediate pressure of competition.

New Training Tools

One of the new training techniques/methodologies that we've put into operation this year is an improvement to our video-training program: it's a computer-based video editing system called "Dartfish." Among many features, two that jump out ( pun intended ) are the strobe and the side-by-side comparison. The strobe can be seen in the two pictures below. The program takes raw video footage and identifies common landmarks from frame to frame. It then sets the frames together into one coherent photograph.

The athlete can then look closely at form, line, body position and other particulars, can compare the phases of the trick without having to frame-advance a videotape, and can get an overall sense of the trick along with a step by step "demonstration."

Coaches can look at the picture and point out details that the judges will see, things that would be overlooked at normal speed. It is, to coin a phrase, Instant Replay taken one step further.

The other feature, which we haven't included on this page but intend to soon, is the side-by-side comparison. This takes video clips of two athletes on the same portion of the hill and blends the two videos into one sequence, making it seem as if the two are racing simultaneously. One can combine coach and athlete and demonstrate the differences in technique by examining point by point.

Olympic Training Center

Also this year, we went swimming. The team took several days at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, NY, where they skied off the plastic covered jumps into the water. It was a new experience for them - life preservers were necessary to keep them afloat with all their ski equipment! This training is valuable because it helps the skiers by greatly lessening the fear and apprehension of a missed trick. The worst wipeout in a swimming pool in summer is always less painful than the least wipeout on Outer Limits, after all.

Along with the water jumping, the trampolines and support rigs were used to further enhance the learning curve. The athletes were able to spend a lot of quality hours working on their sense of position and spatial orientation.