The weirdest thing happened late Tuesday night as I snowboarded with my friend Vera at Mt. Holly. I was all hopped up after coming home from Steamboat Springs combined with watching a lot of Olympic snowboarding.
As I carved down a run, I saw a roller and took a lot of speed into it. A thought flashed in my mind of doing a spin off it from my heel side. Before I could fully process the thought (i.e. Is that safe? Should I be doing that? What if I wipe out?) my body had already made the decision and spun itself in the air, sticking the landing.
At the bottom of the run, I excitedly told Vera I had done an unexpected 180 off the roller. She told me, “No, you did a 360!”
I’ve never had this experience before where, honestly, my body overrode my brain and sent it into autopilot, forcing me to do something. It was indescribable.
The rest of the night I popped off rollers, taking airs and remembering my freestyle/16-year-old snowboarding self.
Maybe it’s time to let up on the carves and start focusing on the spins. 🙂 🏂
That makes total sense Michael. I think I always have the best performance climbing when I stop thinking and just relax into the doing of it. Alas sometimes it is hard to push past all the noise and the residual anxiety of the day. – sam
I hear ya! That’s why I love sports like climbing and snowboarding. They tend to block everything out while we’re doing them. I always think of them as “single-thought” activities. It was really great climbing a few weeks ago! We gotta do that again!