I promised my friends over at Four Seasons Produce (who all follow my skeleton antics!) that I’d have a new blog post up by September 1st, and lo and behold, here we are! Talk about the 11th hour! Truthfully, this item has been on my to-do list for ages, but every time I found the time to sit down and write it, I couldn’t find the words.
This summer has been full of changes, so I’ll fill you all in.
Summer Push Training
I returned to the Olympic Training Center back in May to start off-season training, this time with a new coach. The rocky start my to my season last year (read: losing my World Cup spot) was the kick in the pants I needed to make some changes. I’ve had success on the training program I’ve been on for the past 3 years, but I needed a program that focused more on sprint development; the push start has been my “finicky friend” for the past several seasons, and it’s an area I need to improve in. Let me tell you–this change was hard. It’s tough to introspectively look at yourself and point out your flaws.
My programming looks vastly different from what I’m used to, and from what everyone here at the OTC was doing. It almost felt wrong to take a big step back from the weightlifting aspect of my program in order to focus on sprint mechanics. It caused me to question everything, from training, to my existence, to my future.
Simply put, change is scary.
And now that we’re 46 days away from our first day on ice (<–eek!) I’m trying to make sure that I put time in each day to take a deep breath and relaaaaaax and try to be present. I panic about the future–and its uncertainty–and it brings so much anxiety that sometimes it’s hard to breathe. Anxiety about team trials, and Olympic trials. Anxiety about how badly I want to feel the emotions I saw across the faces of the athletes walking into the Opening Ceremonies in Rio.
It’s a process. Learning how to train, figuring out how your body reacts to different training and treatment, and learning how to handle the copious, fluctuating emotions you feel. It’s a process I’m learning to live with, and starting to try and learn to trust.
push from the top 