SMS Snowboarders are Back for the Hardest Season Of The Year.

Sunrise, five days a week. Sweet.

Great to have everyone back on campus and finally getting to get started with the new team. New PD. So many graduates and so many new kids taking their turn. Big in the youth department, ("Breakers" in usasa lingo. We usually have two or three. We have four for full-term and five on the way for the winter). Four senior boys, zero senior girls and our roster is full! These near total reloads are one of the toughest things to continually face as a coach but also what keeps it fresh. Early spring in the cycle of a team.
We took this opportunity to change up our fitness testing and preceded it with a functional movement screen on every athlete. The concept briefly is to identify weakness and imbalance in an athlete's basic movement patterns before training on top of that pattern. Then we add appropriate movement prep and stretches to begin our training sessions and teach the body to fire muscles in the correct sequence, i.e. stabilizers first. Accordingly we removed a couple tests that are not functionally appropriate to our sport and added a couple that don't simply stress poor patterning while testing fitness or toughness. Some people think that if one can test well even with a funny pattern "than why change it?" but the consensus opinion is that this will lead to injury, "topping out" in performance and the great American sore back.

Tanner Barret took the beep test to a higher level.

Hunty doing doubles on the old fasioned tramp.

So then we changed out the 1.5 mile run for the "beep test". The sit-up test is now the 7 level sit-up test. Girls now do box jumps for the same amount of time as the boys since their are no girls' pipes and no girls' jumps. Finally we dropped the bench press and have measured each rider to acquire their PHV. Peak Height Velocity refers to an individuals' maturation peak and helps us implement the appropriate training for each. All of these changes make it safer for us to help the athletes train for power and performance they can use on snow. This is the hardest time of year for a bunch of kids who mostly just want to go ride. When the workouts are tougher in the later fall they will be significantly stronger physically, more stable in their techniques and movements and mentally familiar with the difference between good and bad discomfort. Support them. Love them and understand the occasional crankiness.