Surf week

I just finished a 1 hour massage, so I am completely relaxed and clearheaded, thus its the perfect time to recap on another amazing week in Florida! 
I spent this week living with the pro's. We had 5 days of training with Ryan and Breanne Dodd, naturally the focus was a little more on jump and slalom than on tricks, since it's not everyday that you get to ski with the champion of the world. This week was truly a great investment for my jumps to come, because I've spent 1 or 2 sets each day doing drills. One of the drills was the same as I had learned from him when he coached the Dutch team back home. I did notice a huge difference whilst doing this drill though, because at the end of the set, my feet were hurting from the tight bindings, but my legs were not that sore. This is definitely not because I was giving less effort than before, if anything the cuts I was making were more controlled and stable than the first time round. I believe its due to the training I've been receiving from my personal trainer, because the first sessions I did with her she already noticed that my legs needed more development. We have worked hard on strengthening my legs throughout the sessions, which many times made it hard to bike back after training. However, noticing the difference whilst doing those drills this week, I am more than happy with taking twice as long to bike back from training as I did biking there! This is not to say that the drills didn't tire my leg. Even though I didn't really feel it whilst skiing or after, I definitely felt it during the massage and so did the masseuse. He said my right leg was very tight and that my left leg before he massaged it felt the same as my right one after working on it for a few minutes.

Aside from jump drills, I also did some free skiing in slalom. Free skiing was new to me this summer when I did it with Anthony in France. Now I did a different type of free skiing, which makes it easier to make adjustments to my technique, since there's no distraction from the bouys. This really helped later in the course, but I could also feel it get better and better with every cut I made, which was a great feeling.

Even though skiing is great and I probably could do it non-stop for more than a month, it's still fun to do some other stuff when you spend a month only focussed on skiing. Therefore it was so much fun when we went to the beach to do some surfing. This was the first time I had ever gone surfing in the ocean, mainly because it is almost never possible in the Netherlands, especially where I live. It is something I had been wanting to try, but never got round to, until now! It was much harder than I thought and requires more timing, strength and endurance than I thought. Luckily with some coaching, I managed to catch a couple of waves, that was sooo awesome. Sadly, since all of us were surfing, there are no pictures or videos, so I have a good excuse to try surfing again. Back home it was definitely time for a break. Still we wanted to go out and do something, preferably on the water of course, so we decided to go wake surfing behind the boat. Another type of surfing that I had never done before. Again it was hard to learn at first, but when I got the hang of it, it was really fun and we were on the water till the sun set, like we did surfing the ocean.
Aside from all the things I learned in skiing and surfing, I also pulled my first slalom skier through the course. Admittidly, this requires some more practise still, but I'm happy to say that I added 3 new skills to my life! Coming week is promising to be exciting too, as my birthday is coming up, but for now I am going to enjoy the effects of my massage!