Keep learning

As promised to myself, this week I have taken some steps towards planning out the next year and especially the season. Since I have the ambition to go to university in the US, I have to take a standardized test on top of my high school diploma. This week I signed up to take this test in May, so still plenty of time to prepare for that, but at least I wont be late in applying. Furthermore I did some research into what else I need to know regarding applying to a university there and the deadlines. I will also apply to the university in the city where I live now as a back-up plan. I've put off doing this for long, because I didn't want, or better didn't want to need, a plan B. I'm so focussed on reaching my goal of joining a waterski team at an American university that I didn't want to think far into what I would do if I can't make it happen, because I just want to make it happen!

There seems to be a trend in me learning things this week, because another really interesting thing that happened was a sort of lecture by the federation's physiotherapist. The focus was put on preventing some common injuries that happen to waterskiers and wakeboarders. One of the injuries we focussed on was tearing ligaments in the knee. It turns out that often whilst jumping or walking the stairs, or even biking, the knees have a tendency to go inwards. When this happens after for example jumping off the ramp in skiing, it increases the possibility of getting an injury. I was never aware of this and

thus I wasn't sure if my knees were doing this too. I immediately looked up a video of me jumping and saw, I must say to my surprise, that my knees fell inward at the landing, and pretty obviously too... I was shocked by this and thus wanted to test it later this week in the gym. I jumped up on the box to see if I could focus on keeping my knees straight under my hips. This went pretty well, so I hope it will be something I can think about during the season whilst jumping too.

The following part of the evening was presented by a sport psychologist. Going to this evening I was excited about this part, even though I didn't know quite what to expect. Like I said last week, I really want to improve the mental preparation of my tournaments throughout next season in order to perform better. I was hoping to learn something here that would help with nerves before the competition and overall to learn more about the mind-set you should have when performing at a high level. Of course this is something that is very individual, but there was a good explanation of how the psychological side of things work in general and how you can change thoughts in a small way in order to help your performance and training. For example to try to find a positive alternative to all negative thoughts, negative thoughts being anything containing not or can't. So rather than thinking don't fall, think of which tricks you will stand up. Also a large emphasis was put on the benefits, if not necessity, of visualization. This can be a training for when you cant be on the water, for just before a competition, all to help you know exactly what you have to perform, how to do it and when to do it. This was interesting as well, since in the ski and wake magazine we have in the Netherlands, this was emphasised a lot as well. All in all, a great day, even just from the fact that more and more is happening with the water sports community, but also because some genuinely interesting and useful things were discussed.

Since I'm talking about the educational things that happened this week, I want to add one more thing. It isn't waterski related, but it's a new experience and learning moment that I still want to share :) It has been snowing, hailing and overall been pretty cold over the last couple of days. Today, the roads were not cleaned, so when driving home from the gym, my dad decided it was a good time to teach me how to drift. We went to the parking area of the lake where I ski and he told me to drive away full speed, see what happens. That was the first time I saw the skid sign in the car. Afterwards it was time to purposefully make the car lose control in a turn and try to get it back in the right path. At first it was rather counter intuitive to drive in such a way that I would lose control of the car, but after he showed me that nothing would happen, I skid away in the turn. Aside from the fact that this was a fun new experience, I also know now how to regain control if I would be driving and lose control over the car.

Generally it was a good week in terms of learning new skills and gaining knowledge, which I hope to continue doing more off until I go off to university. This is because I also want to utilise my gap year to gain life experience and some new skills rather than just learn new things in skiing. I'll be looking out for ways to challenge myself and experience new things like I did in Florida and over the past week.