Another countdown!

Meet Cooper the small münsterländer

Another Florida trip means another countdown! I saw that not too long ago there was also a blog which I titled countdown, now it seems like I’m always waiting for the future! I definitely still enjoy the moment and live in it very much, especially since I now have a new family member! After 2 years of research, everything came together and on Wednesday we went to pick up our new puppy, who is now 8 weeks old!

Despite the fact that it will be harder to leave home this time, I’m still very much  looking forward to my trip to Florida. This is for multiple reasons, the first being that it’s in less than a month, so I have no choice but to think about it and make some plans to optimize my time there. Another reason is that I have a new set of jump skis waiting for me there. I mentioned here a while ago that I might be skiing on bigger ski’s soon, which is finally for sure, after some stress regarding when they would arrive and whether to ship them to the Netherlands or Florida… but they’re waiting for me to ski when I go to Florida now!! I’m really excited, because this is the first set of completely new ski’s I bought for jump and also my second set ever, so it’s the first time I will switch size since I started jumping. I hope and think this will help me improve, once I learn how to control them and get confident with them. Finally I am really enthusiastic about the coaches I will be seeing, some I have skied with before, but I will also ski with Whitney McClintock, which is the first time for me, so I’m excited to see how she will change my perspective on certain things and the new things I’ll learn.

In order to be in the best shape possible when I go to Florida, there is a lot of focus on diet and working out in my daily life. My personal trainer helps by giving a structure and motivation to stay on track, even when I really don’t want to work out, like yesterday. It’s even harder because it’s another couple of hours that I’m not spending with our puppy! But I really enjoy seeing the improvements, which was especially clear in Thursday’s session. When I started training with my personal trainer, we did a so-called ‘max-test’. A series of exercises targeting each part of the body separately are done for 45 seconds, with minimum rest in between. The goal is to do as many repetitions as possible. In almost each exercise, I was able to increase the number of repetitions, especially in the exercises that target the leg muscles. After acknowledging this as a weakness when we started training together, they have improved a lot, which I already noticed when doing jump drills with Ryan Dodd, but now it’s also confirmed with these results. I will keep working on this of course, but I also found a new weakness to work on, which is my flexibility. I feel like I haven’t realized the importance of flexibility and doing stretches enough, so I will work on this more than before. I want to do this using some yoga exercises as well. This helps me to stay motivated, like I said last week, because it’s another new exercise that is out of my comfort zone!

For now, it is 19 more days until I leave for my next Florida adventure!

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Motivation is key

To be completely honest, the title of this blog is simply the text that is on the shirt of my new gym outfit. It does fit perfectly into what I want to write about this week though. I often get questions about how I stay motivated in the winter and where I find the motivation to do things that will benefit water-skiing, but do not necessarily seem linked to water-skiing in the short term. Also sometimes people point out how they admire that I still stay positive and confident I will get where I want to be even though it seems endlessly far away and extremely difficult. Now this is meant as a compliment to my perseverance, but it feels like a reminder of how hard the journey can be sometimes. So for this weeks blog I will share some of the things that help me stay motivated. 

First of all, throughout the week I got more and more bored with my routines at the gym. I do quite a lot of cardio, which I already try to switch up as much as possible and keep exciting and challenging, but still seeing the gym this often in the week gets boring, for me at least. That’s why I decided to try and find more ways to get my cardio going outside. I don’t particularly enjoy running, so I was looking for another alternative, though I did end up also running to the gym, which is about 4km, so that I wouldn’t have to do my warming up in the gym. I also dusted off a pair of roller skates. After being able to do some ice skating this winter, I was reminded of how much I like that and that if you look at it as a sport rather than leisure, it is actually a good work out. Sadly the natural ice that covered the lakes already melted again, so I tried roller skating, since it is pretty similar. It had been long since I had last roller skated, but since I could still ice skate like I used to, I figured I could regain confidence soon enough. For the first time, I did a run of 6km to get the hang of it again, but I really liked the challenge and alternation with my normal routine, so I hope to expand this. 

Whilst looking for changes outside of my comfort zone to incorporate into my work-out routine, I was also faced with how driven I am to improve. I noticed it in roller skating, I track my work-out when I go, in order to go faster and further the next time. In a similar way, I stay motived in the gym. I want to be able to do more repetitions, or higher weights and push myself each day. In this way, even though it is not my ultimate goal to be great in the gym, I am motivated to improve here, without having to think ‘it will help me in water-skiing too’.  I also treated myself to a new outfit to wear to the gym, which actually motivated me as well.

Finally, as far as working towards my rather large goals in water-skiing goes which do feel endlessly far away sometimes... I think I am mainly driven by a passion for the sport. Even though I haven’t reached a goal yet, I’m happy to practise every day to take steps towards a goal. Seeing my friends reach their goals also helps a lot. It is great to see others achieve the things you wish to achieve one day, or see them achieve something that used to be my goal too. In this way I am able to celebrate my own milestones, but also those of other people, which means there’s just that much more to celebrate in a season. And lastly, maybe most importantly, I genuinely believe in my goals. I do think that if I give it everything I’ve got, I will be able to achieve the things I want to achieve, even though the progress might look, and feel, slow.

Good to go!

I feel like the Sundays come around faster and faster each week. Good news, because it’s yet another day closer to the day I leave to Florida! On the other hand, surprising, because it’s time for another blog post, even though it feels like yesterday, since the last one! Time is passing so fast, and as I was reminded off, so is my gap year. Already over half a year has passed since my gap year started. And there is only half a year left to cross off everything from my gap year bucket list!

But first things fist... a while ago I flew to France and on the plane I noticed that I felt some pressure in both my ears. As annoying as this was during the flight, I knew this could only mean one thing. In order to feel pressure build up, my eardrum must have been closed at that time. On Friday I went to the hospital to check for sure, with more reliable equipment. And yes, finally, after maybe 3 months of seeing no progression in the healing process, suddenly my eardrum healed very quickly. I’m really happy with this, because it means I won’t have to hold back on anything when training in Florida this time. I do know that this is a serious weakness that I have to consider during my training. Since my eardrum is more vulnerable than normal, as it is slightly thinner than average, I will have to protect my ears when I ski. Having had many ear infections when I was younger and having torn both eardrums multiple times with skiing is taking its toll. Any damage to my eardrum that follows now has less and less chance of being able to heal by itself. However, the important thing is that this time it has healed and I can train without restrictions from now on, if I just protect my ears a bit!

Also throughout this week, I especially missed the feeling of being on the water and having a ski to stand on. I decided to see whether there were people using the ski machine that was built by some volunteers last year. I was able to train there today alongside some other dedicated youth skiers from my club. It was great to hear what they had been up to in preparation for the season and also to share the plans and goals for coming season. It was great fun to use the ski machine again, though it will never compare to the feeling of skiing on water!

Regaining balance

When I was thinking about what to write for today, I kept looking through what I did this week to find inspiration. However, my week was pretty much just filled with working and working out and working (out) some more. Both of those are investments in the coming water-ski season, but I understand that it’s not the most exciting thing to read about, especially not week after week. Then I thought about anything that I learned or any revelations I had during the week. That is when I started getting somewhere regarding a topic for this blog. 

Story time! 
Somewhere this week, I was biking to the gym where I have my personal training sessions. This is about 7-8km away, so it is about half an hour in which I just have time to myself and get to thinking. At this moment I realized that I was getting a little bit overwhelmed with everything I had been doing. Like I said, my weeks are filled with working and working out, especially since I work normal hours in a supermarket and then also babysit for multiple families. It happens regularly that I only have time to cook and eat between work and babysitting. So a day will be make and eat breakfast, prepare lunch to take to work, eat lunch at work, make dinner and either eat it quickly or take it to where I’m babysitting. Then try to fit working out into the equation too and the biking everywhere. I’m not complaining at all, since it’s my choice to do these things, and like I said I do see them as an investment in something that’s important to me. But spending some time alone with my thoughts whilst biking I definitely felt like I was missing out on quite a lot of social occasions. Everything that I had been doing all the time involved me and were for me. I felt sort of isolated and missed my friends and family, which is ridiculous, because I’m actually home for once and not in a different country. So, since I am in control of how much I fill my days with doing things for myself, I can change it so easily. I just wasn’t aware of how I felt and that I missed doing other things, because I was completely stuck in that flow. 

When I got to my trainer, she also asked if I already started missing water-skiing. At that point I also saw that I didn’t just miss water-skiing as a sport and hobby, but also as a time where I get to feel nothing but the joy and determination that it gives. The moments where nothing else exists except the speed and the technique, the sound of the boat, the spray of the water.... yeah I miss it! I now see that it also helps with channelling my stress somewhere and clearing my mind. Over the past months I was really captivated by the goals that I have for water-skiing and how to best work towards them that I let go of the pure joy I have in it a bit too much. 

So what I learned this week... time to re-evaluate a bit. Get the balance between everything water-ski and having a life outside of that back. Since this was easy to do once I realised the problem, I immediately went to visit my grandparents today! I will also make sure I spend some more time with everyone here before I leave again. Even if I have to run to meet them in order to get all my work outs for the week .