ACTIVE WARMUP/SPATIAL AWARENESS

ACTIVE WARMUP

Safety also includes basic physical fitness and using proper techniques to avoid injury. This ranges from taking a few minutes to stretch after periods of inactivity, to warming up before harder runs. After all, no one wants to tear their ACL or suffer another season-ending injury.

While we can’t control our guests levels of fitness, we can utilize Active Warmup with all of our lessons to help reduce the risk of injury. These exercises should strive to replicate movement patterns that we use while skiing or riding, and should not just be a random set of exercises.

For suggestions on exercises, please see a supervisor or trainer.

SPATIAL AWARENESS

In addition to participating in Active Warmup, we should also make sure that we are practicing good Spatial Awareness at all times. By doing so, we can avoid potential collisions and entanglements and ensure that both us and our guests have a safe lesson. A great way to help practice and improve Spatial Awareness, as well as further engage our guests, is to incorporate Spatial Awareness games or activities into our lessons. The following is a list of possible exercises:

  1. Color of the day—pick one, have everyone look for that color all day.

  2. Peripheral awareness— Have pairs of pros stand one behind the other. The pro in front keeps their eyes fixed on a point ahead of them, the one behind holds their arms out to the sides. They move their arms forward until pro in front can see their hands using only their peripheral vision. Pro standing behind should try moving their arms up high and down low as well.

  3. Try above activity with goggles on and off.

  4. Stand in a safe spot by line-up. Watch skiers/riders coming down and try to guess where they will be in 10 seconds.

  5. Have pros work in pairs. Have one pro vocally command the other to walk in different directions and stop on command. Moving in different directions and giving a variety of movements can hasten the development of your movement-based spatial awareness, because it teaches the brain to spatially orient the body in more than one way. Moving just backward and forward or to the left and right can limit spatial awareness development.

  6. Practice focusing on objects at different distances. This exercise is best done outside during the day. Start by focusing on an object within three feet of you, look at it until it comes into sharp focus and then look away. Immediately focus on an object that is about 30 feet away until it is as clear as possible, then look away at an object 500 feet (one block) away. Once that object is sharp then look at an object at the horizon (maximum visual distance) for a few seconds and then look back to the object within three feet and repeat the cycle. You can do this exercise up to 10 times once or twice a day. Being able to easily focus on objects at any distance is useful for everyone to avoid eyestrain, but strong focusing skills are particularly helpful to tennis, baseball and hockey players.

  7. Focus on an object in your extreme peripheral vision as long as you can and then rest and repeat, alternating eyes. This exercise strengthens the muscles that control your peripheral vision and improves your ability to recognize objects in your outermost visual range. Developing your peripheral tracking abilities will help you in just about any sport.

  8. Hold an “I Spy” scavenger hunt.

This is only a partial list. For more examples or suggestions, please speak with a supervisor or trainer.