Learning Flow from an Extreme Ski Guide

Jenny Zaremba

This weekend, I was lucky enough to spend time in an online seminar with Dan Egan, Extreme Ski Guide and USA Hall of Fame Extreme Skier. His insights were gold-dust and so I felt that I should share a little of the insights that he gave me as a coach to support athletes in search of the ever-elusive ‘flow’ state.

Dan talked of how he works with skiers who come to him for a weekend of extreme skiing – how he works with them in order to create the best ski experience of their lives, what he thinks of as the ‘coach’, and how he works on interacting and communicating with his clients such that they feel able to ski the best they have ever done, and on the most challenging terrains they have ever visited.

He articulated 4 elements of the Peak Performance diamond – coming together in a ‘flow’ experience where the skier is simultaneously in their body experiencing the smooth and beautiful movement, and also slightly above themselves watching their smooth and perfect movement down the mountain. This ‘flow’ is the experience that all athletes work for – it is an elusive grail, that even once experienced cannot be easily re-created on demand. It takes a lot of things to come together.

So what is Dan’s recipe? He has a 4 point diamond:

  1. PURPOSE – Why are we here? What specifically do we want to do?
  2. EMOTION – Our foundational attachments to beliefs about ourselves and the world.
  3. COMMITMENT – The courage to go for it, and how far it is before our ‘freak-out’ point!
  4. TECHNIQUE – Understanding the choices on pace and solutions, in the context of the environment, to get the outcome that we want.

I learned so many brilliant coaching techniques in each of these four areas that help his athletes to get into the moment, deliver technique under pressure; free of the critical mind. To turn their skis down the fall-line of the mountain, settle into the terrain and get into flow.

There was so much that is directly transferable into triathlon coaching. It was a brilliant seminar – and I cannot wait to work with some of Dan’s techniques.