Big Air Chronicles

Big Air Chronicles

By Emily Cook

Blogging is a difficult thing, especially for an athlete. Sharing the most personal of thoughts in a publicly read forum seems almost dangerous as I write this, and personally is something I have been taught my entire life as an athlete, not to do. But, here I am blogging for Park City Magazine, with the intention of it being beneficial for you, the readers, as well as for myself. For the next few weeks I'll do my best to let you into the world of an Olympic athlete preparing for the most important year of my career, leading up to the 2010 Olympics.

I've heard it said that athletes are a closed door; we share only what the media wants to hear, but how else are we expected to act after all that we have been taught as human beings and as athletes? As a young gymnast, I learned to bottle my emotions. I learned that showing fear or pain is an athlete's virtual demise, and there is certainly sometimes fear and pain on the road to the top of any worthy venture, especially in a sport that requires flipping and twisting on skis 40-60 feet in the air. We are all protective; to keep our thoughts internal can be natural, and a form of self-preservation for most people.

Were my coaches right to teach me as a very young girl to bottle my emotions? As surprising as it is to watch myself write this, I say 'yes' on one level. Any real acknowledgement of either fear or pain in the gate of a major competition or a training day can be debilitating and even dangerous for an athlete. So, though I cherish my overly emotional personality, and know that it makes me who I am as a human being, I am working thoroughly and intentionally to balance that component of my personality, especially while on the hill, in order to free up every ounce of physical ability that I have in my body to do my sport.

The specifics of that are much more detailed than this first blog has space for, but this week emotional control will be of the essence, as I do the very first of a brand new trick on the aerial hill in order to prepare for our next World Cup in Lake Placid, New York and of course right here in Deer Valley, Utah at the Visa Freestyle International in just over two weeks.

Though I wish I could say that doing a new trick is going to be a piece of cake, I can promise you that nerves will be present as they always are when approaching any challenge. My job now is not to bottle my emotions, but to use them to my advantage … to acknowledge that being nervous to do three flips and two flips on skis on snow is perfectly natural, and to use the skills that I have been working so hard on, to bring balance and harmony to this challenge.

Physically, when under stress, our heart wants to race, muscles want to tense up and mind wants to go a million miles a minute. The body is miraculous in what it does to protect itself when it senses danger, and these reactions can be harmful or beneficial depending on how we deal with them.

My job is to control, not eliminate, my emotional reactions everyday. When nature turns its head and the wind blows the wrong way before a jump, when training gets rough, or when I'm in the gate at a big event, my job is to slow my breathing, relax my muscles and control very precisely every thought that goes through my mind … filtering any potential invaders of the positive self-talk I have been trained to use, all the while, flipping and twisting through the air. Wish me luck on this adventure and be sure to check back soon to see how it went!

Olympian, World Cup winner and U.S. Champion, Emily Cook was born in Massachusetts where she first started skiing and became hooked on freestyle aerials. She has been on the U.S. Ski Team for 12 years and has lived in Park City, UT since 1999. Cook is often found training at the Utah Olympic Park.