How to Stay Strong, Mobile and Active at Any Age with Elite Ski Coach Warren Smith #600

31:46And I get that. I have to respect that because everyone's their own person. They're entitled to see life in the way that they want to. I would frame it slightly differently. It's not about obsession. It's just about basic preparation. It's about, you know, there's all kinds of beliefs about life and actually what this life actually is. Do we have one life? Is there life after death? You know, everyone's got different views on that stuff, right? Yeah. But we've only got this one body to experience this current life. Yeah. Right? And I really feel I owe it to myself. Yeah. And this experience of being a human for whatever the 90 years I'm going to be on the planet or 80 or 100, who knows?

32:29Yeah. To keep this body in as good a shape as I can so that I can enjoy things like skiing or running or hiking with my mates. so that I can help someone on the plane who needs me to lift up their suitcase and put it up for them. So that when hopefully one day I become a grandfather, I can lift up my grandchildren. And still ski with them. And ski with them. But I honestly feel on a personal level, me spending at least five, 10 minutes a day on mobility and making sure both sides of the body are equal, I guess it's a sign of love to myself. Yeah, it's longevity. It's love, but it's going to give you longevity because whatever happens is, you know, you get people, we get people certainly from the ski environment like, oh, my left knee is getting worse.

33:19And you look up the chain of the body, the chain of the body, if it's out of alignment, it isn't going to go on that longer journey. It isn't going to last to 80, 90. It's going to conk out at 70 years old because it got ground down. It was off alignment. and quite often in skiing as you said earlier that that left and right side of the body imbalance will interrupt the flow of someone's experience in the sport i i certainly know that from a personal perspective i have to on a daily basis manage my body now if i don't i will i feel it i i know that i can't usually perform to my best of ability and i can't give to the clients and it feeds back into confidence, right?

33:59So a lot of confidence comes from preparation. The more you repeat it, the more you prove to yourself that you can do it, the more confidence you start to build. You mentioned injuries before, and you've had a lot of injuries over your career, right? But

34:19you can get away with stuff when you're younger, right? You can have these big imbalances and somehow kind of sail through, right? But as you get older, injury is not just about that injury, right? Let's say you're out of something, you can't run for three months because you pushed it too hard or whatever. That three months where you can't move, it's not a neutral three months. What I mean by that is it's not only you can't do that sport that you love, by you not being able to move your body properly, your body's starting to atrophy your muscles are starting to atrophy your tendons your ligaments so even when you do pick it up again three months later you are way further behind than where you would have been had you not got that injury does that make sense?

35:07100 % there's something that happens like around the the joints the parts of the body the whole system slows down you can't afford injuries too much as you get older what happened to me wrong and I was skiing I'm not sure if I was, I mean, it was in Japan, basically. I was skiing in Japan. I was unlucky. A tip of one of my skis went under the root of a tree. Root of the tree, caught the ski. Ski moved forward. I was going forward at 30 miles an hour. But my binding of my ski didn't release for a variety of reasons, whatever it was. And my Achilles went bang, as in like shotgun sound. So I snapped my Achilles.

35:45In Japan. Was this 2010? Yeah. Mate, I've got a memory of this. And we were the first people, we kind of ground broke the whole thing in Japan, like you're not allowed to ski off-piste in the sacred trees. Well, we did that in 2008, got arrested, got my lift pass taken. We just went in the forbidden area. It turns out it wasn't forbidden. It was only forbidden because it was privately owned land or something like that. Long story short, by 2010, we'd opened up a resort of Ferano to allow us to ski off-piste legitimately. So that's the big thing. a lot of people when they learn to ski a goal for some people is to ski in the powder it's a bit like what surfing would be like for you know anyone going near the water you that sensation um so for us it was to get people into powder that that incredible um feeling around the body we'd achieved it in 2010 we'd had quite a lot of groups about 50 people going to japan with us and it sort of backfired on me because when when we did it all the security guards in the resort were being used with our groups to to delicately carefully take them into off-piste environments i was filming for vocal which is my my ski brand um and i was being filmed by a young british athlete called nick southwell he uh put the camera i skied down had a great run and then the tip of my ski, unlucky, went under a tree branch.

37:08It was out of sight and it went under the tree branch. I went flying forward. Ski stayed back at the tree at 30 miles an hour. I was traveling. And then I heard the Achilles snap. And it was an awful feeling if anyone's ever done that listening to the show. But what I had to do was get my ski back on and we waited for a little while to try and get the security to come and help me. And all the security guys are gone and it was like, oh, no. know so so we i skied down um with this snapped achilles on my on my leg and it was like one legged skiing all the way from the top of the resort down to the bottom and it was going great and i thought this is going to be fine so i just skied down very slowly on a on a blue run style piste hit a mogul field anyone that doesn't know what moguls are they're a kind of an undulating thing going up and down up and down their bumps so ski down like an inverted sort of egg container Yeah, exactly.

37:59Inverted, I can tell you the best way to describe it. Went through that with the snapped Achilles, got to the bottom, got fixed, had the surgery. But the problem with that is that Achilles that got snapped, yes, psychological effect, massive. Pain on the moment, loads. You know, having your ski boot cut off with a Dremel and that sort of thing. All of this happened. but the weirdest thing was a year and a half later I had surgery on my back my lumbar spine because the compensation of hobbling around and getting around off balance off alignment you know even with the best will in the world it has a knock-on effect the knock-on effect was in my hip positioning so everything goes up the chain everything's connected right so you're managing your Achilles not having surgery but you're walking differently you're moving your body differently.

38:50So the strain goes up after you, it was in your back, which then causes the back issue, which goes back to the point we're trying to make, which is you shouldn't, don't ignore these little nickels. Or if, I don't know, if every time you do your Saturday park run, if at 3K in, you're always getting right hammy discomfort, but you push through and you do it, great. But you keep doing that week after week, month after month, something's going to happen at some point. You've got an early warning sign saying, hey, listen, you're able to do this. Your body's strong enough and resilient enough, but there is an imbalance here.

39:28You know, go and see someone. Or maybe, you know, even if you're a runner, I would say the Ski Technique Lab program that you've got, there's sort of six core moves that we all need, right? So even a runner could go onto your website, for example, and look at them and do them. And it would help them identify these imbalances. The ski technique lab applies to nearly every other sport. Okay, so ours is just based around skiing. But the general point is it's functional movement patterns of the body. And whether you do or do not sort of understand it, once you've dipped your toe in it, you're very quickly within half an hour of trying and testing yourself, be like, oh my God, I can see, I can feel the difference between left and right.

40:08You can't unknow it. That's what I found the first time I did it with you many years ago is that once you've done it and you're like, oh wait, like to my right is super easy. 70 degrees. Right. But then to my left, it just feels stiff. You're like, you can't unknow that. Yeah. But I think fear comes in here as well, right? Because this core theme of preparation being important for skiers and non-skiers, I think is massive. The more you prepare, the more confident you become. at the same time a lack of preparation can massively contribute to an increase in fear yeah absolutely so like even on that point there the preparation that should be in there by doing biomechanical functioning testing when you apply that to let's say i'm skiing down the slope i'm going from a blue run to a red run or a red run to a black run for example for someone who's never skied before can you just explain what that means yeah so a blue run is what your your first week of your skiing is going to be on probably.

41:10Red Run would be your second, third, fourth week exploring and getting better skiing. So they're getting steeper and steeper. They get steeper and steeper and more challenging. But when you're on a slope that's quite steep and you're being tested and it might technically feel more difficult, but the outcome is like, oh my God, I'm traveling 40 miles an hour faster here. I'm dropping 40 meters where I should have only been dropping four on the descent at the slope. That can get really scary. So what wasn't prepared for from a physiological point of view, simple preparation can lead to a huge psychological challenge.

41:43And the psychological challenge sometimes can even put you off doing the sport. It can make you walk away. Or it can put you at a much higher risk of injury because you are being put into a situation or a zone which your body wasn't prepared for on one side. And that can get quite confusing. It's like, hang on a second, I can do this one way, I'm really confident. that first turn got you into a very confident place but the second turn in my world this is this is ski specific unfortunately you skied across the slope and that second turn was on 10 degrees steeper just happened to be but you unluckily were on your weaker turning direction to the left now that that that adds up that that's where you're working in terrain and working with biomechanicals yeah there's another point that for me warren which i think is really is really key, which is this idea that, so we're talking about these gradients of a ski slope, but you can apply that to, you know, just as your sport gets harder or you're running steeper and steeper hills, whatever it might be, okay, it's the same principle, but the blue slope being quite shallow, the red being a bit steeper and the black being the steepest, right?

42:52If we just take blue, red and black as a way of simplifying this. Those imbalances that you have in your system, they're still affecting it on a blue slope, but you're getting away with it. Because it's not steep enough to push you, you've got enough compensation within you to get away with it. So you think you're fine. But actually, to your eye, and I would say my eye now, you can easily see it in people on a blue slope, but they're thinking, well, I'm sailing through a blue slope my skiing's great i can ski both ways and then the reason they're struggling on a black often is because actually no you just you sort of didn't address the problems that were there even when you skied on a blue slope yeah this is brilliant what you're saying in fact if anyone wants a ski lesson that's one of the most important points is the prep work done at the lower stages i can relate to this when we do instructor training programs and you take someone who can already ski quite well back to a beginner scenario i've learned to do a snowplow and in fact someone a journalist who was who came to a ski session of ours in hemel uh the snow center which you guys in manchester have one of those as well the indoor snow dome um we were running uh a ski course and it was for advanced skiers you know in all fairness um and the lady that was interviewing me sort of said oh you know ski technique lab it's tech and it's you know lab and it's all this stuff is obviously just for advanced skiers right and i was like you know what absolutely not if anything and i was so lucky in this moment um there happened to be a beginner lesson going on so anyone like trying to dip their toe in like do i want to do snow sports you know we'll come to it later like there's one big reason from a psychological point of view why it's worth trying uh that snow sports um but in terms of what this woman saw as i know what you just said you think it's tech, it's tech, it's high tech, it's advanced, it's like this, that and the other.

44:48We saw the beginner lesson going on and it was just about to get to that stage, which some people might be experiencing this winter for the first time, where you're snowplowing, snowplow is your first part of your progression, and they were just about to learn to snowplow turn. And I said, I know you say what you say, but just watch this, these guys for the first time in their life are going to do a turn on skis. And every single person, like clockwork, thankfully for me, trying to explain this to a journalist who thought it was just advanced, naturally steered one way. Their success was so, so apparent.

45:20And they went to turn the other way. And rather than just repeating back the other direction, they swung their shoulders and upper body into that direction because something down there didn't function. Didn't work. It didn't work. And it was like, there you go, point blank. Like right at the beginning of the journey in skiing or in this sport, let's just say this sport, could be something else for someone else. It could be cycling, it could be tennis, it could be whatever it is you do in your leisure. But straight away there, it happened. Now, I relate a solution in this kind of point as well.

45:53My solution to most people is to say to them, go away and prep yourself for skiing with Pilates or yoga. But in yoga, when I go to yoga after having a break for three or four months away from it, I feel good one side and I know damn well on the other side. it is really tricky for me to hold that same stance, whether it's stability or make that same range of movement. And if anything, I almost feel quite pinched and unbalanced, sometimes painful on one side. But yoga, for me, shows it up. Fear is quite an interesting one when we think about it through the lens of skiing, right? So people are up on a mountain, which is an unfamiliar environment to many people, right?

46:39but let's say a client with you and you guys have gone down far enough where there's no real way out you've committed to getting down the mountain on skis yeah right but let's say either you or your client has suddenly got the fear or is like oh wow this is way harder we shouldn't be here but you know this is what happens in life doesn't it absolutely you still have to deal with it yeah So I guess a couple of questions, Warren, how do you stay calm in those situations? Or how do you help a client stay calm? And then the second part is, well, what do you actually do?

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50:53So to calm them down, you've got to visualize the pathway for them. If they've just seen a moment, a glimpse and don't, you know, their fear is in them because they've looked down a gradient, they don't want to ski. you take them very calmly over to that gradient and you pinpoint and you map out and say right our first process is to get ourselves to that point that's point number one okay point number two we're going to try and side slip down to this next area in that next area where point number three is we'll be able to start making ski turns in their mind in their mind they're going to turn turn turn turn to get down this slope you actually have to intervene and spell it out like a children's book literally going back into the point of like that's point number one we are stepping down here point number two is side slip point number three we're going to put in some basic turns we may even use a snowplow turn at that point but if you don't break down the map of this entry point that builds fear if it's all just chucked into like how do you know it's that yes the whole thing is how am i going to get down yeah yeah they're going to fear is going to sit in them.

51:55So it's the explanation of a real tactical approach. The tactical approach has to be broken down into bite size, smaller pieces. This run, it might only be 20 meters, but I've broken that run down into two meters there. That next three and a half meters is this part. The next four and a half is there. And every little pass, this jigsaw puzzle has a different tactic, has a different technique, has a different part of it where we're going to be holding hands to step down this little area because I don't feel I want you in an environment independently. I'm going to be your buddy. I'm going to hold your hand.

52:30We're going to step down there. And by the time you've finished it, you've segmented this horrible dark gloom into bite-sized little chunks of something that's achievable there, achievable there, achievable there. That's life, right? Yeah, totally. You end up in a sense you don't want to be in. Instead of looking at the totality of that situation or how, I don't know, my to-do list is through the roof. How am I going to get it? it's like wait a minute wait a minute you've done this with me you know you've done this with me on my physical state sometimes yeah you know and I've come to you and like Jesus yeah I've got all this going on and da da da mine's the same brainstorm you know my brain goes like that it goes over speed and doesn't stop to think sometimes so it's exactly the same I love what you said about breaking it down because that is how we get through anything in life a big problem well it's kind of five mini problems yeah right and I love that you know what you say like oh that bit you're just going to sidestep down.

53:22You're not going to ski it because the person's scared because they think they have to ski it. How will I stop the ski there? No, no, no. We'll step that bit. And then I guess what you'll also do, and I know you do this, is that you'll know that, ah, their strong turn is their one to the left. Their weak one is the one to the right. Ah, you know what? So on that little steep bit where they have to make a turn, I'm going to make sure that they are approaching it where it's on their strong side. 100%. And not their weak side. Because then you then help them build the confidence by a strategic approach.

53:54But it's in day-to-day, Rangan, because one of the things that will affect my job is part of my personal life. So I've got, you know, my youngest is almost five. My oldest is 24. And with my youngest, he's sort of neurodivergent. He's a great kid. He's always smiling, super happy. but my preparation work that I've had to learn, which I didn't actually have, you know, I didn't have it before, for him is make or break. It's make or break on whether his mood changes, if it's regulated, it's make or break in terms of what he eats and how it affects his mood. It's make or break in trying to, almost like seeing two steps ahead.

54:40Or it changes very greatly his day, which I don't want to do, and it changes mine as well because my fatigue by not prepping, planning strategically, tactically his day of his things we need to do can end in an explosion like an eruption. It's literally like skiing somewhere steep where you lost it, lost the turn and your equipment came off and you started tumbling down the hill. It's an eruption, it's an explosion. But in ski terms, you're exactly right. And it's the best explanation of that steep face where someone can only see down the whole of that radius. And if you want to sort of calculate it, it's 500 meters down and it's 70 meters across.

55:24That's what they see. And what we're talking about is literally 20 meters at a time in that space. But what do endurance runners do, or people who run half marathons or marathons when they're feeling tired, they break it down. Like, oh, I'll just go to that next lamppost. Let me just do one more mile and see how I feel. They don't think, or the best ones are not looking at, man, there's still 15 miles to go, because it doesn't help you. You have to break it right down into those small bite-sized pieces. And then, you know, you do enough of those small bite-sized pieces before you know it. You're at the bottom of the mountain or you're at the end of the race.

55:57Right? It wasn't the big thing. It was the small things. Yeah. And one thing I will say, because I've been on many of your five-day courses, because I love the approach that you and your academy take, always have done. It's always made sense to me that you do it the right way. But, you know, you guys at 10 a.m. when everyone meets up, you split us into groups. We're doing warm-ups for 10 minutes, right? A lot of people don't want to do a warm-up. It's like, what are you talking about? I've got my gear out. I just want to, let me ski now, right? You're doing warm-ups. Then we're doing low-speed braquage drills, right?

56:34Which actually are really difficult when you first do them. Yeah. Right? Because you don't have momentum. Yeah. So you're having to just in a very small area, rotate your skis around without using your upper body. But then as I reflect back now, I think that's why your flagship five-day courses that you guys run for people are just so phenomenal because you get to do all the cool, fun stuff that you're hoping, but you guys might spend the morning preparing us so that in the afternoon, we can go and do one of the cool slopes. But we, you know, going back to preparation, we prepared all morning.

57:11We built up our skills. We keep getting better. Our confidence gets higher, which means by the time you take us up there, we're like, yeah, actually, you know what? And we've also built trust in you when you're instructors. Which then it's less likely to freak us out because we built that confidence in ourselves and with you guys, right? Yeah, absolutely. another one of these universal principles that apply to skiers and non-skiers I think it's to do with perspective yeah so you are lucky enough to live in the gorgeous mountains of Verbie yeah okay so the views are stunning and you shared before that there are have been some challenges in your personal life yeah absolutely okay over the last few years yeah can we talk a little bit about perspective what what does it do for you when things are going off in your personal life yeah but then for your job you get up out into the mountains like what what do you help us understand that yeah so for me um personally having the view or the perspective of looking out and seeing when you're elevated you're sort of you're not just elevated in terms of altitude it feels like you're elevated in perspective where you can see a greater distance.

58:31And there's something just for me, and I know other people do feel this, that you're, it kind of weirdly for me, I find it difficult to switch off, right? So sometimes I'm not brilliant at sleep. Brain goes about a thousand miles an hour. And I have to like, you know, sometimes, you know, figure out a way that I'm going to get the sleep to try and get the energy back up. When I've got the perspective of a huge view and a space of like a distance, I naturally, something in me naturally switches off and unwinds. We've often done things with a charity we work with called Snow Camp. So Snow Camp is where we get a chance as skiers.

59:13So we've done all right in the ski industry. We want to give back to things that we've been lucky enough to come from. and we've taken a lot of kids who have been in really sort of rough situations it's usually london-based south london-based but the snow camp charities exist all over the uk the ones that we worked with were london sort of scenarios and we got kids out of bad environments um bad environments that were triggering them to do bad things um wasn't their fault that they were just in the place where whether they liked it or not there was a strong uh percentage outcome things would go negatively for them if you measured it.

59:49When they came out to the Alps, the same kids put into a perspective where they, let's just say their vehicle was the fact they did our ski instructor training program, right? So they came to Verbier. We sponsored these guys through Snow Camp and they did a ski instructor training program and they, it was incredible to watch how they turned up in the resort, quite edgy, quite, not chippy is the wrong word, but quite tense and stressed, you know? their natural perception and their demeanor within a week completely changed their performance their ability to perform um was excellent a lot of these kids who had survived through you know a lot of street life and broken homes came out and ended up being like the upper upper level of performance in our skiing structure training program they worked for us uh one of them came out and worked for us ended up teaching members of the royal family I was skiing with.

1:00:43And you almost couldn't explain it, but it was like, wow, you know, I'm in a completely different environment. Now, not so much to do with us and what the content of the program was. The individual you could see by perspective and elevation and distance and like, you know, forget about the postcard looking beauty of the place or a lovely chalet, but you forget about that. just the simple elevation of seeing a greater distance as opposed to the opposite of being low down with a really tall skyscraper around you whatever you want to call it but basically if you're if you're continually down there in an environment that's trapped you know that's darker it's more dingy you're boxed in and whatever and you flip it upside down and this person then gets elevated and stuck on this for us we're lucky is we're on the mountain and get even cooler when you're really high up and you've achieved and you hiked up to a peak but the mental side of that and how it physically reflected if you just look at the shoulders and someone's stance and someone's you know you've seen it where someone's got the tension in their body where it kind of for me the mountains unwinds people just switch off and everything becomes a lot more like oh i can breathe out personally i actually used it and we talk about personal scenarios i had a really bad road cycling accident in um uh 2017 when my front tire blew out and um i ended up in hospital for 10 days and shattered my hips dislocated my shoulder twisted my lower leg the wrong way around it was all sort of terrible for my ski career um and i ended up having to have therapy for it because i didn't get knocked out when i hit my bike was going downhill about 75k front tire blew out bang hit the ground quite hard and um i i i kept having these things at night where i was like i was re uh picturing it i couldn't switch the picture of and um i went to a therapy session which was labeled emdr right so and i didn't believe in it because i kind of i'm the hardest person like you know lights going like this and somebody just reminded me of clockwork orange so i was like i don't believe in this stuff them so this woman was persistent she was brilliant and she said um i went to a place called cognacity or cognicity in london anyway i did this thing sat in front of the lights and we went for a process and she was writing those notes and she asked me to pick your happy place right and at the time I was breaking up in a relationship with someone that was quite stressful and I had other factors of like my son being involved and all solutions were made and it was all ended up well and good but in her process of where she found me my happy place what is your happy place I couldn't really think of anything and I just said actually it's my balcony it's my balcony of my house where I live in Switzerland.

1:03:31And actually, I bought the house in 2002. That has been my happy place. It's been the only place I think I could go outside and like take a breath out and feel, not that I'm protected, but just feel like I've got a moment of peace, you know, a moment to let the body, let the mind sort of reset, recover. And weirdly enough, there was almost like a delayed effect of this EMDR therapy working and to this day whether it was how she used my happy place being elevated in my balcony in my view I'm lucky I've got like a 180 degree view I could see over to the face we were talking about there from my chalet there's lots of memories that are positive stuff but there's a lot about it it's like the breathing in of the fresh air you know wherever you are in the UK I can pick any number of places I choose to go to jump in the car and say right I'm driving up to the top of that the air is fresher the views more uh the emotional state of it's calmer so it's an elevation for me you know it's one of the reasons it's magnetized me towards the mountain on my day-to-day job which I love but elevation is a cure for a lot of the day-to-day that we get sort of sucked downwards into, you know.

1:04:51And I would recommend it. I'd strongly recommend it. I did a thing for one of my partners, a sponsor, Helly Hanson, and it was at Mountains. It was about getting people to go to the mountains, go to the hills. And we've got loads of them in the UK. You know, I mean, I know this goes out internationally, this show. Whichever city or town you're in, close by, you ain't going to be that far away from something which is elevated, which gives you a view back down looking at everything. It is profound. And it's, again, as you sort of mentioned, we're not all lucky enough to live in the mountains, right?

1:05:22But many of us do have access to some form of hilly area. Not everyone, of course, but many of us do. And if you can access it, if you're struggling in your life, if you're feeling stuck, if you're feeling lost, if you can't see through the problems, you think you're in the wrong job, whatever. it is amazing how getting some elevation, getting out to some awe-inspiring nature, if you can, will just start to shift your perspective. And hearing your individual experience was wonderful. And I love hearing people's individual take on what it's done for them, and how being in the hills, for example, gives them a different perspective.

1:06:07There is also a lot of science now to support it. There's science showing us that simply being out in nature will lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. So it literally changes you physiologically. There's also science showing us that when you have this big panoramic view and your vision becomes more peripheral, right? So if we're on a screen, right? Our vision is not peripheral. It's central. it's all locked in in front of us which actually if you think about it on an evolutionary level that's kind of where we look when we're stressed we're not looking around us we're just focusing on the problem at hand when people get out into nature whether it's a mountain or not frankly and if they're not looking at their phone at the same time which of course these days a lot of people are and you just soften your vision and you start to take things in from the side and more peripheral we know that that turns down the dial of your stress system yeah right your sympathetic nervous system the stress arm of your nervous system starts to come down and the parasympathetic arm the relaxation arm starts to get amped up relatively yeah right so it's not just oh it feels good it's literally change well yeah it changes you physiologically so yeah i think what you guys are doing with your charities to try and get people out to the mountains to experience this just helps people see a different perspective on life you know if you i totally agree and if you if you look into it i mean snow camp's a brilliant thing um is that s-n-o-s-n-o-w and then camp so yeah you just you go online you google um snow camp you'll find it straight away but snow camp operates at many venues around the UK.

1:07:58But even if you don't go to snow camp and you don't ski, go and have a look at where the local ski slopes are, the dry slopes, and go walk up to the top of one of them. It is incredible. In Dublin on Saturday when I was coaching there, the view that we got, just because the dry slope was situated on a hill, it has to be, right, was incredible. We saw right into the bay in Dublin. You saw more, and that was a buzz. I mean, I'd strongly encourage, I mean, this weekend I get to Verbier, right? So I'll be in Verbier, I'll be getting back in the swing of things. And the first thing I'll do is go and enjoy the altitude and the view.

1:08:37Now, elevation doesn't have to be going up to a ski resort high. Elevation could be going up 100 meters or two, somewhere around the hills, you know, anywhere you are. But take in a few deep breaths and just let your system switch off and reset. Yeah. Talking about perspective, I think about the fact that you were caught in an avalanche early on in your career. Yeah. And I'm really interested to know, Warren, well, if you could tell us a little bit about that experience and what you learned or what changed in you from going through it. Yeah. So the avalanche I was caught in, I was quite lucky, actually.

1:09:18You can be in an avalanche where you're caught in it and you're sort of a bit like being in a washing machine effect. You can end up when everything stops, head down, feet up. I was the other way around. My head was right next to the surface. Anyway, I got caught in it and I was lucky I got out. But to me, it really, it made me reflect a lot on life. I remember getting in the car that afternoon and driving to a trade show to go and see one of my ski sponsors. as like you mentioned vocal and going through your mind all that drive is like god what what if you know what if that was just a bit different what if the outcome was different what if i was further across an extra 10 meters over would have been a more intense strike by the avalanche if i was 10 meters lower would i have ended up the other way around upside down so it really woke me up um i I dealt with scenarios in skiing in my early days where I did silly things, took high risk.

1:10:16My first child came along and I definitely lowered the tone of the risk taking, but I still took the risk. After that avalanche in 2008, I definitely changed a lot about it. You know, sometimes we are just caught in the, with the blinkers on and we're just going full speed ahead with not much time to think sort of laterally or sideways. and that moment that incident definitely made me wake up a little bit think about the sort of longevity how long is life for me how long does that picture look like yeah it's kind of we're talking about avalanches and when you come close to death how it changes the way that you value life and appreciate life yeah right you have an increased sense of gratitude usually yeah But of course, skiing these days, certainly not when you guys teach or academy, which is very, very safe.

1:11:09But a lot of people out with those things, a lot of people by themselves often will go into some quite gnarly ski terrain. Yeah. I've done a couple of ski seasons in Chamonix with my band earlier on, you know, maybe 20 years ago or so. And, you know, every year people die. Yeah, 100%. usually not when they're being coached it's off doing crazy stuff usually right you've had friends I believe who have died when out in the mountains what has that done to how you view life? yeah I think knowing and seeing the repercussions it's made us try and raise awareness for sure one of the first things that when you see the damage it does when someone's taken before they should be and leave.

1:12:04It's something that affects such a big wealth of people that you want to do something about it and you want to raise awareness. And in our game, we often see scenarios nowadays where someone didn't expect it. Someone did all the preparation work, but because of the environmental element of the way the planet's warming up and the way that things are changing in the winter, preparation preparation preparation didn't always get the outcome yeah because there was some chance involved but it still remains the fact that if you can educate someone a little bit i mean our bigger issue at the moment is temperature shifts so we are getting now in a winter season unless like you said more and more people have have um uh have been caught in avalanches in recent years especially but in january last year you've got a temperature shift of minus 10 to plus 10 in the space of 24 hours that that's too much and what people are not understanding yet not to my knowledge in terms of the degree of the volume of people who want to understand it is that you know it's the the temperature shift that's making the snowpack week which wasn't there 20 30 years ago now it is we've got to be more aware of it and if there's one thing that someone's life being taken in the mountains in an avalanche has done for me is waking up the idea that let as many people know about it as we possibly can educate people help them prepare you know help them realize that there's a set bunch of pointers you've got to check before you go there and it comes back also to greed and want and desire for you know you now look at a traverse line to traverse into a beautiful off-piste imagine that lovely open powder field and there's tracks in the powder field but do you traverse the extra 10 or 20 meters to get something that visually had a perfect flat surface but above you took a huge amount more risk and risk to life because you were just a bit too far out in that risky zone or do you sort of back away from it a little bit and say I'm going to ski this line it's still awesome it's 90 % of the awesome that the one that took high risk was going about the 10, 20 meters further across.

1:14:18They're the bits we want to get across to people. And that's playing with a few different like technical knowledge of the mountain, but also the ego as well. And like, do we go and grab that part? I mean, I certainly know that the client of mine that wants, wants, wants, wants, get that, got this, got to grab it, take it home and turn the trophy on it on the Instagram photograph on their phone. That's the extra 20 meters that can cost the life. and so we're playing with technical knowledge but also ego yeah it's amazing greed and desire get humans into all kinds of problems when unchecked yeah yes on a mountainside yeah but also in life yeah yeah you know that desire for more yeah you know i want to keep pushing i want more i've got enough already but i need more i need more money more promotions more whatever you know again it It depends on what your start point is.

1:15:10It depends where you are in life. But I think one thing humans are not very good at is knowing when enough is enough. Yeah, yeah. And it's something, you know, I've said it before on the show, but I can't reiterate enough. One of my very favorite phrases is from the old Chinese philosophy text, the Tao Te Ching. True wealth is knowing what is enough. Yeah, yeah. And I think about it all the time. What does enough look like? Because often the quest, the greed for more starts to decimate what you already have. And of course, on a mountain, that could be fatal. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's really important is to get some form when someone's learning in our world of this is your expectation.

1:15:54This is what we're going to go for. The problem in the modern world is the videos you watch online. The videos you watch online now, every kid coming up age 15 to 20 have got to prove themselves because the videos are so much more extreme. They're jumping off of a bigger cliff. They're doing more backflips. They're skiing powder in the most remote places. Then it's coupled with the ego and the expectation of what their Instagram feed compared to their mate's Instagram feed is looking like. And what at risk have they got to take to go and get the better picture? It's really important education at this stage.

1:16:31It's where education is key. It's where education kicks in and says, right you've got to learn um like we work with we uh we mountain we mountain is a bit like if anyone's dived it's a bit like the paddy uh explanation book for off-piece knowledge we've got to get people with more off-piece knowledge and when they get that knowledge they pass that knowledge on definitely pass it on to your friends and family once you've got the knowledge you can then go and exercise your technique and practice it safely but within all of those elements you've got to respect the current situation of what the weather history is like you can't just get out there and just run for the mountains like you used to you've got to have preparation so much more so now because we're dealing with a different type of media we're dealing with a different type of expectation that you've got to be you know putting out this content on your on your on your instagram which is crazy in our environment it's just like a mega risk take inside of things, coupled with an environment that's a hotter planet, you know.

1:17:32So it's like, it's really difficult to manage that. But the best we can do is make people better, technically, prepare better in what they do. But respect now, like more so than ever, respect the mountain itself. Because that, there is no, the mountain doesn't forgive, you know, you get one chance to sort of look at it and treat it the way it should be treated. But it's really important to respect that as someone who's been a coach for several decades what would you say is the number one skill that you need the number one skill to ski no the number one skill you need to be a good coach oh wow listen i mean for me it's listening and understanding the person because my job is to give that person a great experience and it's very easy to get carried away because we've got the knowledge to give them all the right ingredients but you've really got to know who the person is you're going to coach and what their expectation is you've got to listen to not just verbally listen to them but listen to the the way that they portray themselves their expectations what they want to get gained from it what their history and their profile is listen to what they've done listen to the fact of they have they done a lot of sport in the past are they fragile are they agile are they you know are they confident are they underselling themselves what type of it a person is it you know so the the listening game covers what way more than audio way way more than audio i think that's the same thing i would say as a doctor i think the number one skill is your ability to listen yeah listen without preconceived ideas yeah when i could talk to you for hours um i love what you have given to me over the years.

1:19:20I love what you brought to the ski industry and I love the fact that you are keen to get these principles, particularly around our body, around our biomechanics, out to everyone, skiers and non-skiers alike. If people want to find out more about you and sort of ski with your academy or get hold of this gorgeous ski technique lab sort of program now, where should they go? So, I mean, that's a big question there. Yeah, 95 % of people don't take ski lessons, 5 % of people do. So in terms of the millions of people that ski, if you're a skier that doesn't take ski lessons, the Ski Technique Lab that sits within our academy, and it's called the Warren Smith Ski Academy, you can Google that.

1:20:03But the Ski Technique Lab is the content that will help someone that doesn't take a ski lesson improve their skiing technique just because of being better at functional movement patterns. And there's an understanding that goes with that. You can find a lot of that content online. If you are a person that likes ski lessons, the chances are globally, you probably might not be skiing with us. You'd be skiing with a ski school, in a resort, wherever you go. If you're going to invest money in a ski lesson, we'd urge you, like beg you, to go and work on the functional movement patterns of Ski Technique Lab.

1:20:37Because if you do so, the value for money at your ski lesson will be at least doubled because the one side of the body is going to absorb it, which might not have done. And it goes the same for someone buying ski kit as well. You know, one side usually works better than the other. If you are skiing with us, fantastic. You know, come and say hi. We're based in Verbier. But also we're quite often accessible in the UK at the snow centre in Hamelhempstead and the snow centre in Manchester. And these are brilliant indoor ski venues that give someone the chance to ski on real snow, which is unusual.

1:21:12And this sort of new magazine, well, it's not a magazine, it's your Ski Technique Lab expert program, which I love. I'm looking through it and although it revolves around skiing, you think, well, actually anyone's going to benefit from trying to do these simple exercises. If they go to your academy websites, can they find the Ski Technique Lab stuff and this little program on there? If they go to our academy website, along the top bar, there's an option that says Technique Lab. And if you go to Technique Lab, you'll find the content in there. One of the things will evolve and people can do is if they don't get a chance to ski with us is run an online coaching session with somebody.

1:21:51And that's a way that, okay, I'm not going to Verbiere, I'm not going to get a chance to see you guys. But if you want to access and work through the functional movement patterns, you can hire us, you can book that online. And quite often, that might be all you need. It's been so fun talking to you. To finish off, Warren, for that person who's been listening, and let's say that they don't ski. Yeah. but they want to stay active and there are sports that they want to do but feel that they can't do because they're scared or the state of their body or whatever it might be you are an elite coach for that person what would you say to them?

1:22:33I would say to get out there and try I would say that you you have to look at the idea of your sport you want to do how you're going to prepare for that sport and in the preparation phase that we've been talking about you know being functional and moving movement itself is something that will improve so many elements of life if you choose a sport and let's just say you want to be good at paddle or running or whatever it might be go behind the scenes of your body you know go behind the scenes and see what your body can do you're going to quite often as we've been mentioned throughout today's talk, you're going to find a difference between left and right side of the body.

1:23:14Once you've identified it, you might find that it was only one side of the body that drew you away from something that stopped you going there. And you can make the changes in that. You can make it balanced, but you can only make it balanced by finding out about it first. That's how we've made our life and our business work in skiing. In terms of that word, in terms of preparation, I think the big thing for me personally is um you know I've got through areas of my life where outside of work in personal life with preparation I've learned to be a better dad with preparation I've learned to manage my time and try and find a balance between sort of work life um and home life which is a really important thing for me um and then the other part I think from today from what I would advise to someone is I want to personally, and you were saying the same, I want to do sport until I'm older, much, much older.

1:24:10I want to enjoy all these things for as long as I possibly can. And if you get to work at it right now, but trying to look at what your body's capabilities are, your machine will go on lasting longer and longer and longer. But if you're grinding down one side of your unbalanced body, you're going to know about it. And those joints won't last forever. yeah love it Warren fantastic advice it's been fantastic having you on the show such a fun conversation I really hope we get to have a little ski adventure at some point over the winter absolutely and until next time I'll ski you later mate ski you later I like that cheers mate

1:24:53really hope you enjoyed that conversation do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect.

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