Freestyling into the season
Grabbing air — The snowboarding and skiing team uses more than Snowflex to prepare for the spring campaign. Photo credit: Ruth Bibby
Alhough it is still January and substantial snow has yet to fall here at Liberty University, the Freestyle Skiing and Snowboarding Team has been working hard training for its spring competitive season.
Much of the team’s training is possible thanks to the Liberty Mountain Snowflex Centre that has athletes to practice year round without the threat of summer or low snowfall yields much like this winter. However, few know that the Freestyle Team trains much like any other sport at Liberty.
The Freestyle Team trains not only at Snowflex and at other mountain resorts, but they also hit the gym to tune their turns in a different manner. The team’s strength trainer, Anaisabel Middleton, has the team up before 7 a.m. three times a week to strengthen their core and lower body.
“We train the core, because that is where your body’s power comes from, and we train each leg individually so the athletes can react quickly,” Middleton said.
Workouts have been vigorous preparing for the spring season.
“Well, for starters, I hate waking up at 6:30 a.m. but after the shock of waking up I believe the workouts are improving our team and even making us more cohesive and team-like,” sophomore Zach Bukolt said.
This spring marks the Freestyle Team’s third season, but workouts were not implemented until November 2011. This was a decision made by the team coaches, Will Scheren and Kevin Manguiob, who noted that all of the professionals in this sport workout just like any other professional athlete.
Still, there is a lot of talent and skill in the ever-progressing world of freestyle skiing and snowboarding, and physical training can only aide in this sport. In order to fine-tune the skills the teammates have, they must practice to learn new tricks and perfect existing ones.
Each athlete has one private session with the coaches a week, but the athletes are encouraged to practice as much as they can throughout the rest of the week and most practice everyday.
For the first time ever, the team has been issued Wintergreen Mountain Resort season passes to further enhance their training. Unfortunately, the unusually warm winter and low snow yields have made it impossible for Wintergreen to open their terrain park at this point, but they are hopeful to have it open in the coming weeks.