What Are You Actually Preparing For?

There’s something about the first week of September that always feels like a reset.

For many families, it’s back-to-school week. The summer holidays are finally coming to an end, routines are starting again and, after weeks where everything seems to operate at a slightly different pace, there’s a definite sense of getting back to normal.

And perhaps because I work in skiing, September also feels like the point when winter starts to become real again.

The ski conversations begin to pick up. Holidays that have been vaguely discussed start getting booked. People begin thinking about their fitness, digging out equipment or wondering whether they really will do those pre-ski exercises they promised themselves they’d start earlier this year.

There’s a sense of preparation beginning.

Which has made me wonder about something.

What are you actually preparing for?

It sounds obvious. A ski holiday, presumably.

But that isn’t quite what I mean.

What do you want the experience of skiing to feel like this year?

Because we tend to be very good at preparing for what we’re going to do. We book the flights, arrange the transfers, organise childcare, sort out our equipment and perhaps work on our fitness. We think about where we’re going to ski and who we’re going with.

We spend much less time thinking about how we want to feel when we get there.

And perhaps that matters more than we realise.

I've spoken to skiers who are already thinking about their first day back on snow months before it happens. They know that first chairlift will come with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. They're wondering whether their legs will remember what to do, whether they'll feel as confident as they did at the end of their last holiday, or whether that familiar voice will appear again asking, “What if I can't do this anymore?”

For someone learning to ski as an adult, preparation might look completely different. They may not be trying to get back to where they were. They might simply want this holiday to feel different from the last one. Less pressure to keep up. Less comparison. More confidence to say when they need a break or when something feels too much.

Then there's the skier who knows perfectly well that they can ski. Perhaps they've skied for twenty or thirty years. Their technique hasn't disappeared, but something has changed. An accident, an injury, a difficult experience, a long break or sometimes nothing they can clearly identify has left them questioning themselves in a way they never used to.

And preparation for someone who wants more from their skiing might be different again. They may be comfortable on the mountain but know that they hold back when they're under pressure, become frustrated when they make a mistake, or don't quite ski as freely as they know they can.

Different skiers will arrive at the start of the season wanting very different things from it.

Which is why I'm not sure that simply saying “I want to feel more confident” goes quite far enough.

What would confidence actually look like for you?

Would it mean getting on the first lift without that familiar knot in your stomach? Choosing a run because you want to ski it rather than because everybody else does? Being able to have a wobble without deciding the whole day is ruined? Trusting your technique on steeper terrain? Speaking up when something doesn't feel right? Or perhaps simply enjoying your skiing without constantly assessing how well you're doing compared with everyone around you?

None of those answers is more impressive than another.

And that's important, because ski holidays have a funny way of acquiring expectations.

We can start measuring a successful week by how many kilometres we covered, which runs we skied, whether we tackled something difficult or whether we kept up with the strongest person in the group. Sometimes those are exactly the things that matter to us. Sometimes, without really noticing, we've borrowed somebody else's definition of a good ski holiday.

Preparing ahead gives us an opportunity to decide what our definition is.

Before the lifts open and before you're standing on the mountain surrounded by everybody else's opinions, expectations and plans for the day, you can ask yourself what a successful ski holiday would actually look like for you.

Perhaps you want to ski that run you've avoided for the past three years. Perhaps you'd like to stop apologising every time somebody waits for you. Maybe you want to enjoy skiing with your family again, push yourself harder, trust your decisions more, or recover more easily when something doesn't go quite as planned.

Or perhaps you simply want to come home thinking, “I really enjoyed that.”

Once you know what you're preparing for, you can start preparing for the right thing.

That might mean improving your fitness. It might mean booking some time with a good ski instructor. It might mean having an honest conversation with the people you're travelling with about what you want from the holiday.

And sometimes it might mean doing some work on your mindset and confidence before you arrive, rather than waiting until you're standing at the top of a slope for all those familiar thoughts and feelings to return.

Because confidence doesn't have to be something we only pay attention to once it's disappeared.

We can prepare that too.

For most of us, there are still a few months before we click into our skis again. And that's actually quite a gift.

September gives us time. Not just to get fitter or organise the holiday, but to think about what we'd like to be different this year, and to do something about it before we're standing on the mountain wishing we'd thought about it sooner.

So while you're thinking about the squats, the ski servicing and whether last year's salopettes still fit, perhaps add one more thing to your winter preparation.

Ask yourself:

What am I actually preparing for?

Not which resort. Not which piste. Not how many days.

What do I want skiing to feel like this year?

Because once you know the answer to that, you have something much more useful to prepare for.