CARA BROWN

It is always when something comes to an end that you give yourself time to reflect on it. I find myself in that position shortly after the end of my ski racing career. While I am proud of many of my accomplishments, there are a few things which I know really made a difference. I would like to pass on some of my thoughts which I think could be useful to future champions! I started skiing from a young age with my parents but I didn’t actually start ski racing until I was 12. I went on ski holidays, I skied on the slopes, in powder, soft snow, hard snow, in good weather and bad. I didn’t know it at the time but being able to “ski the mountain” was a skill that would win me quite a few races, plus give me the results to qualify for World Championships. I always performed well in bad weather. It wasn’t that I skied better, I just skied the same and everyone else skied worse. Thanks to skiing in all kinds of weather as a kid, I didn’t see the difference!

I really enjoyed my first ski camps, I thought going through the gates was great fun and I wanted to do more of it. However, skiing isn’t something you can do every day unless you live in a ski resort. Instead I did other sports like athletics, boosting my speed and power, figure skating, making me more flexible and improving my balance, tennis helped my reaction times and coordination and swimming kept up my general fitness levels. At the time I just thought these were all fun things to do but by doing a range of sports I was building up a range of skills.

At 16 I went on my first fitness camps with the Scottish Ski Team. I was really lacking an understanding of the muscles used in ski racing and the kind of strength training my body needed. I had never lifted any weights so I had to learn good technique and form. It was really important to learn the correct movements so I didn’t do myself more harm than good. Over the next few years, I slowly started to make lifting weights a more frequent part of my fitness training. I wish the concept of consistent and beneficial strength training had been introduced to me at a younger age. It is a skill that takes years to perfect and results do not come overnight. I have learnt that at high level races the person winning is usually the fittest one in the start gate.

Thanks to my interest in fitness and the importance it had in my skiing career, I have just set up VC Ski Fitness, an online ski fitness company, with Vivian Fonseca, one of the UKs most experienced fitness trainers. We have identified problems faced by skiers of different levels and created the solution. More than just a strength program, we also focus on balance, agility, coordination and technique.

There will never be a perfect formula to become a champion because champions are constantly evolving to be better than their predecessor. Being fit will carry you far and understanding and listening to your body will make you a better athlete. I have found though that ultimately the thing that kept me ski racing over the years was because I loved it. The reason why we all ski is because it is great fun and it makes us happy. No matter what age or level you are at, never forget why you started.