#81 Chris Heron: The Path to Balance and Well-Being

Episode Transcript
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Intro (00:02):
Lynn, Welcome to Creative spirits unleashed, where we talk
about the dilemmas of balancingwork and life and now here's
your host. Lynn Carnes,

Lynn (00:19):
welcome to the creative spirits unleash Podcast. I'm
Lynn Karns, your host. My guestfor this episode of the podcast
is Chris Herron. He's thedirector and head coach of water
ski and wakeboard Scotland, butnot only is he a coach, he is
also the three time ScottishNational Water Ski champion. Now
this podcast happened because Ijust opened an email that came

(00:41):
through my contact form on mywebsite. I almost never do that,
but nine times out because ninetimes out of 10, or maybe 99
times out of 100 it's just junksolicitations. But in this case,
it was Chris's water ski team,or members of his team reaching
out to say that they were fansof the podcast and thought he
would be a really good guest.
Well, I'm really glad I openedthat email, because he was a

(01:02):
great guest, and I had so muchfun with this conversation. We
spoke about everything from theroutines and rituals that he has
found useful in competition togetting over fears to his
philosophy of learning. Soundslike my typical podcast, right?
So Chris comes from waterskiing, from both the coaching
and athlete perspective, and itadds depth to his viewpoints,

(01:25):
plus he's still skiing in thewinter. We talked about the
benefits of cold exposure,which, as you can see, he takes
to a whole different level,beyond what most do now, whether
you're a water skier or yourperformance happens in other
domains. There is something inthis podcast for you. He has so
much to offer. He not only isthe three time Scottish water

(01:49):
ski champion, he's a competitiondriver, he's a judge. He
prepares other people to learnto judge in water skiing. He has
a very comprehensive bio, whichyou can find on the website,
which he has put in a beautiful,very slick format. And I really
hope that you enjoy this podcastwith Chris Herron. Chris Herron,
welcome to the creative spirits.

(02:12):
Unleash podcast.

Chris Heron (02:15):
Thanks, Lynn, it's great to be here. Thanks for
having me. It's an honor. It's

Lynn (02:19):
a I'm thrilled to have you here and thrilled that we got a
chance to meet, and the waywe've met, unlike most of the
time I meet someone who's afellow water skier, is on the
side of the dock, is we've metthrough our water ski
connections in the podcastworld.

Yeah, definitely, yeah. It was a bit of a bit of a
weird one coming out of there.
But yeah, it's quite nice toconnect over the pond again.
Yeah, and and speak to speak toa fellow skier, which is always
nice to nice to do. What's

Lynn (02:51):
interesting about skiing, and this is kind of where I want
to start, is we didn't know eachother until we hit record for
this podcast. And yet, the sportof water skiing has this amazing
way to connect. It's like youalmost instantly have a
shorthand. And I hate to saythat use the word addiction, but

(03:13):
we share an addiction, becausethere's something see what I
mean. There's something aboutthis sport that once you and
there's a moment, and I'm notsure what that moment is, we'll
talk about that, but once youreally get into it, it does
create an addiction in that, mydefinition of addiction is
something that you want to doagain, because you know you can

(03:35):
do it a little bit better, andyou're already figuring out,
when are you going to get yournext chance to do it. So what do
you think makes water skiing sodang addictive?

That's good question. We're getting really
good questions. Start off, thankyou.

Lynn (03:51):
This is my thing. I start Yeah, no,

I think so if I talk about it from my my own
perspective, it's the speed Ilike, the adrenaline and but
also it's kind of, it's astrange sport, if you, if some
of your listeners haven't doneit before, it's one of these
sports where you are, if you'recompeting, it's, you're on your
own, but you have only one shotat it. So it's, it's a bit it

(04:18):
can be nerve wracking. It can bepretty brutal as well. And it's
one of those things that kind ofmakes me addicted to is kind of
pushing myself outside mycomfort zone, and it feels
horrible just beforehand, butthen, as you're doing it, it's
amazing, and then the aftermathis fantastic, especially you've
skied well, so I think it's,it's having that feeling of, I

(04:38):
guess, freedom, depending howlong your set is, but for 15
minutes on the water, you'reprobably not thinking about
anything that's going on yourlife, bar surviving and not
falling um, or trying to runsome nice ski passes. So it
gives you that escapism fromfrom life and any of trouble. So
I guess that's definitely whatgot me into, is that that space

(04:59):
from life. For 15 minutes a day,or half an hour a day.

Lynn (05:03):
Yeah, and you're saying 15, not 50, because one of the
things that for, like, somebodywho snow skis or hikes or, you
know, I'm going out to do someendurance riding in a month,
where we're going to ride like1520 miles a day, you know, we
go for a long things with waterskiing, 15 to 30 minutes, and 30

(05:27):
is a long time, and you'repretty much toast.

Oh yeah, you're totally I think I'll be honest
if you probably shouldn't saythat to some of the guys I
coach, but I'm probably toastafter about two or three passes,
but I'll put a brave face on,um, afterwards, but yeah, it's
pretty intense for that for thatshort period of time, 100%

Lynn (05:46):
so that's another that leads me to another question
that I've I've thought about alot, because it's hard, more
difficult, to practice a sportthat has so little time you can
do it because, for example, if Iwant to learn to be a good snow
skier, I could go do quite a fewcarves of the turns all day

(06:08):
long, you know. And so I get alot of repetitions, but in two
or three passes of water ski,let's just use three for easy
math. We're going to get threeright, you know, one odd ball
turns, and three even ballturns, if you will, and so
that's on each pass. So you getnine opportunities for your off
side and nine opportunities foryour on side. Yeah, a few gates

(06:33):
and your toast, or double that,because that six passes is a
normal set. How the heck is it?
The edge. And you're the coach,you know, the head coach of the
water ski and white board ofScotland. So how does one get
good when you get so littlepractice? Um,

yeah, I think there's a couple of things like
we're talking about slalom. Soyeah, you're right. Those, those
six, six passes are, if you cometo Scotland, you get eight for
your set. Just, just a wee plugthere.

Lynn (07:03):
But yeah, well, that's good for you.

That's okay for your flight journey over from
the States, you get an extra twopasses a set. But yeah, I think,
I guess from an athleteperspective, it is. It's
committing yourself to, toactually training like I do try
and train twice, twice a day, soI do get double that amount, and
it's and it's just having thatconsistency. Some sets are not
going to go your way. You'regoing to miss passes it should

(07:29):
always run, or you're just goingto have just an off day. But
it's not being disheartened withthat and trying to keep going
with it, because consistency iskey. And the whole sort of
10,000 hours of deliberatepractice, all those sort of
things come into play, whereyou've got to try and to do
that, but when you have got thelimited time, it's making sure
that you're mentally preparedgoing into each each session to

(07:50):
make sure you get the most outof it. Because, like you say,
you've got limited time, so youneed to make most of it. And
that kind of goes the same forjump tricks, maybe a little bit
different trick, you can kind ofget away if you've got a big
enough Lake. Look, we've gotlakes here, or locks, as we call
them, that are miles and mileslong. And so you could easily
just jump on the boat and youcould do a trick run over and

(08:12):
over again 1015, times beforeyou run out of water. So in a
way, albeit tricks of different,different sort of discipline,
you've probably got more moretime on the water to be able to
practice like certain aspects ofthat, albeit some of the
trickers will still say they getwet quite a lot, because they're
still gonna be falling quite abit. I

Lynn (08:29):
was about to say, if somebody can do 10 trick runs
down a lake and not fall, that'spretty magical. Yeah, they're
probably not pushing theircomfort zone or really learning
anything. If that's the case,no, I

would Yeah, I would say, so I think it's good for
practice getting out there,especially this time of year
over here, when we're breakingnice to try and get in the water
and stuff like that. Sometimesmaybe just sticking to either
slalom passes it, you know, youcan run relatively comfortably,
or just to get your ski, yourski strength going, and your
practice on point, and thencheck in same sort of things

(09:01):
that you're comfortable doing,whether it's the surface trips
or or wake jumps and whatnot,just trying to get yourself
going. Um, obviously not manypeople are going to be jumping
off a ramp at this time, socutting and practicing on your
jumpers and stuff like that aswell will obviously help this
time of year, because we we doget hit with some cold snaps,
um, from about sort of November,December, all the way through

(09:23):
to, like, end of February. Soyeah, it's just trying to be as
as consistent, but also makingmost of the time. Because, like,
you say it is limited whenyou're in a ski school,

Lynn (09:33):
yeah? Well, that's the other way we're limited is not
only is it by our physicallimits, but it's also by the
weather limits. Because, yeah, Imean, I'm assuming, what is the
temperature there? It's prettycold. We're way too we have ice
on our lake. We're not skiing.

Yeah, we've, we've been, we've had some cold snaps
lately. It's a little bit warmertoday. It's something like four,
four degrees Celsius and today,but it has been sort of minus
six, minus seven, and it's,we're quite fortunate. That the
lake that we, that we run theNational Train site at, is is
relatively shallow. It's onlysort of six to seven foot deep.

(10:07):
So it does take a it doesn'ttake long to fall, but it is
quick to freeze, but wegenerally get away with it, or
we we know the limits of when wecan break the ice up and the
guys can get out. So we werestill we were still skiing when
it was minus four outside. Wemanaged to break the ice before
it kind of got really, reallybad. But yeah, that's that's
killer on your hands, and yourbody takes a bit of a pound, and

(10:30):
even more so with the coldweather. But there's ways in
which you can, you can obviouslyprepare yourself for that and
ensure that you kind of are asready as possible for getting
into that cold water, gettingyour your body ready for it, and
not limiting yourself to justfair weather skiing like some
people do. And I certainly thinkit shows towards the start of

(10:52):
the season, the guys that haveskied through the winter
normally start kind of rampingup quicker than the guys that
come back and are pretty coldand pretty stiff from the off
season, and they try and startagain. It always takes a few
weeks, whereas the guys thathave been skiing for the winter
normally kind of can hit theground running and kind of just
start leapfrogging a few peopleat start season.

Lynn (11:13):
Yeah, well, there's so many, okay, so I want to, I want
to pull several threads fromthat, from every kind of the
riff that you just went through,because there's so many pieces.
One is the benefits of coldtherapy, whether you're doing it
in or outside of getting in thewater skiing, because you're
getting cold therapy when youski. I would like to talk about
also the the feelings thatskiing creates, because you

(11:38):
talked about, you know, thefeeling of freedom, but also
about being out of your comfortzone. So I'd love to talk about,
like, dancing back and forth onthat as well. As you know, where
someone is finding their edge,like, where are they improving
versus just repeating the samethings they already know? And
kind of in all of that, wheredoes the you know, if you wrap

(11:59):
it all up with the hormones inour body. How do you see the
adrenaline and the resultingendorphins and dopamine kind of
connecting with each other?
Because we can love theadrenaline, but what we really
love is the release after theadrenaline, right? I didn't
like, yeah, so there was a lotto everything you said there. So
you pick where you want tostart, what kind of hit hit you
as a thing worth following upon?

Yeah, okay, so, I mean, the guys that know me and
and I'll listen to this when it,when it gets released, will know
that my cold water therapythings are pretty big deal in my
life. So yeah, I think the ColdWar, I started doing cold, cold
plunges. I mean, properly,religiously, about three years
ago, and I've not, I've notmissed a day since then. So

(12:47):
every single morning, threeminutes at six degrees or below,
regardless wherever I am. Imean, that can be baths, it can
be showers, it can be in myactual ice bath that I've got.
Yeah, okay, it doesn't matter aslong as some sort of cold
exposure, but and I certainlydon't. I don't feel the cold as
much. I still my hands still golike everyone does, but I can

(13:07):
certainly last in the water alot longer now, in the winter,
I'm in a three mil suit, just aCamaro three mil, just a super
skin. It's not fine. I don'tfeel I don't feel it, um, and my
body and I can ski normally. SoI'm still short line passes,
still full speed. And I guessthe cold water therapy for me is
twofold. There is that wholemedical side of it that people

(13:31):
debate quite a lot. And there'sa lot of us that debate over
here who are quite, quiteknowledgeable about it, whether
it is good for the brown fatcells, whether it's
inflammation, etc. I don'treally mind debating that with
people. It's each to their own.
For me, I kind of go down moreof a mental side of it, that if
I can get into six degree wateror break an ice bath, it let's

(13:54):
minus five minus six at halfpast five in the morning and get
in that for three minutes andsurvive. You can pretty much
tackle anything during that day.
And it means when you'restanding on that dock at like, a
world championships or aEuropean Championships, it's,
yeah, okay, it's nerve wracking,and you're you're starting to
think and get buzzed up for abit. You can it makes a lot

(14:16):
easier, because you've alreadyconquered something that's
pretty difficult mentally to goshort term sacrifice, long term
gain. I've got get into it'snot, there's a saying that
doesn't get any colder thelonger you wait together. So,
yeah, I think that's the firstthing definitely, I think, for
for us to try and continue thatour sport, which is very much
seasonal in most countries inthe world, depending where you

(14:39):
are, it's, it's not a bad way oftrying to get yourself
acclimatized, I suppose, tobeing able to do that and trying
to get your season last a littlebit longer or start a little bit
earlier. So I think that's thatfirst point, definitely, for me,
is is a big thing, and it'ssomething I like to do. And
there is, there is some provenstuff about sort of longevity
with it, and it's helping thehealth. Up in the body stressed

(15:02):
for the body isn't always a badthing, as long as it's the right
type of stress. And that'sdefinitely from my opinion.
Anyway, one of the good things,

Lynn (15:09):
it's, it's something I've I've been doing the cold shower
Since 2017 started ice bathsabout three years ago. We bought
one to put up with us with asauna, which is really nice to
do the hot and the cold. Yeah, Iabsolutely love them. And for
all the reasons you'redescribing, you know, it extends
your season. When I starteddoing them, one of the, one of

(15:32):
the funny things when I, I'veskied with Austin for years, and
I used to jump in the water, andit could be, you know, 75
degrees, and I'd go, oh, youknow, like, it's too cold,
right? And now I, when I stepin, I don't even really feel the
cold, and it doesn't matter whattemperature it is. And I used to
go to a dry suit at 60 degreesFahrenheit, which is, you know,

(15:55):
what's that going to be? Like,12 degrees Celsius, yeah,
something like that. Yeah, yeah.
So, so I'd go, I'd go to a wetsuit, I mean, a dry suit at that
temperature. And I don't evenown a dry suit now. And we'll,
we'll ski down to 55 or 50degrees. We do have to winterize
our boats. So we, we do have toshut down. I'll go down to
Florida sometimes in the in thewinter. But it, it makes those
fringes so much better. Sothere's that, but it's less

it's less variables, though, isn't it?
It's one less variable for youto worry about, variables in our
sport. So that's one less oneyou can you can control.

Lynn (16:31):
It takes it away, but you're what you hit, because
we're both coaches. I have totalk about that mental game
piece, because I would say, Evenstill, I have to remind myself I
can do this, because I don'twant to get in the cold water
right before I get in, like,there is still a part of me
that's like, that's going to bemiserable and it's cold. And

(16:55):
what's absolutely amazing is tohave the mental tools that are
greater than the pressure of thecold, yep. Cuz I think in terms
of pressure of, in other words,so much of what we let get to us
is the scene, thing, thepressure of the competition, the
pressure of the, you know, wethink it's the competition, or

(17:18):
it's the the mistake orwhatever. But it's not any of
that. It's the pressure of itthat creates the problem. And so
if you can overcome your mentalchatter and use your mental
tools to say, I can do this,then you raise your pressure
threshold every single day. Soyou know, it's not just about

(17:40):
are you better on the dockbecause you because you're able
to get in the cold water, butyou're better on the dot because
your pressure threshold ishigher?

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. I
think that's kind of it's halfthe balance our brains. I'm not,
I wouldn't say I'm an expert onit, but I've done a lot of
reading and research on onsports psychology side of in I
see a sports therapist now aswell, just to kind of help,
because I did go through somesome stages within my very short

(18:11):
career competitively, where I itdid get the best of me, and I
needed to identify that. Andthat was the most difficult
part, is identifying that. Okay,normally, you're really good at
all these sports, and you don'tnormally have an issue with
that. Issue with that whenyou're younger, but you get
older, your your mentalitychanges. You you start looking
at things in a different,different light, and you need to

(18:31):
adapt yourself to be able tokind of hone in on that. And
definitely, I think we're ourbrains are wired like that,
survival instinct. You've got tokeep yourself comfortable and
cozy and warm, because that'swhat the caveman had to do back
in the day. You know, that's howyou survive, whereas we need to
be able to push ourselves outwith those comfort zones, or I
wouldn't even say that comfortzone, you're actually in a good

(18:54):
position to be able to doeverything you want to be able
to do. And sometimes, if youjust push yourself outside the
comfort zone, you go into asurvival zone, and that isn't a
bad place to be some of thetime, but if you're living in
that all the time, yeah, it'snot so great. But I certainly,
for me, feel like I do a lotmore positive work and perform
better when I'm in my comfortzone. I i am comfortable being

(19:16):
in those positions because Ihave done the work in advance of
that to put myself beingcomfortable. Sorry, being
comfortable, beinguncomfortable, which makes all
those sort of situations a loteasier for me to kind of deal
with. I mean, we'll watch thisspace this season, see if it, if
the off seasons worked. Butcertainly last season there was,
there was glimpses of thatworking and helping so

Lynn (19:37):
well there's that's that space, what you're describing, I
call froth. And so think aboutwhen we get agitated, we feel
something, and pressure createsagitation. But if you shake up a
can of soda, you get froth,right? Or I think of it, I like
the analogy of the ocean, wherethere's a little bit of the new
and a little bit of the old, butyou won't get any new. If you

(20:00):
don't create a little agitation,because the brain just doesn't
have any reason to change. And,I mean, you do

get what you get a lot of people like that that
say, after a competition, or ifthey've never competed, they
say, I could have done that. Wecould have, I could have, maybe
got that score. I could, yeah,yeah, do it. I mean, there's you
can say that all you all youwant, but put your money where
your mouth is, in nice a sense,and go and do those because that
will help you advance, and itwill give you that sort of the

(20:28):
buzz and that sort of little bitof adrenaline pump and that to
make sure you keep going.
There's a guy that we've startedcompeting with this year's first
season last year, and he'sbuzzing from it, absolutely
buzzing from it. And he, he, hethe first competition went to
was a nervous wreck, and he, andhe didn't know what to do, but
after he completed any skipretty well, he was really

(20:50):
happy. He got that bug, andthat's he's hooked. There's the
addiction piece again. There you

Lynn (20:56):
go, once you get that well. And it may be the
addiction of that, likeadrenaline then dopamine sort of
cycle, which is what we aredesigned to do to raise that
pressure threshold. You know,you don't get the dopamine and
the endorphins unless you getthe adrenaline first, at least,
that's what the bio thescientists that I've talked to
have told me. So,

yeah, I'm sure Huberman will be able to tell us
that when it becomes, well, I

Lynn (21:20):
don't, and by the way, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pitch Andrew
Huberman right now because he hemanaged to score an interview
with Josh Waitzkin. Oh yeah. Andthe only person that has ever
done that is Tim Ferriss. AndJosh waitskin has been on
Ferris's podcast three times,but he's the closest coach to
the way I coach that I've everheard. And so I listened to him.
I love hearing how Joshua thinksabout it, because he languages

(21:43):
it so beautifully. You know, heuses language like unobstructed
learning. And it's like, Yes,that's what I've been trying to
say. That's what I mean bycreative spirits unleash, you
know. So, so I'm going to pitchHuberman on that, but, but, you
know that that like, I rememberwhen I first started learning to
ski, and I started late in life.
I think I was 46 when I firstsaw slalom course, and I

(22:04):
started, and I got a chance togo to the water ski in 2007 and
eight water ski magazine, whenit still existed, did like a
water ski fantasy camp. And Iwas at both of them. And at the
first one I this was like adream. I got to Marcus Brown was
my coach, but Terry winter wasriding with him, and Matt Rennie

(22:29):
was my driver, and I had, youcan't get better than that. It's
like superstars. And, you know,I and I didn't even know enough
to be nervous, because I didn'tknow Skiing World that well
until later. But I had heardfrom somebody else. I'd skied
with Thomas More over at DrewRoss's Lake, like the year
before, and Thomas More said,You need to go ski with Matt

(22:52):
Rennie. I was like, I don't knowwho Matt Rennie is, but fine.
Whatever. You know, that's kindof where I was. And so as I was
skiing those three guys. There'sthis, I've got a picture of me
behind the 2007 master crafttournament team boat of that
which I happen to own now, ofthat year. And you can see that
Marcus is supposed to becoaching me, and he is. He's

(23:13):
looking at me. He and Terry arealso talking. But you see Matt
watching me in the mirror, andafter like, a couple of passes,
Matt took over. Even thoughMarcus was coaching, Matt stood
up and goes, Lynn, do this. Andit made all the difference. And
so one day I was down, and laterI went to ski with Matt. Again,
that's all the build up to say.

(23:34):
I ended up skiing with Matt foryears, and I don't know how many
times I've been down to ski withhim. This is his page. Was just
learning how to ski, by the way,but he I, and maybe it was in a
tailwind or something. But wegot to the other end of the
lake, we dropped, and he yelledat me, Lynn, if you don't learn
how to get out of your comfortzone, you're never going to run
a tailwind pass. There you go.
And I was, I was kind of, Ineeded, like, I needed that

(23:59):
shock, like, that's the kind ofthing that creates enough
agitation to get me off groundzero. And, you know, I'm sure
you've experienced this as acoach, because you said
something very important a fewminutes ago. You said, there is
a point at which people will gointo survival mode and then they
can't learn anything. Yeah,

yeah, they do. And you see that especially in our
sport, our sports really bad forthat, because they think they're
safe. They think, say, forinstance, going through the
week, they want to clamp up orsomething like that, because
they think I'll get into a ball,I'll be in a safe position,
whereas the I kind of say tothem, whatever feels
uncomfortable is normallycorrect in our sport, because it
doesn't feel right what you'redoing, but actually is the right

(24:42):
thing for what you're trying toachieve. And but I think you say
something questions, and Mattsaying that to you, but I'm sure
a couple of other people haveprobably said something similar,
but just different words, but itresonated more with you. So you
can I found that a lot,especially in the last couple of
years, you're maybe trying toteach somebody something. Them,
and you've said ABC, and it'sjust not landing with them. So

(25:04):
you then go XYZ. It's the samething, but it's just different
words, and all of a sudden,boom, light bulb moment, yeah,
and, and that's kind of where itgoes. It's that's kind of the
best part of being a coach iswhen you see that, like, sort of
realization, and that, that sortof athlete's face, or they just
go out and they do exactly whatyou're saying. They see the
enjoyment that they've gotbecause they've actually okay

(25:25):
now, because this is what's soannoying about our our sporting
frustration is it's so difficultto coach. It's not like, um,
rugby or football or Americanfootball, whereas you can sort
of pause it, stop the person,move their position, show them
how to throw the ball better, orshow them how to kick better.
You're trying to do it lookingbehind you while looking
forward. To keep it straight,trying to get that little five

(25:48):
to 10 seconds, or whateveryou've got of nugget of
information when they've droppedin at the end of the past to go
try do this. Yeah, you've got tobe really strategic, really
logical, really clear, reallyconcise about what you're trying
to do, but still explain itenough that they actually
understand it. And that's what'sprobably one of the more unique
things about our sport is thatwe can't physically stop

(26:08):
somebody midway through a passin the water and move their
position into the right way. No,they have to be told that then
feel it, and once they kind offeel it, then their body starts
to have muscle memory, andeverything starts to link in.
But that's why our sport takes alot longer to learn, and we lose
a lot of people, because we allknow, we all remember what it

(26:29):
was like trying to get up on oneski out of the water. It's
always a bet, if one gets reallywell and two skis, they get
good, and then you try and putthem on one ski, and you lose
50% of your, that's right, yourclientele and stuff. So this is
rubbish. I'm getting cold or I'mjust getting frustrated. And
that's why we lose a lot ofpeople, because there's that big
mountain that they've got to bebe consistent at and keep
plowing at it, and that's whenyou then get the fruits of your

(26:52):
labor, because then you start tobe able to enjoy the sport that
isn't it's like that, sort oflike the the gates are opening
for you once you go over thathill. So you can then get into
the great part of our sport,because getting told behind the
boat in two skis, it's fun. It'snot as fun. No, no, it's fun as
slalom skiing, full, full metaljacket at like 12 meters or
something, getting gettingslingshot. There's nothing like

(27:13):
that. So, yeah, it's there'scertainly some sort of
underlying thread or deep,meaningful sort of philosophy
there whereby you've got tocontinue doing that to get the
fruits of your labor. So yeah,in

Lynn (27:26):
my mind, in slalom, there's two major hurdles. It's
the getting up on one slalomski. And I think you lose a lot
of people right there. And thenthere's that 15 off to 22 off
hump, because that bump, I don'tcare what boat you're behind,
the 15 off versus 22 off. Andand I started, like, a couple of

(27:49):
years ago, I just, and I haven'tgone much past 22 but I'm like,
Austin, we're just going to stayat 22 and then I don't have to,
like, feel the difference. Andwhat's amazing is, you know, and
I had, I had some real headproblems with the 22 off hop
years ago, to the point where Ijust, you know, quit trying like
that, trying, you know, they wedidn't lose me as a skier, but

(28:10):
we lost me as somebody trying toadvance for a while, and then
once you do it enough, then youdon't even notice the bump
anymore. Like, really goodskiers are like, what pump? And
it's like, those of us on theother side is like, well, we can
tell you about the bump. Aboutthe bump.

Yeah? No, we have, we have those conversations a
lot. Yeah. I feel you there.

Lynn (28:28):
Yeah. And so that's the interesting thing about the
sport is, but you hit on themost important thing is, you're
making 1000 balance correctionsevery path, whether you're a 15
mouth skier or a 39 off skier.
You're it's a very dynamicsport, and there's very specific
positions, especially at keyelements, but, but many, many

(28:49):
frames in those in those inevery pass where you can make a
difference, and the only personthat can do it is you back there
by yourself going, what feelslikely. You called it full metal
jacket, you know, by yourself.
And you can't even, like, wearearbuds where the coach could
say, do this or do that whileyou're skiing, you know. Well,

well, we do, we do?
You do? Oh, wait, yeah, we,yeah. So we've got, we've got
Beth tech, whereby they're,like, they're waterproof
headphones, Bluetooth to a form,and we have the conversation. So
we've tried it. It's itcertainly got his pros and its
cons from the guys that one ofthe guys at ski with it was his
sort of, he'd seen it, and hekind of had some tech that we

(29:32):
used. And it works for certainskiers. I don't think it works
if you're proper running thecourse and you're in it, but the
guys that are learning to mayberun the slalom course for the
first time, or try andunderstand that, or for
beginners, trying to get theright position through the week.
I mean, that's Matt reeniesmajor thing, isn't he always
wants to see what position youare through the week. He can
sort everything else out. But aslong as you're doing that well,

(29:54):
and that's what he always looksfor, then it's great for that.
And. But yeah, when you'retraveling it, yeah, like, you
say 36 miles an hour, sort oflike, I don't know, threatening
off. It's probably not what youwant in the in your back, your
head. But certainly for some ofthe beginners we've we've
certainly used it, and it's andit's worked so far. It's just,
it's just not as consistent. Youalways, sometimes lose

(30:15):
connection on all those sort ofthings. But yeah, there is just
ways.

Lynn (30:19):
There's, well, that's that that, actually, I've never had
that there. I've done ithorseback riding. We put earbuds
in when I first did some of myfirst reigning lessons, where he
could be on the phone and and hecould talk to me. And the
problem is that I the earbudskeep falling out, and you don't
want him to fall in the dirt,and then the horse steps on it
and or you have to find it. It'slike finding an Easter egg out

(30:40):
there and all that dirt so, andin the lake, you know, it'd be
just sank to the bottom. So weit has to be something you're
not going to lose. Yeah, it's

normally the ones that kind of wrap around your
head and then tie into your vestor something. But, yeah,
there's, there's, there'salways, you know, what we're
like As humans, we always find away around things. So we really,
really want to find it. Yeah,and it was just something that
he he used him cycling. And heremember speaking to one of his
friends, I think New cycling islike, this should work. We're
only going to be 18 meters awayfrom from each other, so it's

(31:11):
not like we're miles away fromeach other. So it should work,
yeah. And it did. And it hasbenefits. Some people, we've not
used it as much, but certainlyfor some people where they're
maybe really struggling to justknow when to move or when to
change that position slightly.
It's always good, because youknow what it's like. You've got
a 6.2 liter engine. It's prettyhard to shout over that when
somebody's

Lynn (31:32):
Oh, but if you're austin, you know, I ski with Austin able
at Mystic waters, at able skischool, and so one of the things
that I hear in the summer, allsummer long, as I hear Austin's
booming voice going, turn, turn.
And you know what, what isamazing is how much earlier you
need to turn than you think youneed to turn. Yep, and that's

(31:54):
why he's yelling it. Becauseeven with some of the better
skiers, you know, as he's movingthem up the up the line,
understanding that you can startthat turn,

you know, yeah, quite the perception of the
perception of the course iseverything, and it's it changes
each time that you're you moveeither a speed up or you move a
rope length down. It's theperception of the course
changes, and your your pivotpoint so your turn, you're
breaking the boy line changes,and that's as you like you say.

(32:27):
You get used to 22 offer, andthen you get, okay, that's where
I turn. And all of a sudden youcut the line, and you're like,
Whoa. Okay, where'd I turn now?
And everything feels faster. Ifeel the boys a bit closer to me
now, or I'm not as wide. I feelnarrower it's, everything
changes. And there's a lot ofweird sort of, it's like you're
a quantum math mathematician inyour head trying to work out
where I need to get better anglehere I need to, I need to turn

(32:49):
in later and to turn in earlier.
There's so many like, you sayvariances. And when you start
going up speeds and down lines,it's, it can be quite
frustrating, because you get thehang of one and you're like,
it's only a meter difference, orit's only three, three clicks of
a difference. Wow, yeah. How canthis be so so alien to me, but

(33:10):
it's all about rhythm and andusing that to your advantage.
But if you're not used to yourbody, your body's at whack. So
yes, is it? That's what makes itso addictive, I guess, because
you're never going to completeit. Are you? It's no matter if
you're Nate Smith and you've gotthree boys at 43 you're still
want more. So yeah,

Lynn (33:28):
well, that's that. When I first started learning to ski, I
spent a lot of time down atCOVID ski school, you know, with
April and Chris, and maybe firstor second time I was down there,
Chris said something that reallystruck me. He said, You know,
our sport always ends infailure, and that's a great way
of looking at it. Yeah. I waslike, Oh yeah, because you

(33:49):
basically just keep going untilyou can't go anymore, and then
you're done. And the the thingthat struck me watching like I
got to watch Nate Smith, he'she's been to our lake a couple
of times, and one day, I decidedto not video while riding in the
boat watching him, because whatI've learned about video is you

(34:11):
don't really see in the video,which you can see in real life,
for one thing, but also it takesyou out of the moment, like it
puts a wall of reality Betweenyou and what's happening so
against my better judgment,except it was really good
judgment. This day I put theski, I put the phone down and
just watched him, because thisis the best for those of people
listening that don't know waterskiing or Nate Smith's name.

(34:33):
He's dramatically the best waterskier of our era, and what he's
run the 41 off past severalmultiples of all the people
combined. Yeah,

there was a weird stat that came out on twbc. I
think he's ran it more timesthan all the rest of the guys
who have run it have run it.
That makes sense. So I thinkthere was some sort of stat,

Lynn (34:53):
and that's some multiple, like he's way over 100 and
there's only what 13 or 14people total that have ever run
it. Period. And most of them,you know, are happy if they've
run it twice or three times in atournament. You know, some of
them have a handful or more,but, you know, you just start
doing that math, and it's justnuts. So, So Nate, just
something. He figured somethingout. And my, my quest that day

(35:17):
was to say, what has he figuredout? So I watched him, and all
of a sudden I like, I hit I saidto Austin. I said, Austin,
mistakes. Don't throw him. Ithought he was going to be
making less mistakes, but heactually doesn't like when I
watched him ski, he was offbalance. As often as any I've

(35:39):
been in the I've had the goodfortune, thanks to the water ski
thing and going to all these skischools. I've been in the boat
with a lot of the best skiers.
I've skied, when Andy Mapple washere with us, I skied. I was
with him. I watched Wade Cox,I've watched Marcus Brown, I've
watched Thomas de gaspery. I'vewatched will Asher, you know, so
I've, I've been in the boat witha lot of good skiers. And I and
Chris Lapointe, you know, one ofthe greatest of all time. I've

(36:01):
Chris is probably the closest toNate in terms of not letting
mistakes throw him. Nateliterally just kept rebalancing,
rebalancing, rebalancing. Andone of the things that I think
about a lot is what's happeningin the space between the space.
This is one of the things Ishare with Josh. You know, Josh
Waitzkin talks to this aboutthis a lot. What are the frames

(36:24):
that are unseen in transition?
Yeah. And in water skiing, Ithink it's that what you do when
you've made a mistake, becauseyou know your turn is over if
the mistake is bad enough, yep.
And I think some people me,included, more used to than I do
now, because I've been workingon it, get lost when they make a
mistake, like they go, Oh crap,I'm done. Gotta fix it. And then

(36:50):
they start over and underreacting Nate, I think that's
it. Yeah, Nate feels his waythrough. And I was talking to
him at the Malibu open one time.
And I said, you know, I've neverseen anybody ski with the kind
of feel you have. And his eyeslit up, like you get it. And I
said, but you're not going totell me any more than that. He
goes, nope.

I mean, yeah, Secrets of the trade. I think, I
think you've got it bang onhere, because you see, as soon
as somebody makes a mistake,they over. I think it's
overreact. I don't think it's Ithink maybe, okay, maybe one,
one time out of 10, it's underreact. But I think nine times
out of 10 you see themoverreact. So, like, they maybe
don't get the right turn, sothey pull like hell trying to
get across. They've got too muchspeed, or they've overturned it,

(37:33):
they've over cracked it, they'vehooked up to it, they've,
they've, they've tried to doeverything too quickly, and it's
a natural thing. Like, I knowmyself, like, when you're
traveling at that sort of speedacross the wake, your mind's
trying to get ahead of yourself,to preempt what you're going to
do. Because sometimes yourbody's actually engaging before
your brain's engaging, and thenit's you're going too quick. So

(37:54):
yeah, I think definitely theoverreaction thing and the feel
and the ski, I think there's, Ithink it was Crystal Point and
said it would maybe bobble. Ican't remember which one, but
the person that that will winskiing will be the person that
moves least on the ski. And Ithink that's probably right. And
you do see that the balancepoint of the skis, the balance
point of the ski, for a reason,it's the best place to be on it.
It's going to it's going to gripit's going to speed up when it

(38:16):
needs to. It's going to slowdown when it needs to. But you
see so many people move about somuch on ski, and sometimes
that's as easy as them trying tostay a bit bit still or on your
ski and see how it feels.
Because you see a lot of peoplethere, they're leaning, they're
on the back foot, and begin toturn the slam down front foot,
trying to slow the ski down, andand so, yeah, I think you I
think that's one of the bigthings, is be patient, is a lot
of thing, but it a lot of peoplesay, be patient. And that

(38:40):
automatically makes people go,I'm not going to do anything.
It's it's be patient with yourintensity and your your sort of
intention to do it instead ofjust doing nothing like and
that's sometimes the way thatthe coaches say it. If they say,
be patient, be patient, peopledon't do anything. They just
stand still and wait. Whereas ifyou say, be patient with your
intention, then it kind ofunderstands, right? Okay, I've

(39:02):
still got to have thatintensity. I've still got to
move quickly, but I just maybedelay that initiation of that
movement ever so slightly so itgets a better rhythm. I think
Corey says that quite a bit whenhe's coaching as well. It's,
it's certainly but, yeah, bepaid. Don't hate that. He hates
the word patient, but it'strying to keep that intensity,
but just try not to move asquickly as you're going to or

(39:23):
open up as quick as you want. Soyeah, it's quite an interesting
one. It feels feels alien. Itfeels completely
counterintuitive, but it'ssometimes the right

Lynn (39:33):
thing to do. Well, it's so back to that feel thing. One of
the principles I work with a lotis to be the conduit, which is,
let the thing tell you what todo. And so a different way of
being patient, because I agreewith, well, first of all, a lot
of people just are allergic tobeing patient. Yeah, you know,

(39:53):
but, but that's at the at the atthe apex of the turn before the
ski comes back under you.
There's this, like. Moment ofvulnerability. And I think our
brains say, if we don't get ourother hand back on the handle
and get the ski back reallyquick, we're slide, we're going
to fall. And we don't reallythink about how the centrifugal
force is going to hold us up.

(40:14):
And I don't know that I've everseen anybody other than maybe
Adam Caldwell at 41 off likeslammed down at that point. You
know,

they still got back up, though, didn't

Lynn (40:27):
he got back up? We should.
We should put that in thepodcast notes that was in a
crazy, a crazy day where heskied away from the fall, but,
but the that moment is where ourbodies and brains, especially
our whatever the survival partis, which is, I think both body
and brain is like, you gottahurry or you're gonna die. And I
think it's that moment wherewe're saying, Let the

(40:49):
centrifugal force take you. Sobe the conduit. The ski will let
the ski do what the ski is gonnado, yeah. And when I remember
that, it's magical.

Oh yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

Lynn (41:07):
I just had this moment of thinking, because that puts me
on the ski course, and it's herewe are recording this in late
January. It'll be at least sixweeks before I probably get to
be on a water ski. But you'vejust this conversation has just
made me crave it all the more.
This is what the addiction isabout.

I'll be, I'll be in the water tomorrow, not rubbing
it in, but I'll be, I'll be,I'll be skiing tomorrow. Yeah,

Lynn (41:28):
well, your boat's not winterized, and you don't have,
no, you don't have ice. I haveice.

Yeah, yeah. We've not. I'm hoping we don't get ice
overnight. But, yeah, we shouldbe, we should be okay. We're
fortunate. We're fortunate thatthe other boats are winter ice,
but our school still going. So,yeah, no, I'll, I'll certainly
be thinking about that. I canguarantee you my opening pass on
that my boy won't be thinkingabout that force going, don't
rush, don't rush.

Lynn (41:52):
But at the same moment, I'm going to draw it over to
another two other parallels,because you run a business, and
I want to draw it to a businessparallel in a second. But the
other parallel was just lastweek, I was in Oklahoma riding
reining horses, and I'll be onone this afternoon. So that's my
winter thing, especially. Andwhat I realized last week, it
was the first time ever I was ona very nice horse, and had some

(42:14):
really magnificent coachingabout letting the horse move me
and not bracing. Because thebeautiful thing, especially at
the at the lope, or the cantor,loping in circles, is letting
the horse I used to be so tiredafter one circle that I'd have
to stop because I was worn out.
And that why? Because I wasworking too hard. I was doing

(42:35):
exactly what you described onthe ski. I was like, not on the
balance point I was moving. Andremember, the balance point is
always moving, yep. So you haveto stay on the balance point,
not to be over and underreacting. And I do think our
brains kind of like to find aposition and hold it rather than
be fluid and dynamic. So theywere teaching me how to be fluid

(42:56):
and dynamic and really feel thehorse as we moved. And there was
a period where I could ride incircles with this horse, and we
were in flow for, I don't evenknow how many circles, and I was
like, and this is water skiing,

yeah, the feeling was right, yes, amazing. The

Lynn (43:17):
feeling is the same, and that's what we do it for and
then take that over to business.
You know, what does it look liketo be the conduit in business?
And so I'd be curious what, howyou make sense of that question,
because you're running abusiness.

Yeah, it's a tricky one that the business side of
it's always, always aninteresting topic, a
conversation, especially if wejust take it to uniquely water
skiing in in Scotland, thenit's, it's quite a niche sport.
It's not, it's not as big as itis over, over in your, your neck
of the woods, by any stretch ofthe imagination. And we have

(43:56):
got, we've got a good, a goodski sort of community there.
We've got, probably, I wouldsay, four stroke five recognized
ski sites with slalom courses inwhole of Scotland, kind of
ranging from sort of north tosouth, which is which is
fantastic. And there's a bit ofa cable weight boarding site,
and it's quite large now, andboat weight boards, kind of
there or thereabouts. Butthere's certainly a community

(44:18):
there, and I think it's so we'realways in, not to sound
negative, but we're always upagainst it. We're always want to
grow the sport. We want to getmore people involved in it. We
want to kind of push that outthere so people know, know about
it. And I think certainly, whenI started skiing, it was our
site that is, is now thenational training site. Is, was

(44:40):
was known as Scotland, or thecity that it's in, Dunfermline,
best kept secret, which is notreally what you want your
business to to be. A secret.
Yeah, yeah. I think that kind ofdefeats the purpose of having
it, doesn't it? And I thinkit's, it's trying to move away
from the perception of what thesport is, I think the perception
what. Was that it was an oldboys club, or it was only for

(45:00):
affluent people, or it was onlyif you lived in that area,
that's only thing you could do.
And we've certainly tried tochange that ethos to the to the
extent whereby it's, it's foreveryone. It doesn't matter who
you are. You can, you can come,see, come and learn. It's, it's
definitely accessible now, andbecause of the model that we

(45:21):
operate, you can pretty much skiunlimitedly, for with all your
competition equipment,everything for around about 2000
pounds for a full year. Like ifyou compare that to a golf
membership, it's it's so muchcheaper, because people see that
once will be expensive. But youcompare that to other sports,
such as even even athletics. YouYou pay a membership. You've got

(45:43):
all the competition things,you've got all the equipment.
You before you know it, youspent that money, whereas you
spend that in one fell swoop,and you basically unlimited
skiing, all your competitionequipment, all your coaching,
everything's all all included inthat so, and that's how we've
found that we've brought morepeople into the sport because
it's accessible. So you'reyou're appealing to people who
may never have looked at it. AndI guess that's listening like

(46:06):
it's in being a constant,listening to what the market
saying, just to what the worldin general saying, is that we
want to help people get intosport, health, fair, lifestyles,
all that sort of, all the buzzwords, but in reality, that is a
fact, and then it's also themental health side. But we all
we were speaking just before wewe started recording about COVID
and how we've zooms become likeone of the best things that came

(46:31):
out of it, because we canconnect to people and during
COVID and stuff, we were one ofthe only sports and one of the
only centers that were allowedto open because we could. We
were outside, we had socialdistancing and and it was
helping people's mental health.
People getting outside, theywere enjoying stuff, they were
socializing, they were safe. AndI guess that's one of the things
is, and that still continueseven to now, you come out, you

(46:53):
you have a community, you meetyour friends, you meet new
people, you grow as a person. Soto be the content is listening
to that and finding out whatpeople want, listen to what your
members and your customers aresaying to you, and kind of
trying to adapt it. This oursites gone from it looked tired
three and a half, four yearsago, and it was just kind of,

(47:13):
you turn up ski go, that's apain play. That's then we've
trying to change that to becomea proper club. It's a members
facility. It's open to thepublic. There's cafes, there's
there's other things to do.
There's a community side of it.
There's pool tables, there'stable tennis, all those sort of
things, transferring slackbuttons. So we've got that
community aspect, but it's alsoa three event and international

(47:35):
rankings site. So you can youcan jump to record capability,
you can slalom, you can trick.
We've got top of range boats,all of those things, but that's
because we've listened to whatpeople said. It'd be nice to get
a new boat, or it'd be reallynice if we had that. And it's
you have a list as long as yourarm and a notepad, and you hear
that just can't happen rightnow. It's not going to happen

(47:57):
overnight and but it's justticking those things off. And I
actually did that the other day.
I kind of went back through thelist, and I've seen, I've pretty
much tipped off 90% of thethings that people have asked
for us to have or to do, andthere's only a couple of little
things left that we're planningfor, but they're seeing the
value for it. They're seeingthat they're paying their

(48:18):
membership, or they're payingtheir their fee to come and ski
with us, but they're getting allof this on top of what they were
before, which is just, you'regetting told by important, and
you're getting waved goodbye,see later now you get to have
all these sort of things. Andhave a barbecue, stay with your
friends, have have a party,whatever it's going to be. You
can kind of do that. So, yeah, Ithink that's kind of, from a
business perspective, is islistening to that, jot it down,

(48:39):
but not overwhelming yourselfand trying to do it all
overnight. It's just slowly andsteadily. And say, the ratio of
you say you're going to do it,do it have that 100% Yeah?
Because if it's not, people arejust going to lose

Lynn (48:54):
faith. Yeah. That's actually, that's really
brilliant. And one of the thingsI coach, mostly business
leaders, few athletes, butmostly business leaders. And the
this particular principle of bethe conduit which you know. What
does that mean? Let them tellyou what to do, when to do, how
to do that hits most peopleright in the solar plexus,

(49:17):
because they're like, wait aminute, I'm supposed to know
what to do, when to do, how todo right like on the and what I
hear from what you just said isthe key word you listen and and
if you think about it, itactually makes a ton of sense
what you've done, because we canonly ski for 15 minutes, and we
got one set. If we're going toski two sets in a day, there's

(49:39):
rest time. We, most people needminimum of 30 minutes, if not,
you know, an hour, well, whatare you going to do for 30
minutes or an hour? You're goingto socialize with the other
people. Maybe you can pick up aping pong or a pool game, or,
you know, have like you. Youwhat you did was fill in the
blanks, because the sportdoesn't do it for you, because
you're not doing the sport allthe time.

We try. Can do a bit of both. We have that aspect
whereby it's that community sideof it, but we also try and get
people involved in the actualsport. Because you know yourself
that the amount of officialsthat we have in the sport is is
so low, so it's trying to getpeople, do you want to come in,
jump in the boat and, like,especially if I'm skiing, be the
judge in the boat. Call mygates, which some people love

(50:20):
doing, surprisingly enough, um,but yeah, like, call the gates,
call, how many boys that you gotand stuff. Like to get them used
to that official sport.
Brilliant. Learn, learn to drivethe boat. You know, just
understanding how to do that.
And we do all the differentqualifications, because in
Britain, it's a little bitdifferent. But we do all the
boat driving qualification. Wedo, we offer to train up
officials and whatnot as wellfor the British water skim

(50:42):
Federation. So we can do allthose things, because it's
trying to impact that, becausewe want to be able to hold more
events up here. And we did ourfirst one in 10 years last year,
full international. We realizedwe didn't have enough officials
who were trying to plow themthrough. Now we've just launched
our three events, so we've got aproper three event rankings and
another slalom event this yearthat's there so, but it's trying

(51:05):
to get everyone involved onthem. But it's when we're it's a
bit like when I'm coaching isI'm listening to them, but it's
also we, we call it discoverylearning, and whereby we're
asking them, what? So if thatsets gone wrong, or that past
has gone wrong. Say, forinstance, ask them, What did you
feel went wrong? Because ninetimes out of 10 they probably do

(51:28):
feel it, and they try, and thenyou're saying, Yeah, I agree. Or
there is that nugget sometimesthat they don't have a clue, and
you have to try and do the fivewhys kind of kind of ooze out of
them so they can kind ofunderstand it. Because, yeah,
you can just go, this is whatwent wrong. That's not going to
resonate well with them. And Iguess that's the same in
business as if you just kind ofgo, this is what we're doing.
This is what we're doing. Thisis what we're doing. It's not

(51:49):
going to work. There has to bean element of both. There has to
be that balance of going, if Ijust listen to everything you
guys tell me, and try and goaround and run and do 100
things, I'm going to do 100things, not very well. Whereas,
if I can take five of thosethings and do them really well,
it's going to it's going toimpress people, and they're
going to be happy, they're goingto be they're going to be more
engaged with it. So, yeah,there's, there's definitely that

(52:10):
balance there. I think certainly

Lynn (52:12):
that's that, well, you just hit something. I actually
used to call it this myself whenI was in banking, Discovery
Learning and when I took overcredit training. Training. It
was credit training was the biddepartment. Many, many years ago
at the bank I worked for, theywere doing lectures and
basically telling you how to bebankers, and it looked like the

(52:35):
learning yield was about 10% andthat's really low. So I looked
at how to increase it, and had aphenomenal team around me of
people who were courageous andwilling to do this. And we
flipped it where we made the,you know, the students that came
in, we gave them a treasure huntwhen they first got there,

(52:56):
instead of showing them aroundlike kings and queens. Because
what I found is, if you showedwhen we showed them around the
first round, we did. We treatedthem like kings and queens, and
they started acting like kingsand queens, which really didn't
work, because then they thinkthey have all the power. So we
we switched it, and they lovedit. And the feedback we got back
from the field when we set thebankers out, where these are the

(53:17):
best tradies we've ever had,because discovery learning was
more like a 75% learning yield,because they had to actually go
make the mistakes and correct itthemselves. Yeah, definitely, we
we celebrated the mistakes asopposed to trying to get them to
stop them.

But you would remember your mistake in this
nice sense. It's weird how itworks, but you automatically
remember your mistakes more thanwhat you've achieved normally,
if that makes sense. So youalways remember, like, oh, I can
still somebody says, What wasthe worst part of last season?
What? What bit Did you muck upon? You can pinpoint it and go,
I didn't turn that boycorrectly, or I came out the
front, or something along thoselines. It's, yeah, you remember

(53:55):
that, and you learn from it, andyou try not to make that mistake
again. So yeah, I totally, Itotally agree with that?
Totally, yeah,

Lynn (54:01):
it was, I think that's just amazing. The other thing
you said that I want to reallyhighlight, because I saw this on
your website, and I was like,this is incredible. You teach
people how to drive the boat,and I don't let me, let me just
stipulate I drive slalom and Idrive Austin, so I drive into 41
off learning to do that was andhe's not there. I mean, I've

(54:24):
driven several people through 39off, but it's, it's not a small
thing, no. And just to havesomebody trust you to do that is
a big deal. So how I don't drivetrick, I don't drive jump, but
tell me about that program,because that sounds amazing.
Yeah,

no. So, I mean, we so war skiing, weight board,
Scotland and British waterscheme weight board are kind of
enjoying both governing bodiesof the country offer what we
call SBDS, so speed boat driverand to work at a ski school. In
Britain, every driver needs tohave that for insurance

(55:03):
purposes. So it's a bit likeyour driving test. It's the
basic so it's like you aretrusted to be in control of a
vessel on your own, and you'vegot to have it first aid. You've
got to have sort of yourdisclosure checks, all those
sort of things. But that's kindof the entry into it. So you
can, you can drive a boat onopen waters and stuff like that
in Scotland or closed water,sorry, in Scotland, without a

(55:24):
license. But for the ski schoolsthat this is what we offer. So
we've got a couple of principalsin the in the country, one of
them, be me, is that we we trainpeople how to drive that
specific course, and then oncethey've passed their their level
two, they can then go on totheir level three, which is sort
of an advanced driver module,but it also focuses on slalom

(55:47):
and tournament on the skiingside anyway, and that kind of
gives them an understanding,again, very basic understanding
and entry level to be able totow something slalom, so they
have to go through, like atheory test as well. So it's,
it's questions that you'll beable to answer really, really
quickly off top your head, like,what color of rope is 22 off,

(56:09):
what is the color of the ropefor? 39 off, all those sort of
things. So they understand that.
So when they're cutting therope, they are aware of what
rope they're blowing, and alsocertain aspects of, if you've
got a strong headwind coming tothe pre gates, where would you
line the boat up? How would youoffset it? And then once they've
passed that, then they startcoming in with me more often,
while I'm skiing, boss, whileI'm driving, the guys that are

(56:33):
are serious short line skiers,so they can understand the give
and take. You're the guinea pig,isn't that fun? Yeah, I'm
always, I'm always the guineapig, especially at my site,
because at the end of the day,my members pay money to be told
correctly, and I want my driversto be able to talk correctly. So
it's only fair that, and Ithink, and I mean this in a

(56:54):
nicer sense, in the greatrespect to the members, I feel
like I can feedback and have alittle bit more of a joke with
it. So they they take I can go,Whoa, you were way off on that
boy. But don't worry about it.
Just try and do it, because Ican feel it, and I can give them
the feedback in the water. Soinstead of it being person on
the boat feeding to the skier,the skier is actually feeding to
the boat driver, yeah. So we'reactually learning as I'm skiing

(57:17):
or when I'm on the boat, and ithelps, and we get that so we've
got sure path because of James.
So I was going to ask you about,yeah, all of us competition
drivers love love that now wedo. It's great we take the mick
out of them, but we do love it,and it's great that we've got
that on site so it can allow usto really, really hone in on our
drivers when they're wanting toget to that stage to go, this is

(57:39):
where you appear to be, notgoing wrong, but your
opportunity to improve is youryour stall off to the left a wee
bit, or, yeah, you're not liningit correctly. Let's try and work
on that. And and that's been agreat bit of technology that
we've had because it's reallyhelped us. I can see if
somebody's driving straight froman eye and and from the tower,
or when I'm skiing, but it givesthem the data. Instead of me

(58:01):
just going, Oh, you're a littlebit to the left. You've got
those measurements. You've gotthat, yeah, breadcrumb path
through the app so they can see,okay, so he's left foot forward,
so on one ball, he's actuallygiven me a little bit of a tug,
and I'm not compensating thatenough. So yeah, and we do, we
do all that. So people can gofrom beginner and just learn to
drive the boat to getting theirqualifications to then learning

(58:23):
how to competition drive andtournament drive. And then they
can, they can obviously do thatin front of some of the
Federation, sort of officials,who will then sign them off to
come and tournament drivers andwhatnot. So they can do sort of
international events andnationals and all those sort of
things that

Lynn (58:42):
being able to get that feedback. I've only had, like, a
tiny bit of sure path feedback,because we couldn't get it to
work right. We borrowed one. I'dlike to really get it installed
at our lake, but I what I doinstead is I'm really open to
having the ski or give mefeedback, because, you know, you
just can't improve if you're notgetting feedback, like when

(59:03):
we're skiing, we're gettingfeedback. Are we on the right
spot? Are we not did we, youknow, turn the buoy, or did we
hit the buoy, or did we miss thebuoy all together? You know, but
when you're driving it's veryhard to it's happening very
fast. It has to be by feel, to alarge degree, because you're
really not watching the skier.
You're watching where you'regoing. Those of you who can
drive and coach, I give yousuper duper, yeah,

it's a unique skill to have. And yeah, it doesn't
always go right, but yeah, it's,I think probably April, May
time. I'm still a bit like,okay, get back in the swing come
June. It's just comes like asecond, second

Lynn (59:42):
nature, yeah, yeah. Oh, and by the way, you just hit on
something else for every singlewater skier, I think, I mean, I
I'm going to say every singleone. But even pros, I heard both
will Asher and April Coble bothsay this after a break, getting
back on after you've been off.
April. A couple of kids willtakes a couple of months off.
You kind of go, wow, this isreally fast. I hope I can

(01:00:03):
remember how to do it, even atthe highest levels. That's

Chris Heron (01:00:09):
why I don't. I know how my brain works. That's why I
don't stop because I try to.
I've done so many differentthings, on, off, seasons, trying
to find that sort of unique wayof doing it, to keep me
improving that sort of HolyGrail, and I've tried dropping
speed down maybe like one and ahalf clicks, just to kind of
take the edge off because thewater's going to be quicker, or

(01:00:30):
trying to maybe extend the ropelength, just kind of do easy
passes. And it never worked. Theone that's always worked for me
is stay normal and just keeprunning the same passes that you
would normally do. And just keepdoing, like, it's like, even
though it's cold, we're onlygoing to take six passes instead
of eight. Yeah, just do thesame, same thing and and doesn't
always go right. And you're,you're falling on passage you

(01:00:52):
shouldn't fall on but it's cold,the water's quicker, the skis
reacting differently. But thereisn't that anxiety of going,
I've not skied in a few, likefive, six weeks. Oh, this is
going to be awful. But thenagain, on the flip side, going
in with no expectations is, issometimes half, half the battle.
You've, you've, you've actuallyachieved half the bit. Because

(01:01:14):
when you go in effect, youthere's a saying you've got to
remove the expectations. Andnormally, when you do that, it
normally goes a bit better,because expectations killed,
like they completely kill. Killthe dreams they kill, they kill
the reality everything, becauseyou're you're too busy thinking
about them and actually tryingto do the task in that. So there
is a element, I guess, for

Lynn (01:01:34):
everybody listening. Just hit rewind and listen to that
three times. Yeah, no Truerwords were ever spoken.

Yeah, I need to probably do that as well.
Actually, just rewind myself andsay it back to myself, because
I'm probably one of the worstfor it. So, yeah,

Lynn (01:01:50):
well, we all so we all have that because I think that's
part of living in a modern worldlike we live in. I call it
agenda brain and what I'velearned, because I, you know, on
the horse side of my life, I've,we've, I work with a rescue that
has been taking on ferals andMustangs. So feral horse is a

(01:02:14):
horse owned by somebody. It'snot out in the wilderness, but
it's not really been touched,and they're super scaredy cats,
very, very frightening. It canbe dangerous just because
they're going to run so quicklyaway from you. And Mustangs as
well, which who were wild. Andin both cases, they're more
sensitive, so what they sense isour expectations or our agenda.

(01:02:37):
And I've experimented with thismultiple times where all I did
was in my brain, no bodylanguage shift very consciously,
just shifting to I'm now goingto put this halter on you, and
for a horse that has it had thatdone before, they will 100% of
time back away or run away, andso They feel that energy of

(01:02:59):
expectations. So the trick ishow to be move and like, do
something without expectations.

Horses are, as I said before, my partner's got a
horse and loves her piece, andthe way that they they can just
if she's had a bad day or she'sgone in with a bit of anxiety,
that the way that the horse canjust read that straight away is
on. It's unbelievable. I mean, Iknow animals are quite
intuitive. Dogs are probablyvery similar, but snaps or

(01:03:30):
horses is mad, how you can tell,but the way that they can calm
each other, the way that theycan talk to each other, for us
to communicate, and for such a Ithink it's just horses are just
one of the weird phenomena ofthe world where there's such
great big beasts, but they're sovulnerable at the same time.
It's, it's scary how, like, youcan have those two poor

(01:03:52):
opposites and one sort of oneanimal. And I think you're
right. It's having that sort ofconfidence to not, be kind of a
bit like standoffish with them,because they'll read that, but
going in there, just have a sortof a humility, but a confidence
and humility of going andbecause even just feeding them,
if you kind of tap them, theywill nip you, because they will

(01:04:13):
not know what you're doing. Yougo, go there with a good firm
hand, and you give them a clap,you give them an apple or
something. They're going to loveyou for the rest of their life.
And they knit. Their eyes lightup, but yeah, they're, they're
phenomenal beasts. I'vecertainly learned a lot from
that. I still think, I still, Istill think horse riding is a
lot, a lot harder and a lotscareder than skiing, to be
fair, because I know if thatboat's if that boat's not

(01:04:35):
starting properly, or it'smisfiring, I can fully
understand that. You don't knowthat that horse is going to
misfire when you're 16 to 18hands up, or whatever it is.

Lynn (01:04:44):
It's another brain. It's not Yeah, and that's not good,
yeah, yeah, no, it's verydifferent. Austin, I've had this
conversation because his wifehas a couple of horses. He's
like, Yeah, no, that's gotanother brain. I'd rather work
with a boat, you know, that Ican predict, but you hit
something that I think isessential. Social around what
horses do. And I think it tiesright back to our water skiing

(01:05:04):
as well. And it is, what do wedo with our fear? Or you didn't
use the word fear, but what likethis happened with my daughter.
She came out to me with one ofmy early riding lessons. This is
probably four or five years ago,and the horses were starting to
scare her, and she was shuttingdown. And her way of shutting
down was to get on her phone.
And then the woman, you know,she was parked kind of by the

(01:05:28):
horse's head, because she wasvery afraid of horses butts. And
the woman said, you know, whyaren't you grooming and why are
you on your phone? And she got alittle annoyed, and Jennifer got
very upset, and left the barn,and Jennifer's, you know, at
that time, she was in her late30s, so this is a grown ass
woman getting upset. So then thequestion was, well, what's going
on? So she did come back in, andwe had this interesting

(01:05:50):
conversation where she finallywas able to tell the instructor,
I'm afraid. And she said, that'sfine. And she goes, but I
thought I was supposed to not beafraid. I'm trying to, like, not
let the horse see my fear. Andthe instructor said, Oh no no
no, honey, you try to cover upyour fear. That scares them

(01:06:11):
worse than anything, becausethey they need you to be in
alignment with yourself. So shesaid, Go walk out. She said, own
it, and let them know you'reafraid. And walk right over
there. And there were threebarn, three horses in that barn.
We were had them, you know, wehad them, not cross tied, but on
a single tie so they could swingtheir butts around, which was

(01:06:34):
one of the things that wasmaking her very nervous. And all
of the horses let down. Everyone of them got relaxed. The
whole barn changed. As soon as

Jen owned her feet, she just aligned herself. Knows
it, yeah.

Lynn (01:06:47):
And what I recognized is, I've talked about this a lot of
the the nervous, the calm,nervous, excited study that they
did, they did ambush karaoke,and I they as some scientists, I
don't know who it was. I heardabout it on PBS. I actually, as
I was driving down to ski withtravers, when one winter and
they were saying that, when theytold the people that were

(01:07:08):
skiing, sorry, singing, andthink about ambush karaoke. I
mean, most people don't singthat well, and all of a sudden,
you know, that's pressure. Andagain, it's not, it's not the
karaoke, it's the pressurecreated by the karaoke, right?
Yep. So they put the people inthree buckets, and one bucket
was instructed to be calm and dowhatever you can to be calm. One

(01:07:30):
bucket was instructed to you'refeeling nerves. You're nervous,
fine, be nervous. And the lastgroup was you're feeling
something. Call it excitement,yeah, and then they measured
them. And who do you think didthe best?

I can follow the laughter of the three, I would
imagine,

Lynn (01:07:50):
like it like there was the measurements were something like
they had, they had a a tunerthing that could tell when
people were in tune, and theyhad other measurements. But that
was the kind of, probably themost quantitative and the
excited group was like 80something percent good. The
nervous group was somethinglike, I want to say it was like
high 60 something percent good.
And the calm was less than 50%good. Wow. And I had just been

(01:08:12):
at a tournament that fall whereit's the first time I didn't ski
to my practice. Average, I don'teven ski tournaments anymore,
because I don't get the samejolt everybody else does if I
tend to ski my exact way I skiin practice, and I don't like
spending the whole day out theretoo. There is that fair? But I

(01:08:34):
know, I know. I know otherpeople I had, I had truly, well
and truly choked in thistournament, and when I reflected
back on it, I realized that mythoughts were this as I stood on
that dock. I'm a coach. I shouldnot be feeling this. I should be
calm. Calm yourself down. Lynn,you can do this. And that's when

(01:08:55):
I skied horribly.

Yeah, yeah. And so

Lynn (01:09:03):
this Yes, as a coach, you probably have you probably
that's why you knew the excited.
So how, what's your coaching forpeople when they need to get
themselves in alignment? Andthis is back to those
expectations, becauseexpectations can create fear,
but they also sort of create ouraspiration. Yeah? So how do we
balance those two things with

great difficulty, I think. But I think there is,
there's tools you can use forfor me, for the guys that I
compete, there's, there's,there's one thing always comes
to mind is that I try and tellmyself, is that when you're
sitting on that dock, you'restanding that Doc and stuff of
that is, and you're gettingthose nervous feelings. Nervous
feelings and those butterfliesin your stomach, or ever it's
kind of manifesting itselfwithin you is that it's a

(01:09:49):
privilege to compete. It's aprivilege to be able to do that.
There's a lot of people in thisworld who will never, ever be
able to experience that, who areskiers they might never be able
to get over. Hump of wherethey're they're plateauing, or
they may never have, they mightnot have the ability they join.
There's so many people worse offof you in that, in that moment
in time. So it's like it's aprivilege to compete. It's a

(01:10:12):
privilege to be able to do that,to be challenged. Like, it's
privilege. Like, sorry,Challenge is a privilege, not
privilege is a challenge. Sortof thing that that can resonates
to some people. And so I thinkthat's the first and foremost,
is trying to have thatmentality, is that you're the
one that signed up for that. So,like, it's your time. You're not

(01:10:32):
going to get it back. So try andmake the most of it. I for, for
me personally, it's having aroutine. It's having some sort
of, some sort of way that youknow you're getting into that.
Now, my routine is a bitdifferent to a lot of people.
Mine is last minute, as in, Iwill be getting waiting for the
call like at EuropeanChampionships just last year, at

(01:10:52):
both the ski in Spain, the boatwas coming back to pick up the
first skier off the dock, whichwas me for that for that round,
and I still wasn't on the dock,because I wait till last minute,
and I literally just run downthe steps, chuck my ski and jump
in the water, because I don'thave any time to think then. So
it's Don't think, just do andbecause if I get inside my head,

(01:11:15):
if I get too much time, I'lljust psych myself out and I'll,
I'll just, and I'll choke andI'll and I'll just muck it all
up. Whereas if I don't givemyself the time, and I'm rushing
about I've got no time to think,I just go and do what my body is
used to doing when I'm pullingout of the gates and I go
through that entrance gate formy first pass, it just becomes
natural, and it's just normalthat doesn't work for everyone.

(01:11:36):
So it's trying to it's tellingpeople and the guys that I coach
is that try different thingsout. There's no There's no rhyme
or reason to it. It's whateversuits you. So if you got
yourself organized, you stretchfor an hour, you've psyched
yourself up, you've listened toyour air pods around. You're
listening to psyching up musicand stuff, and that works. And
you ski and fine, use that ifyou're listening to music and it

(01:11:57):
you're you're too hyped up, andthen you go out way too much
adrenaline. Then that doesn'twork for you, just because it
works for it works for theperson right side doesn't mean
it's going to work for you. Soyou have to tailor that. But the
best bit of advice I've got formost people, my dogs bark in a
minute. I can guarantee it's abin men or love dogs. You might
not love those two in a minute,but yeah. So effectively, what

(01:12:20):
we try and do is, is, as iscoming up to competition and
tournament time, is that we tryand get them to mimic what
they're going to do. So if theyare the person that likes to
have that long preparation time,get to the site earlier. Prepare
yourself like you're doing acompetition. Get the boat driver
to take you down to thecompetition top, get into the

(01:12:42):
water there. Go through thatsort of regime as close to the
competition as it comes, becauseat the time the competition
comes, it's just like a normalpractice. It's never going to be
like that, but you've preparedyourself as much as you possibly
can of that routine, thatfeeling of getting yourself
hyped up, like I try and makemyself a bit anxious, especially
when it's tournament time, whenI'm getting changed in our

(01:13:05):
facility, in our change rooms, Itry and get a bit anxious. This
is calm. You've gotta run this.
You've gotta try and spike thatsort of adrenaline spike inside
me so I can cope with it better.
And so I guess that's my biggestadvice. There's, there's so many
different ways to do it. Trydifferent ways, try different
preps, look at it, and then takebits from other people, and take

(01:13:25):
bits at work, delete the stuffthat doesn't but then as it
comes to that tournament side,it comes to closer those time,
try and replicate, try and livethose things through. So when it
does come to the time, you'restill going to get nervous. No,
it doesn't matter who you are,the Pro is still getting
nervous, but it's given you thata little bit of peace of mind
that you've done this before,you've ran this path, so it

(01:13:46):
should be a little bit easier.
So that's my it's not quantumphysics. It's not some sort of
like epiphany. It's just logic,really, I suppose.

Lynn (01:13:57):
Well, there's several things you said that were super
logical, and I want to call outthe early one, because you when
you say, Challenge is aprivilege and be grateful that
you're there, it puts you on theground of what you have. And
what I have found is whenpeople, including me, focus on

(01:14:20):
what we don't have, we get moreof that. Yeah, 100% and when we
focus on what we do have, we getmore of that. Yeah.

And so that is that. It's science, it's logic.
Like I look at it, if I go back10 years ago, I was on I was
getting heart surgery, I mightnot have been being able to
scale. I didn't think doctorsaid I wasn't going to be able
to ski again. I had to give upskiing. Oh my gosh. And I'd
only, I'd only started maybethree, three years I was just
getting into so I started likeyou, not quite as like I'm 39 in

(01:14:52):
a few weeks. So I was 24 some ofthat, some along those lines,
but

Lynn (01:14:56):
in to ski at the level you ski at that's pretty light.
Usually people start. Yeah.

Well, that said they get that balance point as a
kid. They learn it's like theywalk, they ski. And I didn't
have any of that. So I guess Ireally started skiing again in
2018 I couldn't run a pass. Icouldn't really get out the
water in 2018 that well. So I, Igot the all clearness. I'm going
to give this a shot. And it wasthat. It was that mentality of

(01:15:21):
going, I might not have beenable to do this. So make the
most of it. And okay, maybe wentto a slight extreme where you
give up your your career thatyou're doing, kind of retire to
an extent quite early inScotland, focus on this. I'm
just going to do this. Butthat's kind of half the battle.
So you're all in it makes it alittle bit easier, if that makes
sense. So you've got thatmentality. I might not be able

(01:15:42):
to do this, so make the most ofit. Yeah, you still have days
you you get annoyed, you getfrustrated at it. That's that's
sport at the end of the day, andthat's life. But in the general
feel is you've, you've alwaysgotta keep that in the back of
your mind. And then the otherside of it is that if you're
going to do something properly,do it properly, like commit 100%
to if you're if you want to doit, serve as a hobby and stuff

(01:16:04):
like, that's cool, but thendon't expect, yeah, be able to
do it, X, Y and Z. You've got tosacrifice a lot to be able to do
stuff. And I think people forgetthat they want that. I'm not
saying I'm the best in theplanet of any strips
imagination, but I work hard forit. And people, they want to get
the end goal, and they just wantto have that. But there's a lot
that goes in between, startingfrom that scratch bit in 2018 to

(01:16:26):
today. So yeah, and there'sstill a lot, a lot, trust me,
the guys that I trained to starta lot more to improve on. So
yeah, you don't, you don'tcomplete it. You definitely
don't complete

Lynn (01:16:37):
it. It's the the distinction between becoming the
best. And, you know, people haveheard about this in the opening
when I describe your bio at theintro, but you were the Scottish
National Champion for threeyears in a row, from what I see.
Yeah. So you you understand whatit is to be on the tip of that

(01:16:59):
sphere and what it takes to beon top. Because it's one thing
to be really good, and it'sanother thing to be on top.

There's only one way to go when you're there,
that's the that's the thing andthat. And yeah, you mean

Unknown (01:17:12):
down, right, yeah.
Well, there is, yeah, onceyou're there,

you stay there. And I kind of said to myself, I was
like, when I when I won it thefirst year, I was like, that was
my achieve. I always want to dothat. Since I was a bit like,
when you were saying, when youstart skiing, you you don't know
a lot of the guys, but then yougo to your first one, you watch
these guys ski, and then youwatch these guys get crowned
your national champion. You'relike, yeah, okay, wow. These
guys are phenomenal. So then Iwas when I started competing, I

(01:17:37):
started getting decent scores. Iwas like, that's what I would
say. I want to try that. And Iremember saying to my coach at
the time, Simon, who's he's aSouth African guy that came over
to us and coached us for aseason, and I said to him, and
when, in 2020 I think, had beenskiing for like, a year and a
half, I said, really want to,like, get to the European
Championship. So that's what Iwant to do. And he goes, that's
tall order, but you could do itif you stick at it. So I was

(01:17:58):
like, Okay, let's try it. And Ikind of did that in the
background. Didn't really tell alot of people that that's what I
want to do. So in 2020, 21 Istart really going for it. And
then then I won that. And I waslike, okay, that's amazing. I
kind of, I achieved my goals.
Like, what do I do now? Like,well, I've done what I kind of
want to do. And and I was like,Okay, let's, let's, let's go for

(01:18:19):
the my, my first ever rankingsevent I entered was British
nationals, which is probably, inhindsight, probably the
stupidest thing you could alsodo. It's normal people kind of
go through those levels, youknow, they they do the
grassroots, they maybe do alocal competition, and then they
kind of build up. Whereas me,being the strange person I am
decided, oh, let's just go for anational championship. And I

(01:18:42):
ended up coming third in thatwhich I'd never imagined in a
month or Sundays that was goingto happen. And then with that,
got called up, we got to theBritish squad for the over 30
fives. And after that, it kindof just spiraled from there, and
it was but then you start thenext season going, I'm going to
have to try and do this again.
Like, can I do this again?
There's that element of doubt,can I kind of repeat what I've

(01:19:04):
done, kind of improving it,like, if I don't win it this
year? Or is that going to be afailure of what people going to
think you you start goingthrough this like mad, sort of
spiral in your brain and and itwas, it was when I started
seeing my sports surface, like,kind of going take a step back,
stop, like, giving yourself sucha hard time, chill out like

(01:19:24):
you're, yeah, and basicallythat, that Mo, that sort of
saying, like, is going, you arejust like you're, you're
defeating yourself. And it'ssort of thinking that way of
going right, okay, and that'staking a step back, grounding it
and and just doing the best youcan, like, doing the best that
you can achieve, like, withinthe situation you can have,

(01:19:46):
you're never going to PB everysingle competition. That's not
going to happen, yeah, um,because not every competition is
going to have flat ground water,straight drive or, like, no wet
and so you can. Expect when it'slike at the Oxford Pro Am, when
Corey won, when we werecompeting, there it was Rolly,
it was windy. It was even forus, well, okay, for the English

(01:20:07):
guys. It probably was good forthe Scottish guys. Now we were
fine, like we were still incharge, but I'm going to get so
much abuse for that. But yeah,like we're, we're everyone was
kind of, the scores were down,and everyone admitted that. Um,
but you have to, you have tothen realize that you're doing
the best you can with the thescenario you're dealt with, the

(01:20:30):
the hand you're dealt and that'sall you can do. Um, and once I
realized that it started, it'snever, always goes perfect, I
certainly it made it a loteasier for me to kind of
establish what I'm doing. Um, Ikind of said, If I won three in
a row, I'd probably not do itthis year and kind of focus on
other things. I'll see how Ifeel once the season comes. But
one of my friends was like, Oh,you if you do 3p, you've gonna,

(01:20:53):
you've gotta give somebody elsea chance. And I was like, Oh,
don't say that. And that was onthe podcast as well. Oh, that's
just gonna, I'm gonna be, I'mgonna have a massive target my
back. So, yeah, I don't know.
We'll see. We'll see whathappens this year. There's,
there's certainly a few, a fewcompetitions we want to do, but
we'll see how time goes, Iguess. But yeah, back to your
original that's kind of how Iapproached it. Yeah, it was a

(01:21:16):
bit of, a bit of a whirlwind fewyears, that's for sure.

Lynn (01:21:19):
Well, one of the things I heard as you were thinking about
this upcoming year is not thatyou have that level of
expectation that you've had inthe past, speaking of
expectations, but there'ssomething about the process,
too, of the driving towards thegoal that is so magical. And it

(01:21:41):
doesn't sound like you've lostany of that hunger. I

not. I don't like I don't like cliches, but a lot of
them make quite a lot of sensewhen you talk about it. But it
is like the journey rather thanthe destinations. Apps. I do
enjoy it. I do. We were talkingabout lifting heavy weights,
longevity, all those sort ofthings before we came on. And I
love it like, I love going togym, like I have we built when
we built our first house, likeit was or we bought our first
house. Sorry, we we put a gym inthe garage that we pop our kids

(01:22:09):
out. And I love it, because it'ssomething I do every day,
whether or not it's a run,whether it's lifting weights.
And I enjoy that, enjoy pushingmyself to that. And I enjoy
going and training. I enjoyskiing. I enjoy doing those
things, and that feeling whenyou win your first medal, or you
win your first championship andstuff, that is a phenomenal
feeling. And but then you canreflect, and you actually

(01:22:32):
looking at of the journey you'vehad, and you actually appreciate
all that stuff even more thanthat little smidgen event. Cos,
let's be fair. Everyone forgetsabout that after that Sunday,
when the The trophy is done, thepodium is done, everyone's gone
back on with their life. So whenyeah

Lynn (01:22:50):
experiences you, you're already like, well, so that was
great. And now what next? Yeah.
And like, yeah. And so thejourney is, is that? But to me,
that's the dancing the tightrope piece of it, because, you
know, that's the title of thebook I wrote. And lot of people
ask me what dancing the tightrope means. And I said it means
any two things you have tobalance. Because, you know, you
do have to balance the journeyand the goal. If there's no

(01:23:13):
goal, there's no reason for thejourney. But if all you focus on
is the goal, the journey becomesmiserable. So that's a tight
rope right there that you haveto balance. And I know it sounds
to me like you know, you arevery aware of that balance and
doing a pretty good job of it.

I probably wasn't.
I'll be honest with you, when Istarted doing it and when I
started properly in 2022 I wasrabbit in headlights. Had no
clue what I was doing. And Iwouldn't say it was a fluke of a
season, because I trained hardfor it, but I scored really
well, like I did really good,and it was a really great
season. 23 was a little bit moreof the reality check, whereby it
was like I focused too much. Atthe start of I won this. I did

(01:23:54):
that there. I need to repeatthis. I need to do this. There's
so much pressure, and I learnedthe hard way, fortunately, with
that in 23 like didn't, didn't,didn't score where I wanted to,
didn't do as well as i i wantedto personally. And then had to
kind of re evaluate that 24certainly from a psychological
point of view, and was certainlya major, major journey there and

(01:24:18):
trying to understand that moreand getting and I think towards
the end of the season that Ikind of came up not on top. I
came out of a positive attitudeand certainly a far better place
buying I do it's, it's justmaking sure that you have
balance within your life aswell. I think I focused too much

(01:24:39):
in 23 it was just ski. Didn'tmatter anything else and you and
that's where I went wrong. Therewas no escapism from it. There
was no sort of I was working it,I was competing it. I was loving
it, and I love that. But youneed to have stuff out with it,
whether or not that is goingjust out for a walk. So. Things
like that, but like going to seethe horse with my partner, or

(01:25:01):
going away in the long weekendor something away from the ski
site, because literally, it wasjust non stop. And that's
certainly something this yearI'm going to make more of an
effort to do is escape away fromthe sport. It's going to be more
difficult because I work it andI competed. But that's
definitely in the wall planneralready is weekends where I'm
not going to be skiing, or I'mnot going to be at the ski site,

(01:25:22):
I'm going to be doing thingsI've got nothing to do with it.
And and that certainly hashelped me, because it detaches
and it doesn't put as muchpressure on because that isn't
you're not defined by the sport.
You're defined by the person youare. And unfortunately, that
year didn't go too well. I wastrying to define myself at the
sport, which isn't a healthy wayto be at all. So, yeah, I think

(01:25:44):
this year will be a bitdifferent. I hope, no, it will
be. It will be. I,

Lynn (01:25:50):
you know, right as right as her career was sort of coming
to a close, her competitivecareer. I skied with April
COVID. I was at Coble ski schoolsomething like 20 times. I went
so many times I am the mostcoached amateur on the planet. I
think nothing wrong with that,

nothing wrong

Lynn (01:26:06):
with that. No, no, especially spoken by the ski
coach. But she she said skiingis what we do. It's not who we
are. And just another way to saywhat you just said. And I think
that's what gives us the fuel toactually do the sport or
whatever it is we're doing,whether we're the CEO of a
company or riding horses orskiing or whatever other

(01:26:27):
endeavor we have, is we have toget it from the inside out of
who we are, and that's whatfuels the endeavor. And when you
get that backwards, I thinkthat's when our egos get in
trouble, and where we have a lotof problems unexplored. We can't
put our finger on it, but that'swhere nothing seems to balance.
Yeah,

100% I think it's certainly the ego side of it is
a big thing, and a lot of peoplefall, fall foul to that. I
think, I think for me in thatyear where I think what I was, I
was more worrying about keepingup appearances of that. This is
what I did last year. I need torepeat that. And okay,
fortunately, most of that didhappen, but it's that this

(01:27:10):
realizing that's not a be alland end all. And I read a book,
Ryan Holiday's one eagle is theenemy, and that kind of helped
me a

Lynn (01:27:16):
lot. Oh, there we go. That was, yeah, Ryan Holiday, right?
Ryan Holiday,

yeah, great. It's a great but I read that. I
actually wrongly. I read that assoon as I started feeling that
way. And what I've recommendedto a lot of the guys as well
that I ski with, it'sphenomenal, because as a skier,
it's an individual sport, albeitthere's team sport, all those
sort of things when you're atthe bigger championships, but

(01:27:41):
it's an individual sport, andyou the there was a tool that I
got told, whereas you've gotfour perspectives, you've got
your perspective, somebody closeto you, somebody watching, and
somebody doesn't know anythingabout you, and so you don't run
your first pass, or you fall onan easy pass that you should Run
your expert, your your feelingof that is, it's catastrophic.

(01:28:03):
It's the worst thing in theworld. The person next to you,
the person that knows you, is isdisappointed, as in because
they, they're, they'redisappointed for you, not in you
before you or they feel, theyfeel like sad for you. They're
empathetic, or feel sorry foryou, wherever that is, yeah, the
person watching, it's like,we've all been there. I've done
that. It's not a great feelinglike, and they're quite and the

(01:28:25):
person that doesn't knowanything about sport goes,
alright, cool, next. And whenyou actually think about it that
way, that you're kind of likegoing, nobody, really, nobody
cares, because everyone's, in anicer sense, everyone's too busy
focused on what they're doingrather than what's going on with
you. So, yeah, okay, that splitsecond in their life, one second

(01:28:45):
of however many seconds in aday, every a week, a year, all
those sort of things, they'vegone, oh, that's That's rubbish,
unfortunate. Next gears off thetop. They've forgotten all about
it. They're watching that personski. And that certainly helped
me, because I did get when Iremember that first time I fell
on my pass. I should never havefallen. And I was properly like,
you idiot, were you doing givingmyself, like, the biggest sort

(01:29:06):
of dressing down I could have.
But then when I got taught thattool, I was like, wow, okay,
yeah, it's not a big deal. We'llmove on. Like it's happened, but
I'm still living. I'm stilldoing this. I've got other stuff
I need to go and do, and I'vegot two more rounds to to make
up for it. So that was certainlythe I didn't think, I don't
think I have an ego based Ithink you've got to be
confident. I think there's adifference. But I certainly

(01:29:27):
think that was the sort of thedressing down of that ego side
about going, there's no point.
It doesn't help anyone to havethat, and it limits you so so
much. And there many examples ofthat book of famous people, like
kings, queens. It's, it'sphenomenal. You can kind of go,
you're a very, very smallaspect, and those grand things

(01:29:50):
have happened in history of theworld. So you're like, yeah,
we'll just, we'll just move on.
We'll get on to the next one. Soyeah, but

Lynn (01:29:56):
that's that, you know, what you you have hit on. That's
such a great story. Uh, thatthing that we do where we jump
into other people's heads andthen beat ourselves up, because
surely, that's what they'regoing to do, you know? And kids
do that with parents and AndreAgassi and his book open
actually talked about the momentwhere he beat himself up so his

(01:30:17):
dad didn't have to do itanymore. And it was very sad,
because he didn't like tennis.
Who knew that this great tennisplayer was living through his,
you know, he was living hisdad's dream, not his dream, and
yet, look what he achieved. And,yeah, phenomenal. So there's,
you know, under the topic ofeverything we've been talking

(01:30:38):
about, is that thing about whowe are versus what we do and and
we look at people who have beengreat achievers, but what is
their inner life like? What istheir life like? You know, what
is really happening for them?
Because it's sort of when you'retrying to get something, it's
really common to have thethought, If only I could run

(01:31:00):
that pass or win thattournament, or buy that business
or what, you know, fill in theblank. If only I could do that
thing. And then once you getthere, you find out it, it ain't
all it was cracked up to be.

You don't want to be the person that puts your
ladder up against wrong wall.
That's the

Lynn (01:31:16):
Say that again. Say that again. I want to hear that
clearly so

you don't so that's, See, I told you you're
gonna need subtitles for this.
You don't want to be the personwho puts your ladder up against
the wrong wall.

Lynn (01:31:28):
Put your ladder up against the wrong wall. I don't need
subtitles for that, but, yes,but, but that's exactly right.
And we do that. Well,

I've done that. I did that, and in my career, I
followed what I thought I shouldbe doing, and I did pretty good
at it, but then became unstuckand just started to become
miserable and realized that thelast six months to a year has
probably been the biggest thingwhere I've realized that the
whole sort of life, and that'snot disrespectful to anybody who

(01:31:58):
lives the stereotypical life ofworking In nine to five, they
get married at certain age, theyhave kids, and they get a
mortgage, they do all thosethings that that's fine. That's
their choice, their life of notpreaching or trying to sort of
say that they're wrong. But Irealized that wasn't for me,
that that wasn't my life. I itwasn't a case of, I wanted to

(01:32:21):
work a nine till five and livein suburbia and drive a car and
do all those sort of things thatjust wasn't mean. But it took me
a number of years to realizethat, because I thought that the
way I was feeling was justnormal, that's just how you
feel. That's life, until I kindof had something happen in my
life whereby, I think a choicein the matter got made

(01:32:42):
redundant, and then it was kindof like, okay, I don't know,
actually know what to do here,and then you have to properly
step back and look at what youwant to achieve and like, what
makes you happy, what? And itwas a blessing in disguise. And
I can gain another cliche asthey they always say that
something that bad that happensto you feels bad at time, but
sometimes it's actually the bestthing that could have happened
to you and and that was thecase, because that then made me

(01:33:02):
realize, okay, I don't want tobe financed up to my eyeballs
with mortgages or car fine. Idon't want to be working a nine
to five behind the desk. I'm notreally the marriage material. My
partner and I are really happy.
We're just not that way inclinedright now. We're not really
wanting kids or dogs and ourpets, our horses, our our
family, our children, people.

(01:33:23):
Some people think that's mad,but that's just the way it is
and but because we've made thosechoices, we lose a lot of
people. You lose a lot of peoplefrom your circle because you're
not going down that same route.
And it's, yeah, it'sheartbreaking. Some things
because you you lose a lot ofpeople that you were really good
friends with because they'vegone down a different route to
you. But then the good thing is,you more people that are of a
similar mentality, then kind ofcome back into your circle, and

(01:33:45):
you grow a different sort offamily and a different sort of
circle of friends, becauseyou're moving in that same
direction. But yeah, Idefinitely put my ladder up
against the wrong wall, and Iclimbed it to the more or less
the top, and couldn't seeanything I liked. So now I've
kind of done this, and it's noteveryone's cup of tea. It's a

(01:34:06):
lot of people said I was mad fordoing what I was doing. I didn't
get a lot of support from it. Alot of people kind of just
thought I was having a midlifecrisis, and maybe I am, but I'm
happy. So spine of that's acrisis. That's cool, but, but,
yeah, that's certainly somethingthat I learned the hard way. But
I would always say to people andguys that I'm the kids that I'm
coaching, or the teenagers notknowing what they want to do is,

(01:34:29):
is, I've always said to them,just, you don't have to go to
university. That's not justbecause that's the next step
that everyone thinks you have todo. You don't need to do that. I
mean, it might be the right onefor you, but you don't need to,
or you don't need to get a jobat big banks or that, or the big
law firms, you can do somethingdifferent. I mean, again might
be the right one for you, butdon't just pigeonhole yourself,
because

Lynn (01:34:53):
I did that time again. I call that shooting on yourself.
Yeah. It, right? And, yeah, but,you know, that's, that's a tough
one, because, you know, I'vebeen caught in that. I mean,
I've, I've done life both ways,and it caused me some serious

(01:35:15):
health issues to try to be inthat shitting environment where,
you know, I ended up in thehospital emergency room with a
pretty significant, we thought,heart issue. And what woke me up
was the cardiologist, who saidhe hadn't been there hardly at
all that week in Charlotte,North Carolina, he goes, I
haven't been here that much, butyou're the fifth person from

(01:35:37):
your bank that I have seen thisweek with potential heart
problems.

And there's a common denominator there isn't
there.

Lynn (01:35:46):
What kind of Treadmill Am I on? You know? And it wasn't
that unusual to have ambulances.
Of course, it's a big bank, butambulances take people away, you
know, pretty regularly. And so Ihad this little bit of a wake up
call. And it was right about thetime I did the book The artist
way. And you notice I didn't sayI read the book The artist way?
I said I did the book The artistway, because it's full of

(01:36:07):
wonderful exercises. I recommendit. It's probably my most
recommended book. And thatparticular year i is the year I
left the bank. We bought ourhouse in Lake Lure, our initial
house, which I'm actuallysitting in right now doing this
podcast. And then I startedworking for an entrepreneurial
company, and that was thebeginning of of my freedom was

(01:36:29):
after I was in the hospital witha wake up call. Something bad

happens. It's the best thing in the nicest sense.
Obviously, you're healthy now,so that's good, but, yeah, best
thing that could have happenedto you. And, and it's certainly
that, that that's, it screams itlike it really, it really does,
because it's, it's easy, it'seasy to just get caught up and
all that sort of stuff in themundane and, and before you know
it, it's past it's passed youby, but, but, yeah, I definitely

(01:36:58):
feel that. And that's it was,it's been difficult and it's but
still, so far, so far, so good.
So I'm pretty I'm pretty chuffedby moving my ladder and climbing
up that one. So I'm starting tosee a lot more, which is good.
So, but, yeah, it's funny howsome things like that can happen
and it turns your life upsidedown, but for a good week. So

(01:37:18):
yeah,

Lynn (01:37:20):
well, I think that's pretty profound. And also
recognizing that nothing everlasts forever, and nothing stays
the same, our sport, you know,is to sort of circle back to
where we started. As we as weclose is the sport is one of
dynamic alignment. You'reconstantly rebalancing, and I

(01:37:41):
think our lives are the sameway, and it's sort of paying
attention to what are thesignals that we need to change
the balance the balance pointhas moved. What's the signal for
us to stay in balance with thebalance point? I've

I've found my my skiing has come on leaps and
bounds when I've kind of beenhappy with less, if that makes
sense like so I've transitioned.
If you remember, I was sayingthat I just like skiing because
it gave me that 50 minutes offreedom. I didn't have to think
about X, Y and Z, that's goingon in life, and it was my
escapism. Now I don't need, Idon't need to have that escapism

(01:38:16):
because I don't have the samesort of pressures I did before,
because I've made the decisionsin my life to try and make my
life better. I still get theescaping because I just my brain
goes a million miles an hour.
That's the sort of person I am.
So it's that escapism there. ButI certainly think being happy
with less is a major thing inlife that people overlook.
They're always striving to getmore or get something new or

(01:38:38):
something better, whereas I'vegone the other way, now I've
kind of going, can I livewithout that? Now? Yeah, cool,
boom, that's that cut. Can Ilive without that? And it's less
to worry about. But I found itsbenefit my skiing, because it's
the same thing as I need to moveless on my ski. So I need to be
happier moving less. And I'veused that analogy from life
going in well, if I don't needas much in life, or maybe I

(01:39:00):
maybe I don't need to move asmuch on that. Or maybe, and, and
it's kind of just in a weird,sort of universal way. It's kind
of plugged together. And I'vekind of put that into my my
training as well. So yeah, it'scertainly, certainly
psychologically, it's helped mea lot looking at it that way.
Well,

Lynn (01:39:16):
I think that's one of the principles of balance. Yeah,
because I, I remember, you know,I talk about dancing the
tightrope a lot, but I hadn'tspent much time on one, and I
was down at a beach last yearand they had a slack line.

Oh, gee, yeah, we've got one, and it's mad for
hard times. I

Lynn (01:39:37):
hadn't I had no idea, like I had tried one years ago, and
just literally could never getup without somebody holding on
to me. So my balance hadimproved to the point where I
could get on the slack line. Butwhat I noticed is that when I
there was a there was a I don'tknow what I was doing, but the
line was moving back and forthreally fast, and I could hold
it, but it was way big. Uh,changes, right? And then all of

(01:40:03):
a sudden, I kind of like, took abreath and said, How little Can
I move this? Yep, and it waslike something tangible went
down through my body. And all ofa sudden, my movements went from
swinging, let's call it six,eight inches, to swinging, like
less than half an inch, butdefinitely still moving, but not
as much. And I'm not even surewhat that was, but it lines up

(01:40:27):
with your principle. And Irealized it's a principle of
balances. You the over and underreacting creates kind of a
porpoising effect, which causesyou eventually to, you know, not
be able to keep going.
Eventually you're going to havea crash with a with a porpoising
effect. But if you can moveless, you can go further

slack lines. It seem so addictive, because you
constantly just want to keepdoing that extra step, or get a
little bit longer, or be able toturn around and go back the way
you've come. And I remember thatone of our members, who's our
chair, he actually donated it tothe center and, and I can
remember, as soon as he set up,like I looked around it, he's on
it, try and, like, do it. Andthen his son does parkour, came

(01:41:08):
on and just walked across itlike there was nothing,

Unknown (01:41:12):
right? Okay, so everyone do that, yeah?
Everyone's

competing. Then you watch the trick skiers. The
trick skiers can do it. No, Ibet they're amazing, just like
that. They're fine. The jumpersare like, all over the shop.
Some of them, like thestereotypical sectors. Obviously
jumpers, I'll be able to do it,but the slalom guys you would
expect putting one foot in frontof the other should be better at
it than most, but they're sobusy, they're used to swinging,
and they're doing that for yourright the it's weird. The the

(01:41:37):
less you move, the more you canmove forward on it. And yeah,
it's very similar to ski, andthat's why we put it in, because
it's got, it's a land trainingexercise that helps of the
sport. So we, that's why we'veput it in. But yeah, we

Lynn (01:41:50):
need all those land training things we can get,
because we there's not a lotthere's

that's the thing, like we've all had that all
skiers know that is, there'svery limited exercises that
physically replicate what you doat skiing, yeah, okay. You do a
Oli lifting, you do alldifferent CrossFit that I love
doing. Yeah, yeah, okay. Makesyou super strong. It makes you
super flexible, mobile on Earthand but there's probably only
about three or four exercisesthat really engage the muscles

(01:42:16):
correctly for what we are doingon the water, and there's only
so many times you can do them ina week before you just go. This
is ridiculously boring now. So,yeah, it's a, it's a, if you're
if you can find stuff that doesthat mixes it up a wee bit, it
certainly helps, definitelyhelps the trend

Lynn (01:42:33):
well. So we spoke about it a little bit, but, but what is
it that you're looking mostforward to this year as this
season begins to open up. Whatare you looking forward to?

Warmer weather?
Maybe

Lynn (01:42:47):
you love the ice baths, but yes, yeah, it's

nice. It's nice going on an ice bath when it's
sunny outside. No, I what am Ilooking forward to the season?
So I'm looking forward tohosting our events again, like
they're a big, a big thing in mylife. I kind of they're like my
little babies. I kind of saidthat in 22 when I took over the
site, I want to make a rankingsand international site of
recognition for excellence, andwe've done that now. So we've

(01:43:12):
got our three events. So I'mreally looking forward to our
three events, site competitionand our slalom cup. So one's in
June, one's in September. So forthe site, I'm looking forward to
them, and for me personally,just looking, looking forward to
competing, seeing friends again,and all the guys, because we're
so far away, we don't see themas much. So probably we've got

(01:43:33):
the European championships thisyear, which is in check. So
hopefully all going well, wecan, we're allowed to go to
that, get selected for that, andthen I guess probably the other
side of it is getting away withmy partner more when actually
looking at the world andtraveling a bit that doesn't
involve skiing. So I'm lookingforward to doing that and spend

(01:43:55):
some more time away from thesport, which sounds really
counterintuitive, but as wediscussed, that's kind of
helped. So those probably arethe three things. Are
competitions, me competing,hopefully at the big events
again, and getting to travelmore and open so, yeah, that's

Lynn (01:44:09):
and you've got those on your calendar, which is the
secret, right? Yeah, they're,they're there.

My to do list is, is definitely there. So yeah,
they're, they're, they're,they're firm, place, permanent
marker, not, not Sharpie.
They're permanent. So, yeah,they're not going anywhere

Lynn (01:44:22):
that that. You know, it's interesting, because those rest
times we we had to take threeweeks off when we had flooding
here in Lake Lure and our lakeflooded, but it was okay. We got
it recovered fairly quickly, butdidn't get a chance to ski
until, like, almost the end ofthe season. It made me really
sad, because that happenedSeptember 27 we normally have
the whole month of October toski, and I got to ski all of two

(01:44:45):
whole times in October.
Interestingly enough, though, itwas the best I skied all year.
And it reminded me thatprincipal we were just talking
about, and Austin and I talkabout this a lot too, less is
sometimes more, and. Andfrankly, that sucks, because
we're already so limited in notgetting to do our sport as much
as we want, because it's so hardand and physically taxing, and

(01:45:07):
yet we're going to be better atit, ironically, if we ski even
less. And I hate that about thissport. My

partner said that to me as well. She goes, maybe
just ski too much where you needto go, and she's totally right.
I probably do. It's probablyright, but, but I was speaking
to my I was speaking to one ofmy best mates I ski with, and
she went, absolutely not. Youcan never ski too much. I'm
like, oh, Dawn, this is, this isridiculous. I can't, yeah, I've
got the logic there of of mypartner going, yeah, the proof
is in the pool when I've got heron the other side of me. Kind of

(01:45:38):
the person who, like me, justwants to ski 24/7, if you can.
And, yeah, there's, there'sagain, there's that balance
piece again, isn't it? Justtrying to get, get that balance.
It's

Lynn (01:45:49):
finding when it's okay, you know, to not ski or to ski,
but, oh, I just, I wish, I wishI could ski more. That's the the
bottom line is, I wish I couldski more, which is probably why
I don't ski as well as I could,because I ski too much. So there
was, it's also trying

to make the most of the the weather, isn't it?
You've got a flat count there.
Oh, try and ski three timeswhere you really should just do
one or two sets, like younormally do, and then, but then,
if you don't, and it's windingthe next day, and you're blowing
out, you're like, we should havedone that. And then you be you
can never win. You can neverwin. You can't put it future. I

Lynn (01:46:21):
actually we have and I magically soft, quiet lake. It's
flat, really. From mid Maythrough August, pretty much the
peak of our ski season, we havevery few windy days now, spring
and fall, we get quite a bit ofwind. So it could be really not
gnarly, but our side is reallyprotected, so it's only one

(01:46:42):
direction that we really get toomuch wind. So all that said
exactly that, except for whatI've noticed, in if it's windy,
it always blows when I'm aboutto ski, I'll come up and I'll
go, Austin, it's not blowing.
I'm going to ski now, and assoon as I put that ski on, boom,
the wind comes up. I said, Well,he says, yeah, that's just a
good, good practice. That's whatwe

we've got, we've, we've got a apparel line that we
do for our site, and we've got at shirt for that. It's called,
What's your excuse? And it'sbasically every single excuse.
Oh, like, everything you can Oh,it's, oh, it's a, really, I'm
not good in a head wind or, orall my skis not set up
correctly. Or, you know, everysingle one that you've you've
heard from, it said, Oh, I'veput my boot on the wrong way

(01:47:25):
around, or I've not tied my mylace up correctly, yep, all
those things. And it's so funny,because every time you hear
somebody go, Oh, it's a littlebit windy, I like, get in the
water.

Lynn (01:47:34):
Yes, that's just number three on the list. Yeah,

tech and but to be fair, I always said to them, if
you come off an excuse that I'venever heard before, I'll
actually give you the benefit ofthe doubt, yeah, and I'll add it
to the t shirt. But so far,

Lynn (01:47:47):
they're all well, you know, back to that story I told
you about the tailwind. What'sgreat is now I actually don't
ever have slack on a tailwind. Ihave no idea what I've done to
change, but I think it's thatI'm much less likely to over and
under react. And you just feel,if you're feeling your way
through it, if you're really,truly feeling it, you just kind
of know where to turn and whatto do. And

it's also your confidence. You're confident in
doing it now as well, becauseyou've done it, repetition,
repetition. And you're, you'renow going to ask tailwind,
whereas before, I wasn't there,but I can imagine you were in
your head. Oh, yeah, but yeah,yeah. And then you get it, and

Lynn (01:48:21):
then you get and then you get in your own head, and that's
what obstructs us, back to theunobstructed learning ideas we
obstruct ourselves, and it'smostly ourselves that we do it
too, exactly. So this has beenfull of lots and lots of
encouragement and advice and soforth. You've just given us all
so much to think about. But aswe close, I always ask my guest,

(01:48:44):
you know, what kind of advicewould you give the audience, or
question would you ask of theaudience? What would you just
this is your chance to sort of,you know, say whatever you want
to the people listening. Whatwould you want my listeners? And
you're going to have listenershere. What would you want them
to

know? Oh, that's, that's got to be, there's got to
be some sort of amazingannouncement now. But no, I
think, I think for me, from whatwe're talking about, me, you
could go off in tangents andtalk about so many different
things, but I think we'retalking about what we've
discussed over the last hour anda half, two hours and however
long it's been, is that don'toverthink it too much. Do the

(01:49:27):
best you can with the handyou're dealt or the scenario you
face, or the conditions that youface. And I guess for me
personally, what I've gonethrough is try and look at being
happier with less like honestly,it makes a massive difference to
your life. And finally, Isuppose, is the whole sort of

(01:49:48):
longevity piece that we kind oftouched on before we start
recording. We've kind of spokenabout it all the way through,
but people starting later andwhatnot. And sports is we, we're
both proofs of the pudding thatyou can start a sport really
late. Life and still get reallygood at it and still enjoy it
and stuff. And a lot of people,I think, are their own worst
enemies. They put their blockersup. They put their obstacle up

(01:50:08):
before they've said, I'm told todo that or I can't do that. I
mean, we've got a prime example,as we've got a 70 where you'll
be 79 now, year old guy whoshort lines, like straight into
sort of like, 14 meters, camesecond at British nationals.
We've got in the over 35 team.
We've got guys breaking worldrecords who are 70 plus, and
some of the best gears in theworld are like, seriously

(01:50:30):
ripping up and showing some ofus younger guys in the senior
team how to how to ski. So Iguess my biggest thing is, and
you, asked me that what was,kind of my intention for the
podcast was to show that we skiin Scotland. We were pretty
good. We people should comevisit us and see us. But also
the the longevity pieces thatyou can start stuff and don't,

(01:50:52):
don't, kind of just think you'retoo old, or you're past it, and
and the idea of still beingpretty mobile, pretty strong,
pretty athletic, into your 70s,80s and 90s, is certainly key
for what I try and produce formyself, but also kind of, um,
probably preach a little bit, Iwould say to my guys when I'm
when I'm coaching them andstuff. But that's certainly a

(01:51:13):
big thing in in my lifenowadays. Yeah, well, that'll
that'll probably do for aconclusion from me.

Lynn (01:51:20):
Yeah, what? What was it on TED lasso, the guy said soccer
is life. Skiing is life. That'swhat we say. Skiing is life,
yeah,

Unknown (01:51:28):
yeah, it's a very big part of it. It's a very life

Lynn (01:51:32):
affirming sport, and it's the best fitness ever I've I'm
convinced it's the fountain ofyouth.

Well, you don't, you don't be an unfit skier.
I've not met somebody who's likea like a proper slalom skier,
not met somebody who's unfit,yeah, no,

Lynn (01:51:46):
no. It puts you in shape that you never dream of. And our
ski site is very similar toyours. We have, I would actually
say it's it, you know, maybe alittle more, few more women than
men. I'm not sure. I haven'tever done a poll for sure, 5050,
at our site. And you know, a fewyounger people, but I say most

(01:52:06):
of Austin's clients are over 40,loving life driving a good
distance to get to ski, becausethey love it. And so if and if
people want to come ski withyou, we may have some people
dreaming of taking a trip, maybefrom the states to Scotland, and
didn't even know this existed.
How do they find you, both toski with you, and just in
general, on the socials andstuff, tell people how to find

(01:52:27):
you and how to come ski withyou. Yeah.

So best for the site itself, water ski and
whiteboard Scotland, town lock,national training site. You type
that into Google, it'll come up.
You'll see it purpose madefacility for skiing. So it's got
proper change of facility,showers, toilets, massive
auditorium, sort of part, TVscreens, pool tables, you'd name
it. It's got it. So yeah, it's alittle bit different than some

(01:52:53):
of the sites that we've allvisited, where it's been shacks
or something like that. So it'sa purpose built building, like
proper offices and earth and so,yeah, that's the best place to
find them. Our memberships, verysimilar. Our average age, our
sites, probably about 3031 32pretty good mixture between
females and males. But we've gota lot of young talent coming

(01:53:14):
through now. So we've got a nicedevelopment squad of about 10
kids that we are proper, notpushing in a nasty way, but
we're pushing them through theranks, and they're doing it. So
yeah, if anybody ever wants todo that, that the sites on
Instagram and Facebook andstuff. For me, it's Instagram
handles Chris J Heron andFacebook's Christopher James

(01:53:34):
Herron. So yeah, you can get mein both them. I can give them
the information stuff out forthe site anyway, but yeah,
that's the best place to find

Lynn (01:53:43):
that's great. Well, this has just been an absolute
delight, and I'm so gratefulthat you joined me from Scotland
for this really great podcast. Iknow the water ski audience is
just going to love it. So thankyou for being here, and for
those of you listening, yes,you're welcome, and for those of
you listening, as always, I'mgoing to ask you to write this
podcast, share it with yourfriends, especially with your

(01:54:06):
water ski friends for this one,but even your horse friends,
because a lot of what we talkedabout applies to both. And if
you're interested in followingme, you can always go to Lynn
carnes.com to sign up for thecoaching digest, and in the
meantime, we will see you on thenext podcast. Thank you for
listening to the creativespirits unleash podcast. I
started this podcast because Iwas having these great

(01:54:27):
conversations, and I wanted toshare them with others. I'm
always learning in theseconversations, and I wanted to
share that kind of learning withyou. Now what I need to hear
from you is what you want moreof and what you want less of. I
really want these podcasts to bea value for the listeners. Also,
if you happen to know someonewho you think might love them,
please share the podcast and, ofcourse, subscribe and rate it on

(01:54:51):
the different apps that you'reusing, because that's how others
will find it. Now, I hope you goand do something very fun today.
You.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#81 Chris Heron: The Path to Balance and Well-Being

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#81 Chris Heron: The Path to Balance and Well-Being

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