Jessie Graff is a badass. In August, she became the first woman to ever complete Stage 1 of the American Ninja Warrior national finals in Las Vegas. But that was just a little extra fun for the stunt-person, who has black belts in both Tae Kwan Do and Kung Fu, and who鈥檚 worked on shows like Supergirl and The Walking Dead, as well as on the Iron Man, X-Men, and Transformers movie franchises.听

So, when she invited me along for a day of cliff diving and rock climbing in Malibu, the answer was obviously yes. Hopefully, I learned a little about what makes this elite athlete tick.听

Jessie鈥檚 Early Inspiration Was Xena: Warrior Princess

鈥淏efore I knew anything, I knew I wanted to be up high, and jump off things, and swing and climb,鈥� she explains. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 know how to interact with people yet, but I knew that if I had to go ask a scary adult for permission to do the trapeze, then I was going to find the confidence to go ask them.鈥�

鈥淚 knew I wanted to do all that stuff, but the goal didn鈥檛 really take shape until I started watching Xena when I was about 12. I was convinced that one day Lucy Lawless would retire, and they鈥檇 need another Xena to take her place. Because, to my 12-year old brain, there could obviously never not be a Xena.鈥�

鈥淚 was trying to do everything that she did,鈥� Graff continues. 鈥淚 cut my bangs to look like her, I braided my hair to look like her, and I鈥檇 run around the woods with a stick for a sword doing flying side kicks trying to knock down dead trees, and I鈥檇 try the flying wall flip she鈥檇 do when she was kicking bad guys.鈥�

But for a While, She Worked on Becoming an Astronaut

Jessie started college at Georgia Tech, and an aerospace engineering major. 鈥淚 did an aptitude test where they said I was good at science and math,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 figured it鈥檇 be fun to float around in space, so maybe I would be an astronaut.鈥�

鈥淚 didn鈥檛 have a scientific goal though,鈥� Graff continues. 鈥淎nd no one needs an astronaut to just be really good at floating around, they鈥檙e going up there to study things, I had to be honest with myself.鈥�

鈥淚鈥檝e always tried to write down my goals,鈥� she explains. 鈥淗ow was I going to fit in going to the Olympics for diving and pole vaulting, while becoming a superhero on TV, and joining the circus? There鈥檚 only one lifetime, you can only fit maybe three of those things in.鈥澨�

Jessie missed Olympic qualification by an inch-and-a-half, and now uses her engineering background to design complex stunts.听

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She Learned Kung Fu on a Pirate Ship

During her early years in Los Angeles, Jessie paid the bills by working at one of those cheesy theme restaurants where actors sing and dance while you eat. 鈥淚 thought I was going to get to be a pirate, so I showed up to the audition with my sword.鈥� But even Jessie Graff faces sexism; they made her the damsel in distress. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 get to be a pirate, but one of my pirate friends taught Northern Eagle Claw Kung Fu,鈥� she says. 鈥淗e would train us a couple days a week, and I progressed through the system.鈥�

Jessie Idolizes Jackie Chan

I鈥檇 gotten about three syllables into asking her who she looked up to when she blurted out 鈥淛ackie Chan!鈥� Citing the way he鈥檚 able to tell stories through action, she paints a picture of her perfect action scene: 鈥淭he helicopter comes over the cliff, I run and jump off the cliff, grab one skid, the guards in the helicopter run over the side, I grab one, throw him, then jump in, and the fighting ensues.听

Graff pursues martial arts as a way to become a better stunt-person. 鈥淚 worked through the belt system and got a black belt in Tae Kwan Do specifically for stunts,鈥� she explains. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 compete in tournaments, with everything I learned I asked myself how I could apply it to stunts.鈥�

The same goes for her ongoing gymnastics training. She no longer worries about landing a back flip with straight legs and pointed toes, now she practices how to make that back flip look realistic as part of a fight scene. 鈥淗ow do you make it look like you鈥檙e flying back from an upper cut, completely out of control, and then land safely? How do I do that differently if I鈥檓 knocked unconscious?鈥�

All This Stuff is Hard on Your Body

Jessie鈥檚 had her share of injuries, most notably tearing her ACL, MCL, and meniscus in 2014. 鈥淢y biggest challenge is knowing when to rest,鈥� she says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 just so much fun stuff to do.鈥�

鈥淚 had had two solid days of work, where I was doing heavy fights in SWAT gear, falling over fences, getting up, and fighting some more,鈥� Graff explains. 鈥淭he next day, I felt like I had missed my scheduled workouts, so I was excited to go run two miles of hills, and practice all my kicks. That evening, my legs felt like Jello, so I figured I鈥檇 ride my bike to Tae Kwan Do class. In hindsight, that was an absurd decision, but I鈥檇 already missed two classes, so I didn鈥檛 want to miss another. We started with jump-spinning plyometrics over mats, and mid-jump my muscles were just so exhausted they stopped responding. When I hit the floor, my knee just popped straight in.鈥�

Injury prevention is now one of Jessie鈥檚 core training focuses. 鈥淚n stunts, you鈥檙e going to get hit from every angle,鈥� she says. 鈥淵ou have to build your own armor out of muscles.鈥�

The Injury Helped Her Win Ninja Warrior

Jessie started competing in American Ninja Warrior in 2013. But it wasn鈥檛 until visiting Colorado with that knee injury to watch a qualifying competition that she figured out what it would take to win. Like other aspiring competitors, she crashed on Dr. Noah Kaufman鈥檚 floor, and it was there she discovered rock climbing.听

鈥淚 asked him to show me one of the routes on his climbing wall,鈥� she says. 鈥淗e showed me one he said I could get on my first try, but once I got up in the first position, I couldn鈥檛 even move.鈥�

Inspired, Graff started an intense routine of pull-ups, dead hangs, and used the Beastmaker app to boost her grip strength on a finger board. Two years later, she dominated the course.听

It鈥檚 Not Jessie鈥檚 Strength That Helped Her Win

I asked Graff what unique ability she has that made her the first female champion on the show. 鈥淚鈥檓 not the strongest, and I鈥檓 not the fastest,鈥� she explains. So what鈥檚 the trick? Graff attributes her victory to adaptability.听

鈥淚t鈥檚 that I have a job where every day I show up not knowing what I鈥檓 going to do,鈥� she elaborates. 鈥淪ometimes you鈥檝e prepared something, but right before you shoot, you鈥檙e told you鈥檝e got to do it in skinny jeans that don鈥檛 stretch, and four-inch heels. Or, they change the fight choreography, or that you鈥檝e got to do a front flip off a trampoline in an 18th century dress, a two-foot-high wig, and near-sighted glasses.鈥�

Each Ninja Warrior obstacle course is unique, and competitors aren鈥檛 allowed to practice on them before the competition. But Jessie鈥檚 made a career out of tackling potentially life-threatening physical challenges on the fly. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e taking a 50-foot high fall from a building, you鈥檝e got to figure it all out before your first time, or you鈥檙e going to die,鈥� she says.听

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She鈥檚 Clear About Why Women Haven鈥檛 Succeeded On the Show Before

鈥淚t鈥檚 not that there haven鈥檛 been women strong enough to do before me,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 that there are just that many more men competing, that the odds of a woman succeeding are much lower.鈥�

And she鈥檚 clear about why there are fewer women competing in physical challenges like this one, explaining that society doesn鈥檛 teach women that they鈥檙e physically capable. 鈥淚 always picture gym class,鈥� she says. 鈥淎 guy has to climb a rope, and he can鈥檛 do it. All the other guys make fun of him, so he goes home and learns how to climb a rope. A girl tries to climb a rope, can鈥檛 do it, and she鈥檚 told that it鈥檚 OK, girls can鈥檛 build upper body strength. So she goes and does something else.鈥�

鈥淚t has nothing to do with being female鈥� Graff continues. 鈥淚t鈥檚 what you have trained versus what you haven鈥檛 trained.鈥�

So How Do You Become as Physically Capable as Jessie?

Jessie says it鈥檚 not so much about following one fitness plan or another, it鈥檚 developing the motivation to put in long hours across many years of training. 鈥淒oing the strength and conditioning it takes to become an athlete is extremely boring,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 hard to stick with it if you haven鈥檛 had a taste of the fun stuff fitness makes possible. Go to a climbing gym, take a lesson, and if that鈥檚 what inspires you, you need to get on a pull up program.鈥�

Using climbing as an example, Jessie says to train for your sport a few days a week, then reward yourself with a fun rock climbing trip on a regular basis. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e just doing the fun stuff, then you鈥檙e going to get hurt,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut if you’re听just doing the conditioning, then it鈥檚 hard to stay motivated.鈥�

Next, Jessie Wants to Become a Her Own Superhero

鈥淪omeone once told me that you have to choose to be an actor or stunt-person, you can鈥檛 do both,鈥� says Graff. 鈥淎nd if I have to chose, I鈥檓 absolutely choosing the stunts, because it鈥檚 all about the action for me. But, my goal since I was a little kid has been to play a superhero on TV. Now that I have this Ninja Warrior thing out there, I have people out there telling me I should play this superhero or that superhero. And that sounds good to me.鈥�

Who knows? Maybe someone will even decide听it鈥檚 time to remake Xena.听

The post How Ninja Warrior Jessie Graff Became a Real-Life Superhero appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Do what intimidates you. It鈥檚 my mantra for a simple reason: it always leads to something amazing.

I am afraid of heights. And not just in an I-don鈥檛-like-it kind of way, but in a nauseating, the-world-is-spinning sort of way. So I鈥檝e zip-lined (piece of cake), hiked nontechnical 20,000-foot peaks (vertiginous and, in the Andes, coca leaf addled), skydived (tandem, nearly puked), hang-glided (tandem, on a date with the instructor, pretending I liked it), and cliff jumped (beer plus Hawaii鈥�).

Rock climbing, however, has been off-limits. As in: no f*cking way. Too dangerous, too technical, and there鈥檚 no going tandem. Besides, I still can鈥檛 shake that dramatic opening scene from Cliffhanger. But with some prodding and the guidance of editor Matt Skenazy, I finally strapped on a harness.

I quickly learned that there is more to climbing than just hanging out in high places. Like strength. A half hour into my first session at the climbing gym, I excused myself to go eat. I was starving, but really I was concerned about my hands, which had been white-knuckle squeezing the colorful knobs that made up the course on the wall. Never before had the cracked skin on my hands ached so badly. And I couldn鈥檛 bend my fingers. When I tried to type a text to a friend, it came out in fluent gibberish, and I couldn鈥檛 blame Autocorrect. Driving home, I could barely grip the steering wheel.

Any experienced climber will tell you鈥攁s Alex Honnold pointed out to me when I asked him for some advice over email鈥攖hat beginners should focus foremost on footwork. But even if you do, you鈥檙e still using finger, forearm, and back muscles. They鈥檙e an underutilized group and require concentration; if you don鈥檛 want to fall, you must laser-focus on these muscles while strategizing the best route up the wall. The result, fellow acrophobics might be excited to hear: You鈥檒l have no energy left to get dizzy with fear. Yippee!

After one more go at the gym, Skenazy and I took the operation outside. And everything changed.

Diablo Canyon in Santa Fe offers a spectacular 300-foot wall of rust-colored basalt that could have been in a scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Much better looking than the inside of a gym, it was also freezing on the day we arrived. And, you know, it鈥檚 made of real rocks, which are sharp and feel like ice cubes when they鈥檙e cold. Those fiberglass knobs in the gym, favorably colored to show me the way up? Gone. The climbing gym鈥檚 padded flooring? Nope. Before me was a steeply inclined, vermilion stone wall with skull-cracking scree at the bottom.

This wall was the endgame. Mastering it would be proof that I鈥檇 gone from Gumby to bomber climber who could lead a 40-foot-tall, 5.8-level climb with at least one Genghis crux.

Genghis, huh? Ah yes, if you want to learn to climb, you鈥檒l also have to learn the language, or 鈥測ou'll be left scratching your head,鈥� Cedar Wright, a climber with The North Face, told me a few days later. 鈥淐limbing is so much about communication between you and your partner, it鈥檚 important to know what鈥檚 going on,鈥� he said. There鈥檚 no way to explain even the basics of climbing lingo here鈥攊t鈥檚 easier to understand than Spanish but harder than Irish brogue. Just know that I had to go from rookie to crackerjack, learn the essentials of the route, and be the guy who clips the rope from the bottom of the rock face to the top on a beginner route that has one intermediate section.

When you 鈥渓ead鈥濃€攃lipping the rope in first鈥攊t means that if you fall, you鈥檒l sustain a much more dangerous drop (but not to the ground) than had you been 鈥渢op roping,鈥� which is the phrase for going up after the rope has already been laid out. The task on my first day at Diablo Canyon was to top rope the 5.8.

In doing so, I quickly discovered the most meaningful aspect of climbing: you need incredible mental stamina and the will to survive. Dramatic? Maybe. But when you鈥檙e clinging to whatever naturally occurring grips you can find on a cold, hard wall so you don鈥檛 feel the horror of falling and then slam into a crag, the sport starts to mirror a prolonged life-or-death situation in which no one鈥檚 coming to the rescue. Well, except your trusted belayer, the guy on the ground who鈥檚 holding you in place. When you start feeling exhausted, you can scream, 鈥淭ake,鈥� and the belayer will pull on the rope, holding you in place as you recharge. Still, taking isn鈥檛 a strategy, Skenazy had to tell me more than once; it鈥檚 a last resort.

When your energy gets low, hands start to numb, and you鈥檙e not sure which way to go鈥攁nd any mistake could lead to an injury鈥攈ow will you act? Will you persevere? Prove yourself? Give up? Take a break every two minutes? Pee your pants?

I wanted to do all of those things all at once. And I may have taken lots of breaks, but eventually I barreled through the fear (rookie tip: think about food鈥攊t helps!), the aches, the cold, the uncertainty of the route, and the voice in my head that told me to just give up and settle into a life of stand-up paddleboarding. After a few falls, scrapes, encouragement from my coach, and a good 30 minutes of being stuck on a two-inch ledge while talking to myself like a crazy man, I made it to the top.

The process was tedious but worth it. For one thing, there was the view! But also, as I perched at the end of the route in a nook meant only for birds, I felt awesome, my adrenalin-infused relief mixed with pride. It was like how you feel after you find your lost phone, combined with finishing a marathon.

After a while at the top, I peeked down鈥攁nd you know what? The world didn鈥檛 spin, nor had it been merry-go-rounding the entire time. Had rock climbing just cured my fear of heights?

It had, for the moment. And then it was time to be lowered back down鈥攁n operation that should have taken all of two seconds, but now that my concentration was freed up, it ended up being a little trickier (read: spinnier). I remembered a toddler in the boulder room at the gym. He was dangling from a nub about six feet off the floor (no harness or ropes), giggling and saying 鈥淢agic!鈥� to his parents, who didn鈥檛 look nearly as concerned as I felt. Out on Diablo, I was completely strapped in and still couldn鈥檛 bring myself to lean back over the four stories of empty space. It鈥檚 funny how children have no fear. And how they believe they are magic. Kinda like adult rock climbers. Anyway, soon I found my calm and bounced down the wall, Mission Impossible-style.

Over the next four weeks, I hit the climbing gym nearly every day and practiced at Diablo Canyon a few more times with my coach. A month after first putting on that awkward harness, I successfully led the climb without falling (or taking too many breaks).

Knowing I tried my hardest would have made me content. Succeeding would have been a bonus. But the real win came in doing both things and in discovering that鈥攍o and behold鈥擨 like rock climbing! And in the process, I wrestled with and overcame my fear of heights yet again.

The post The Transformation: Fear of Heights Meets Rock Climbing appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

The first thought that entered my head when my employer commandeered my body for two months of endurance running鈥攖he first dribble from the cloud of dread forming above me鈥攚as Oh, man, my poor nipples.

I vividly remember slews of joggers crossing the finish line during Run to the Farside on a rainy San Francisco morning. It was the early 1990s. One man came in with bright blood streaked down his soaked white T-shirt. It was then, when I was just a wee pup, that my mother explained to me the chafed-nipple effect.

I was horrified. I鈥檇 gone to the finish line to score some free swag only to meet face-to-nipple with wet, bloodied zombie runners. Ever since that moment, running, to me, has been a foreign and frightening endeavor.

As if that wasn鈥檛 bad enough, when I told my coworker Jon that I'd been selected for long-distance trail running鈥攍ike a tribute in the Hunger Games鈥攖he first thing he said to me was, “Right on, dude. Let me know if you need help taping your nipples.”

Wonderful.

Eight weeks later, I've logged more than 180 miles, gobbled fistfuls of apr猫s-run hamburgers, and re-awakened a 15-year-dormant knee condition. (. It sucks.) I even ran 12 miles (almost) straight, and my nipples, I'm happy to report, are fully intact. But does all of that make me a hero?

When I set out on this journey, my colleagues and I debated what, exactly, I鈥檇 have to do to officially overcome zero status in trail running. Running differs from most sports in that you can do it anywhere, anytime, with little to no gear. And unless you suffer from a debilitating physical setback, progress is dictated more by willpower than skill.

Our other newly minted heroes had skill-based goals. Matt had to haul himself up a 5.8 route on top rope; Scott trained specifically to scoot down a blue run.

But nearly everyone can run. So would running fast make me a hero? Maybe. But I鈥檓 a newbie鈥攁n off-road newbie at that鈥攕o I wasn鈥檛 going for speed just yet. Would covering a certain distance make me a hero? Probably not. Anyone with enough grit can run really, really far. Ultrarunner Scott Jurek and I are doing essentially the same thing, he just does it longer.

Finally, we figured it out. As most runners have told me, running is a lifestyle. To become a hero, I鈥檇 have to like running.

So back in early January, my main concern鈥攁part from preserving my virgin nipples鈥攚as getting my mind in the game. For the sake of pretending I was on-track to become a hero, I conjured an alter ego for myself鈥攐ne who doesn鈥檛 hate running or suck at it.

鈥淏lackbird?鈥� said my coach, associate editor Meaghen Brown, when I told her about my run-happy other self. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 just stupid.鈥� (Meaghen, by the way, is a nationally-ranked ultrarunner of most miraculous origin. Apparently, five years ago she discovered鈥攑ractically on accident鈥攖hat she could crank out 30-mile runs on a whim.)

It was the morning after my first trail run. Because Meaghen told me to, I鈥檇 run up a system of icy trails that crisscrosses a sprawling park in the hills above Santa Fe.

The earliest I could get there was after work on a 30-degree, pitch-black evening in January. I selected what appeared on the trail map to be a simple circuit, then clicked on my headlamp, gloved up, and headed into the frozen wilderness.

Partway through, I glanced at the fancy GPS watch Meaghen had handed me earlier that day. The watch said I鈥檇 slogged just under two miles in about 20 minutes. Sometime around then, I decided I relate to fictitious figures like Superman more than flesh-and-blood freaks like Meaghen. I formed Blackbird鈥檚 call-sign while lost in mid-bonk delirium.

As Blackbird, I pushed through nearly three more miles that first night for a grand total of 4.84. Maybe that鈥檚 farther than you鈥檇 expect from a true zero. But I was under orders to record at least four miles, and when you鈥檙e under that kind of peer pressure to perform (I鈥檒l say it: Meaghen can be intimidating) and half-mad from oxygen deprivation, putting one foot in front of the other is about the only thing you can do.

I returned to find the parking lot at the trailhead empty. Apparently I was the only person foolish enough to clomp around in the snow. And my body was begging for a cheeseburger. Without pausing to stretch or even catch my breath, I dove into my car, phoned in a desperate takeout order, sped to the burger shop, then beelined it home and gorged.

I鈥檇 say that whole ordeal pretty much sums up my two-month relationship with running. There were moments of pain鈥攄eep-tissue aches developed in strange places on long runs that stayed around for weeks. There were a few revelations鈥攆leece-lined running tights was a big one. There were mornings when I awoke with strange urges to lace up the shoes and go further鈥攄ig deeper鈥攖han the day before. There were Zen-like moments of mind-body-soul numbness. And there was a lot of boredom. Try standing still on the sidewalk for an hour and a half watching traffic. Running is a lot like that.

I no longer fear running, but I don鈥檛 love it either. I probably don鈥檛 suck quite as much as I first did, not because I鈥檝e learned a new skill so much as exercised my resolve. I will say, as someone who enjoys a challenge, that it鈥檚 hard to pass up the opportunity to find out how much ground you can cover when the running shoes are staring at you from across the room each day. I still haven鈥檛 found out, and I鈥檓 still running. Does that mean I've achieved hero status?

The second thing I did after that first run鈥攁fter phoning in the burger order鈥攚as text my co-worker, Jon: “Remind me tomorrow to ask you about my nipples.”

How to Not Hate Running

1. Like Born to Run author Chris McDougall says: Go easy, light, and smooth before you worry about moving fast. Endurance and intensity aren鈥檛 the same thing. You can go for a long time and cover some real distance if you take it easy.
2. Try running in different types of shoes. I鈥檝e run in cheap basketball high-tops with flat soles because the heel and ankle support feels amazing.
3. Keep your back straight. It makes me feel slower, but also more in control.
4. If you鈥檙e running in cold, dry weather, put on Chapstick. This was a revelation for me.
5. Find new places to run but get familiar with a specific circuit. Switching up the terrain helped keep my interest. But getting to know a spot inside and out (La Tierra, I own you) helped me measure my improvement more easily.
6. Bring something interesting to listen to. Music doesn鈥檛 really do it for me on a long run. The podcast Serial got me through some long, dark, cold miles. If you鈥檙e like me and your brow sweat somehow works its way into your ear and causes your earbuds to lose their stick, think about investing in buds with an ear brace, like any of these..
7. Go for gear with thumbholes. On long runs, sometimes my hands would get itchy (They鈥檙e probably not used to being away from a keyboard for more than an hour). I鈥檇 hook my thumbs into the sleeves of my running jacket and it helped stabilize my hands. Weird trick, but it worked.
8. Find people who like running and talk to them about it. The first week I started, I read Born to Run for inspiration during those long trail miles. Luckily, I also work in an office where half the people run regularly. They answered a lot of stupid questions and smiled through my misguided bragging.
9. Try jogging at random times. I鈥檇 jog home from the office sometimes (it takes five minutes), or start jogging in boots during a weekend hike. It鈥檚 a reminder that running is something you can do anywhere, anytime, for free, for pleasure. It doesn鈥檛 always need to be a task measured in steps, miles, minutes or ounces of sweat.

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Picking up a new sport is exhilarating, but corralling a new crop of gear can be expensive and intimidating. Fortunately, dialing in your trail running kit is a hassle-free proposition. All you need: a good pair of sneaks and a few choice pieces of lightweight technical apparel to head out the door and hit your stride. Here are the best options鈥攆or men and women鈥攖o help you transition from the road to the trail.

Patagonia Houdini Pullover ($89)

Spring is the season of the windbreaker, and whether you鈥檙e running an exposed trail along the lakefront, traversing a high ridgeline, or jamming through your weekly hill intervals, the super-streamlined听听will keep the chill at bay without slowing you down. Made from lightweight ripstop nylon with a wind-blocking DWR finish, this hoodless snap-top stuffs into its own pocket for easy stowage and weathers light drizzle respectably. Four snaps offer ample ventilation, and a stealth chest pocket stows a key, gel, or your iPod Nano, a nice companion when you鈥檙e ramping up your miles.

Lululemon Inspiration Tank ($58)

This does double duty as technical trail tank and post-run athletic chic. Mesh T-back paneling lets in the cool breeze, while the smooth Light Luxtreme panels in the front and sides wick sweat as fast as you burn it. We love the long, lean fit that won鈥檛 ride up and the wide straps and back coverage that keep sunburn and chafing at bay. It鈥檚 a sweet piece you鈥檒l want to wear even when you鈥檙e not running.

Hoka Challenger ATR Trail ($130)

In the past couple years, the shoe design pendulum has swung from minimalists all the way to fat and foamy maximalists, pioneered by Hoka and favored for the cushy yet lightweight ride that softens the impact but tends to be too high and squishy for steep, technical trails. Now Hoka seems to be easing ever so slightly into the middle with the , a slightly pared-down model with a 5 mm toe-to-heel drop and a 4 mm lug sole. At 7.4 ounces per shoe, the Challenger is just as bantam as the minimals but isn鈥檛 stacked so high that you鈥檒l roll your ankles on roots and rocks鈥攊deal for newbies looking for great grip and a little extra cushion.

UltrAspire Quantum 2.0 Waistbelt ($32)

For training days when you want to carry a few extra gels and supplies but aren鈥檛 ready to shoulder a pack, the is an ideal bridge between too little and too much. The stretchy, barely there mesh fabric is unobtrusive and gently hugs your waist like a pair of yoga pants. Instead of a clunky belt attachment, the ingenious waist cord attaches easily via a small hook and locks down as snug or as loose as you like, eliminating bounce and the love-handle effect. Three pockets, including a zippered sleeve in back that鈥檚 long enough for your phone, stash a surprising amount of gear in a sleek, no-fuss package.

Brooks Infiniti Capri III ($68)

The only capris you鈥檒l need in your quiver, the has a precision fit, with a hidden-drawstring waist that lies flat and stretchy compression that adds lightweight muscle support without constricting your stride. A sneaky zippered back pocket and subtle reflective details on the lower calf make your trail-to-road transition after dark a little less dodgy, and the snazzy patterns provide a welcome break from boring black.

Balega Blister Resist No Show ($13)

The unsung hero of every runner鈥檚 kit, the right pair of socks can make the difference between limping home with blisters and flying free. Balega鈥檚 stellar lineup of South African鈥搈ade performance trail socks features superfine wool polyester and wool yarns for lightweight coverage and natural air-conditioning as they transport moisture away from your skin. The is one of the softest, snuggest socks on the market, with its reinforced heel and toe, mohair-blend footbed to ward off unwanted friction, and ample elastic heel tab to prevent the dreaded bunch-up behind your shoe. Happy dogs, happy running.

Running Skirts Ultra Swift ($49)

People love to hate running skirts. Too girly, too amateur, just plain silly. But I grew up playing tennis and lacrosse in skirts, and I never once felt like less of an athlete for it. This听听is the do-it-all piece, with a sleek mid-thigh length that guarantees total leg freedom when you want to crank up your stride, a wide yoga-like waistband that won鈥檛 ride up, and a breathable built-in mesh liner that never chafes or droops. But the skirt鈥檚 real coup is its three savvy pockets: one on each hip and one in back, all with Velcro closures, for keeping essentials like fuel and tunes handy. Serious trail cred meets backcountry style.

SportHill XC 3SP Zip Top ($155)

The half-zip is a staple of your running wardrobe because of its three-season versatility. Wear it against the skin on cooler days. On colder days, layer it over a base layer, and on the coldest days, with a wind-blocking vest. But even without a vest or base layer, the proprietary fabric in this听听shelters skin from gusts up to 35 miles per hour. The top鈥檚 long sleeves, with their generous thumbholes, work in a pinch if you鈥檝e misplaced your gloves. A pocket on the shoulder holds essentials or media devices.

Lululemon Surge Tight ($98)

While all tights may be formfitting, the somehow fits a guy鈥檚 form better than other options we鈥檝e tried. The Full-On Luxtreme fabric has a slippery sharkskin feel, but it turns away a stiff breeze well. Ventilated panels on the back of the knees dump excess heat and moisture. Though you鈥檒l still need to wear a brief, Lululemon did include an additional inner panel over the groin to blur the outline of your man bits. Two side pockets and one back zip pocket let you stash energy gels and car keys.

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I fail, frequently and enthusiastically. When I stopped embarrassing myself as a competitive swimmer, I started failing as a triathlete鈥攁nd as a rock climber, snowboarder, and mountain biker.听

Several years ago, while not struggling as a senior editor at 国产吃瓜黑料 and stumbling along as a novice skier, I pitched an idea that became our first Zero to Hero package. The idea: Take writers who define themselves, at least in part, as experts at some 国产吃瓜黑料 pursuit and force them to become complete beginners in something else. We were big at dishing out advice on how to get started in various active pursuits, but we spent our free time excelling at things we鈥檇 done since we were kids. I wanted to see what would happen if we turned a bunch of alphas into .

So we sent a guy with no skateboarding experience off to camp to master the half pipe. Associate managing editor Ali Troxell tried the same on a snowboard. Research editor Ryan Krogh did what any North Dakota native would do if he found himself living in New Mexico without a girlfriend: He volunteered to fight in a cage match. Totally won the first two rounds before getting taken out in the third.

Associate editor/professional photographer/expedition kayaker/world-class skier/master hunter Grayson Schaffer, who gets the whole polymath thing but somehow seems to skip the failing part every time, traveled to Mississippi to learn how to train dogs. (听And a senior editor.听We hate that guy.)

It was all good fun, but an expanding body of research suggests that we were onto something more important than face-plants: Growth doesn鈥檛 happen in the comfort zone. And while we鈥檝e long known the physical benefits of changing up our workouts (see: cross-training, plyometrics, CrossFit), we鈥檙e increasingly finding out that just as 鈥渕uscle confusion鈥� delivers a better body, actual confusion builds a better brain.

A 2013 study at the University of Texas at Dallas bore this out. Researchers divided 221 subjects between the ages of 60 and 90 into three groups. The first group was tasked with learning new skills: digital photography, quilting, or both鈥攁ctivities chosen because they involve high-level thinking and long- and short-term memory. The second group was assigned stimulating hobbies with which they were already familiar, in this case doing crossword puzzles or listening to classical music. The third group was asked to participate in social activities like field trips.

You can guess where this is going. After three months, the first group showed a greater overall improvement in memory than the other two.

鈥淭he change was significant, about half a standard deviation,鈥� says neuroscientist Denise Park, PhD, who led the study and is a specialist in the mechanisms of age-related cognitive decline. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want to oversell the results, but they were meaningful.鈥�

The question is whether the members of the first group physically altered their brains or, by virtue of solving new problems, developed strategies that made them better at the memory tests. Park is hoping subsequent studies using MRIs to map neural connections will answer that. But for now, she鈥檚 guessing it鈥檚 the former. 鈥淭hey were still better even a year out, which would suggest that something changed physically,鈥� Park says.

When a new skill starts to feel less awkward, it鈥檚 because repetition has made the brain better at connecting the different regions involved in completing the task. Scientists are discovering that repeated signals along new paths spur the brain to product more myelin, a fatty substance that, in basic terms, speeds up the signals between neurons. The more novel and complex the skill, the more regions get activated and the more myelin is produced.

Bonus if it also makes you sweat.

While research like Park鈥檚 is still fairly new, 听between exercise and healthier brains. So the question is whether the combination of physical activity and complicated skills would provide an extra kick. 鈥淒oes the addition of a high cognitive load in something like rock climbing鈥攚hich involves special skills, geometric problem solving, mathematical calculations, constant risk-reward evaluations鈥攈ave extra benefits for the brain?鈥� Park says. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think we know that yet, but I suspect that it would.鈥�

So: Complexity, physical exertion, and novelty. If you鈥檙e a great skier, more skiing isn鈥檛 going to deliver as much of a cognitive boost as taking up kayaking or spending weekends falling on your ass at the skate park (assuming you don鈥檛 know how to kayak or skate).

But that falling-on-your-ass part can really get in the way.

If you pride yourself on your ability to on-sight a 5.12 or rip technical singletrack, you know how things are supposed to work. Even if you鈥檝e never surfed, you appreciate the aesthetic beauty of a good bottom turn. The flip side: Bad form hurts your soul鈥攅specially if you鈥檙e the one struggling. So when you paddle out for your first surf class and flail just as horribly as that accountant from Des Moines who鈥檚 never heard of Kelly Slater, the temptation to quit and go for a bike ride will be strong.

Don鈥檛 give in. Paddle back out there and embrace the fail.听

The post An Ode to the Falling, Often Failing, Novice Athlete appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Keri Herman grew up in Minnesota, where everyone grows up playing ice hockey. So, naturally, she played varsity hockey all through high school. Her family took occasional ski trips, but Herman never considered herself a skier. If you had told her back then that one day she鈥檇 become a pro, she鈥檇 have laughed in your face.

鈥淚 wasn鈥檛 very good at skiing, and I didn鈥檛 even really like it much back then,鈥� Herman, 32, says.

After high school, she moved to Colorado to attend the University of Denver and started tagging along with friends to ski at Breckenridge听补苍诲听. But it wasn鈥檛 until her junior year when she discovered the thing that would change her life: the terrain park.

鈥淚 was like, 鈥楨xcuse me, what is this? A gigantic jump?鈥欌€� she remembers. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 know you could ski more than just groomers and moguls.鈥� After that, she took the winter quarter off during her senior year to move to Breckenridge and ski every day, learning new tricks on the rails and jumps.

When Herman graduated from college in 2005, the sport of slopestyle鈥攚hich was听added to the Olympic program in 2014 in Sochi, Russia鈥攚as just taking off, and women weren鈥檛 yet allowed to compete at the X Games. She was charting new territory and teaching herself highly technical spins and grabs.

鈥淗ockey translated perfectly to skiing鈥攅dge control, stopping, skiing backward, it all felt like the same thing but on longer blades,鈥� she says. 鈥淧lus, I brought my hockey player attitude鈥攚here you have no fear, and you crash and collide to get the puck鈥攊nto the park, where I鈥檇 fall and then just get up and do it again.鈥�

Women鈥檚 slopestyle was added to the X Games in 2009. The next year, Herman made her debut appearance and . She鈥檚 competed in every X Games since then and qualified for the inaugural U.S. Olympic freeskiing team in 2014.

Most of her peers started competing in freeskiing contests by their teens. But Herman says learning her sport later in life has actually given her an advantage. 鈥淚 was more mature and smarter with risks,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 knew when my body was ready to push the limits and when it wasn鈥檛. Plus, I knew enough about life to know it鈥檚 about more than just skiing.鈥�

Keep It Fresh

鈥淵ou can鈥檛 expect to be the best right away,鈥� says Herman, who picked up golf last summer. 鈥淎nd who cares if you鈥檙e no good at first? Half the fun is learning.鈥�

When things get stagnant or boring, she finds a way to mix it up. One summer, she flew to Australia to ski, where she hitchhiked around and crashed on a friend鈥檚 floor just for a change of environment. 鈥淟earning something new, you keep trying and trying, and sometimes you have a mental block,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 okay to take a step back and return when you鈥檙e fresh.鈥�

Visualize Yourself Being Awesome

Visualization听keeps Herman in the right state of mind during competition, and it鈥檚 a trick that can help anyone entering their first competitive event.

鈥淚 visualize my run and go through it many times. The less I have to think about it on contest day, the less stress I have and the calmer I am at the start gate,鈥� she says. 鈥淰isualize yourself standing on the podium or going through the finish line. Focus on the positive things. Don鈥檛 waste time thinking about the worst-case scenario.鈥�

Find a Skiing Buddy

Herman trains with fellow slopestyle skier almost every day. They key is to not be afraid to ask others for help. 鈥淲e feed off each other. Yes, for that one hour of competition, we鈥檙e competitors, but the rest of the time, we鈥檙e friends helping each other,鈥� Herman says. 鈥淪o find a friend who鈥檚 better than you at certain aspects. Look for their qualities, and let other people鈥檚 skills accelerate your own.鈥�

Do Something That Scares You

鈥淭he adrenaline rush you get after competing in something you鈥檙e scared of is incredible,鈥� Herman says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 always the thinking, 鈥榃hat if I lose? What if I fail?鈥� But you can鈥檛 think that way. We鈥檙e all going to fail sometimes. Coming out of those situations when I do fail, never once have I regretted trying.鈥�

The post Master It: From Never-Ever to Freeskiing Olympian appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

For our second annual Zero to Hero special, six 国产吃瓜黑料rs dug deep and pushed through fear, puppyhood, and fists of fury to find their inner resolve鈥攁nd show you how to evolve.

Deep Thoughts During PADI Certification

It was the turtles that changed me. Green sea turtles, four feet long, 400 pounds, gliding through the saline solution 25 feet below the surface like chubby, hard-shelled aliens.

I'd come to Hawaii to become a PADI-certified Open Water Diver, with two days of pool-and-ocean-based instruction. The week before, in my living room, I'd completed PADI's new online eLearning course, involving about 12 hours of slides on water pressure, buoyancy, nitrogen, etc . finally passing the last test one night at midnight. (Even bleary-eyed, it was hard to fail.)

Next I flew to Honolulu, where I'd arranged to finish the course with Ocean Concepts dive center. Although most beginners do the training in three days, I'd picked the two-day version, which meant completing all the pool skills plus two beach dives on the first day. Once I'd been fitted into an Aqua Lung wetsuit, mask, and fins, my instructor, Joanna, put me through three hours of mastering skills.

The pool turned out to be as scary as anything that came after: Even just eight feet down, even with some snorkeling experience, doing the mask-removal skill was freaky: Close eyes, take off mask, hold it out, resist instinct to breathe through nose, replace mask, purge mask by blowing out nose, open eyes. Fortunately, Joanna was a patient coach. After a long morning, the idea of swimming through crashing surf to make two beach dives was daunting. But I finned out, took some deep breaths, and dropped down 25 feet, and as soon as I saw all the trumpetfish, butterflyfish, and a spotted eagle ray patrolling the neighborhood, any jitters dissolved in the current. OK, I thought, this could get very cool.

On the second day, we did two boat dives, the first one 60 feet down to a wreck we could make out clearly from the surface.

Despite earlier difficulty, my ears had no trouble equalizing. Again Joanna signaled me through a checklist of skills, practicing things like a fin pivot鈥攊nflating the buoyancy-control device just enough to lift slightly with each exhale鈥攁nd I had time left to explore, brushing a bit close to a rusty hole through which a gaping-mouthed moray stared back like a satanic cartoon fish. Next we tooled up Oahu's west coast to a shallow reef, where I navigated with a compass. When I popped out on the surface I was certified, which meant I was free to dive anywhere in the world, and to advance to higher levels.

But it was the next day, swimming for fun through the Makaha Caverns, that I became a diver. As we dipped in and out of a series of overhangs and grottoes, there were dozens of species of polychrome fish and, just chilling on a ledge inside one cavern, a sea turtle. I saw another and followed it along a valley in the seafloor. And then, looking up through an archway, I saw a third. It floated down past me, then gently doubled back and looked me square in the mask. If I had anthropomorphic tendencies, I'd have thought he was delivering some “Welcome to our underwater kingdom” message. But being more of a realist, I expect he was probing my potential as a food source. Either way, it's a different reality down there. 鈥�Will Palmer

How Snowboarders Become Ungrounded

I've been snowboarding for 12 years. But despite being able to tear down double-blacks and through waist-deep powder, I still find leaving the ground terrifying. Ollies, boxes, rails, and the biggest of all terrain-park horrors, the halfpipe鈥攖hey haunt me.

Which is why I'm shaking in my black freestyle boots right now. I'm standing at the top ofa 22-foot halfpipe on Oregon's Mount Hood Glacier, hoping to find the courage and skill to drop in and fly over the lip on the opposite side. “Halfpipe riding is probably the most technical discipline in snowboarding,” says my coach, Reed Silberman. “Any imperfections in your form will come out.”

Um, thanks?

Silberman, 33, is head coach at Windells, a 22-year-old ski-snowboard-and-skateboard camp that, thanks to the glacier, stays open year-round. More than 90 percent of all X Games snowboard medals have been won by athletes who passed through Windells, including Shaun White.

My goal was more modest. I showed up for six days of private instruction last June hoping simply to learn to soar鈥攏o tricks or style points鈥攐ut of the pipe. My lessons began on some blue and green runs with fundamentals, going over things I had forgotten or long ignored, like keeping my shoulders parallel to the board and bending my knees more.

When rain ate at the snow and ice which it did for half my stay鈥擲ilberman took me to a vert ramp in Windells's 184,000-square-foot skate area to work on “pumping the transitions.” In a halfpipe, you build speed by crouching as you enter each curved transition and extending on the flat bottom and the vertical sections of each wall. I managed on the skateboard but had a much tougher time on snow, which has a lot more variables. If I turned my shoulders, I lost balance and fell short on the far wall. Same thing if I made a sloppy turn, crouched late, or sprang early鈥攖ime and again I ended up stuck low in the pipe's trough.

I found more success outside the pipe. After lessons on weight distribution and body alignment, Silberman eventually had me doing ollies, 180s, and box slides over small jumps and obstacles. The trick, I realized, was less about learning the skill than knowing I already had it. If I approached an obstacle confidently and fully committed, my momentum would simply carry me over. As for landing, that just involved being on the snow, which has never been my problem. The last day would be my one chance to put this all together in the pipe.

But after five hours, I still haven't. As my fellow campers spin below me under the June sun, I drop in for my last run and am shocked when I can suddenly see over the lip on the far side. Unfortunately, only my head makes it that high. With my board stalled about a foot below, I do a quick ollie and slide back down. So I didn't air it out over the pipe, but I can catch air now. And I plan to spend a good part of this winter above the lip. 鈥�Alicia Carr

The Dog Shouter: Training the Obedience Trainer

“Whiskey.” Mike Stewart, the owner of Oxford, Mississippi's Wildrose Kennels, gives the retrieve command flatly, as if he's ordering a round, and the yellow Lab at his left knee fairly launches onto the Colorado sage flats after a scented dummy. But a few paces in, Stewart peeps a whistle and Whiskey skids and sits.

“Drake.” The black Lab at Stewart's other knee uncoils and lines past Whiskey before Stewart stops him with the whistle as well.

“Whiskey, back.” And Whiskey is off again, snatching the dummy and returning it.

Alas, neither of these genteel all-stars is my eight-month-old chocolate Lab, Danger, whom I've brought to Wildrose's new summer facility in Granite, Colorado, to mold into a dependable pal for hunting, skiing, fishing, and mountain biking. No, while Stewart demonstrates the results of his low-force training, Danger鈥攁 Wildrose-bred UK retriever, like Whiskey and Drake鈥攊s an intermittent and rebellious glimpse of brown in the swamp willows behind us.

Stewart, 54, the son of a horse trainer, stands six foot two and looks as imposing as the Ole Miss campus-police chief he was in the eighties. His first career shows in the way he interacts with dogs; he's calm, direct, and fair, and he reacts swiftly and assertively when pups challenge him. His philosophy鈥攈e calls it the Wildrose Way鈥攚as developed over the past 30 years around the pack-leadership obedience techniques that pop-culture dog gurus like Cesar Millan espouse.

It works like this: Establish yourself as the dominant dog by doing things like eating first, leading through doorways, and carrying yourself like an alpha. That means cutting out the indiscriminate cooing, petting, and stick throwing. It's these last few that get everybody, including me. When I tell Stewart that my girlfriend squeals at Danger and twirls his ears, he says, “I can't change the dog.

I can only change the people. Send her up here next week and I'll train her.”

When I finally manage to get a leash on Danger, Stewart leads me through some basic heeling drills: “Danger.” Wait for eye contact. “Heel.” When he's at my knee: “Good dog.” If he gets too far ahead, snap the lead or reverse directions. Reinforce good habits and correct the bad. It works: After a couple of days, Danger is making consistent eye contact and acting calmer, though ingraining good habits takes months and years.

If none of this sounds particularly advanced for a hunting dog, that's because the majority of the training for any working retriever comes down to obedience. All dogs, be they hunting stock or pound puppies, are smart; the important question is whether they're interested in pleasing their handler. Danger is prone to relapses, and not long after our trip to Wildrose, that tendency results in three costly trips to the vet鈥攆or a barbed-wire cut, a close call on a pulled ACL, and a deworming after what we'll call the Diaper Incident. The cause was the same in each case: out-of-control dog, untrained owner.

Now I take obedience seriously, if only for Danger's health. And for his part, he thrashes around in the brush with more purpose and always returns with the duck鈥攎y reward. 鈥�Grayson Schaffer

One Ultra Step Farther for Mankind

“How many of you are running your first ultra today?” asks Wendell Doman, the event coordinator at California's Carmel Valley Trail Run.

A handful of us meekly raise our hands, and the crowd of about 170 fellow runners鈥攁 mix of 8K, 19K, 25K, and 50K racers鈥攐ffers a warm cheer.

“Good luck to you, and have fun,” says Doman. “This is one of the hardest courses we offer.”I look up at the 5,000-foot Santa Lucia Mountains, then over at my two-woman support crew鈥攚ife, Christian, and nine-month-old daughter, Olive. They're waiting for my estimated finish time so they know how many hours they have to kill while I try my latest incomprehensible stunt.

“Maybe come back in six hours instead of five?” I offer. Christian glances at me with equal parts pity, bewilderment, and halfhearted tolerance. I know this look. If it were accompanied by words, it would say, “Tell me again why the hell you're doing this sweetie.”

The race begins, leaving me with a lot of time to ponder the answer. Why am I doing this?

I have always been hooked by the simplicity of running. Put on shoes. Run. No expensive purchases or equipment maintenance necessary. Over time, running without a goal鈥攌nown as jogging鈥攚asn't enough, and for eight years my wife has supported my strange quest to raise the bar. It began with a couple of half marathons, a road marathon, and, finally, a few rugged trail mara颅thons. I was never a serious competitor, but I finished, and after every race I was haunted by the same question: Could I go any further?

The logical next step was the 50K. At 31 miles, it's the starter's ultra, the gateway drug to long-distance addiction. I figured I'd simply adapt the marathon training plan I'd always used: regular weekday runs of three to seven miles, Saturdays off, and one progressively longer run every Sunday. To carve out training time, I'd take Olive with me, pushing her in a BOB stroller. She'd sleep; Christian would sleep in. Win-win. It all went perfectly until, late in my training, I made a naive calculation. Since I was pushing a stroller that was increasing in weight each week, maybe my long runs didn't have to be quite as, well, long.

So I'm not exactly prepared as we set off for the race. Within 300 yards, the course takes a right turn and ascends 900 feet up the valley floor, followed by a brutally steep downhill. All told, the race includes 8,600 feet of elevation gain over two laps, which means that as the 25K racers are trading war stories and high-fiving at the finish, I'm stocking up on energy gels and steeling myself to go again.

I see only three other runners during the next three hours. I gobble salt tablets like peanuts to combat calf cramps, and walk backwards down one hill to alleviate the pounding. But mostly I'm in a groove, just planting one foot in front of the other. And that sensation is really why I run. I've tried meditation for years, but the closest I've come to Zen clarity is while running. The longer I go, the closer I get. Thoughts are gradually stripped away, like the chaotic layers of paint on a Jackson Pollock, until all that's left is a blank canvas and the things that really matter. Family. Wife. Child. Salt.

I shouldn't need six hours of exhaustion to realize what's important, but, hey, it works. And the epiphanies are addictive. 鈥�Chris Keyes

Fightin' Words in the UFC Cage

I step inside the cage, or octagon, or what my mother once called “that prison-looking thing,” on the floor of the Albuquerque Convention Center. I hear the cheers of 2,500 mixed-martial-arts (MMA) fans, though the stage lights make it impossible to see beyond the black chain-link fencing that surrounds me. They've come for FightWorld MMA 16 International, a night of 13 amateur and professional bouts. I'm in the opening fight. A referee wearing black plastic gloves gives instructions in my ear, but I can't make them out. He steps to the center of the mat and, with no ceremony, yells “Fight!”

I'd always wondered鈥攁nd I know I'm not alone in this鈥攈ow I would handle myself in a fight. The closest I'd ever come was a heated game of king of the hill in sixth grade. As an adult, would I have the balls to repeatedly punch another man in the face or, perhaps more important, be on the receiving end of the same?

Last spring, I explained my ambitions to Tom Vaughn, co-owner of FIT NHB, an MMA gym in Albuquerque, New Mexico, near my home in Santa Fe.

I was 28, moderately active鈥擨 hike most weekends鈥攂ut a decade removed from my peak fitness (high school football) and carrying only that 0 1 fight record from sixth grade. “We'll need to do some work,” Tom said, looking me over. But he agreed to train me.

Our first session began with simple chokes and striking, then Tom demonstrated a defensive counter called “shrimping.” To practice it, he had me lie on my back and push off with one leg while simultaneously turning on my side. The goal is to recover “guard,” a neutral position in which one fighter has his legs wrapped around the other's waist. But with no one on top of me, I flopped around like a fish on the bottom of a boat. After a few minutes, Tom mercifully stopped me. The next day, his wife, Arlene, who is the gym's Thai-kickboxing instructor, had me practice basic kicks on the heavy bags for an hour. I felt on the verge of puking several times.

Eventually, though, I settled into a routine. Three days a week I drove the 60 miles to Albuquerque and began with an hourlong kickboxing class that often left me bruised and bloodied. The final 15 minutes were reserved for conditioning 鈥攚heelbarrows, squat-hops, and push-ups. Always push-ups. Next, grappling, which became my preferred style. (MMA fighters are generally either strikers or grapplers.) Tom would demonstrate a move, like an arm bar, heel hook, or triangle choke鈥攅ach one a submission move that forces an opponent to surrender before a bone snaps or he is choked out鈥攁nd then I'd practice with a partner. By the end of each back-to-back session, I was spent. After one particularly brutal day, my biceps were so sore that I had to brace one arm with the other just to brush my teeth.

But I was improving. After three months, I'd lost 15 pounds and was holding my own in sparring sessions. I grew more confident. Friends joked about starting bar fights so I could practice. Then one day at the gym, Tom pulled me aside. “I got a fight for you,” he said, “in two months.”

That had been my goal from the beginning, but suddenly, with the prospect of someone training specifically to kick my ass, it became visceral鈥�Holy crap, I'm really stepping into that prison-looking thing. I immediately ramped up my training. Five days a week in Albuquer颅que. Runs in the mountains. Hundred-yard sprints on a football field. Mock fights at the gym. There are plenty of motivators if you need a reason to work out: physical fitness, ski season, vanity. But nothing focuses you like the knowledge that your survival could actually depend on it. By the time fight night arrived, I was in the best shape of my life and, at 167 pounds, nearly 25 pounds lighter than when I'd started.

I met my opponent for the first time at the weigh-in, at a chicken-wing restaurant the day before the fight. Alex Gumaer, 24, from Oregon, was a first-time fighter too, with a chin-strip goatee and a reddish topknot that made him look like an Irish gremlin. Absurdly, I wished him good luck.

From that point until the start of the fight, a combination of nerves and adrenaline short-circuited my body. I was scared, but more than anything I was excited. Most fighters train for a year or more before stepping into the cage; I'd had half that. My modest goal: survive, and maybe make it past round one.

The first punch hits me with a vicious thud, just one second into the round. I hear it, and the crowd's reaction, but I don't feel a thing. Blood is pouring from my nose, and my eye is swelling up. But I recover and manage to score a takedown. We spend the rest of the three-minute round tied up on the ground, me in the dominant top position, scoring hits to Gumaer's ribs. Round two unfolds almost identically, minus the hit to my eye, and by the start of the third I'm ahead on the scorecards. We go to the floor again. But Gumaer gets top position and starts swinging wildly at my head.

The first two rounds seemed to be over in a matter of seconds. But now everything slows down. I block with my forearms and try to shrimp my way to safety. I hear the ref yelling, “Get out of it! Get out of it!” But I'm caught against the cage; no room to maneuver. And 34 seconds into round three, he calls the fight.

After the official announcement, I step out of the cage, onto the concrete floor, and see the crowd for the first time. Tom is next to me, his normally intense eyes betraying, I think, a sense of pride. Arlene wipes my face with a towel. “Nice work,” she says, and gives me a quick hug. I feel a strange satisfaction rising in me. It's the first emotion I've felt all day.In the locker room afterwards, a doctor comes in to check on me.

“You all right?” he asks, feeling my bruised and bloody cheekbone for fractures.

“Never better,” I say.

I mean it.

鈥擱yan Krogh

Laser Sailing Crew of One

The puff鈥�20 knots plus鈥攃ame in hard and fast from behind me. I reacted quickly, arcing my body out farther over the indigo Atlantic water, my toes hooked under the hiking strap as I strained to lever the Laser dinghy upright. I bore off farther downwind, spray smacking me in the face and the planing hull humming the sweet sound of speed. Everything was in perfect balance. Just as I started to mumble self-congratulations, the 14-foot boat snap-rolled back on top of me, and I was underwater.

In Laser-speak, it is called a death roll, and I was sick of my talent for executing it with predictability in strong wind. That's why I was at the Laser Training Center, in Cabarete, a small town off the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. I had started racing the Laser鈥攁 popular high-performance dinghy that's been around since 1972鈥攁 year earlier on Chesapeake Bay. But I needed some good coaching, and if you are a Laser wannabe in search of technique in the gnarly stuff, the Laser Training Center is the place to go. “Almost every afternoon, the wind fills in and blows hard,” says Ari Barshi, an Israeli who opened the center in 2003. “And you get big waves.”

A Laser is not a solo dinghy to relax in, like a Sunfish. It's an overpowered and finicky beast that is eager to dump you, hurt you, and embarrass you. Even the best in the world sometimes end up floundering underwater, and to master the boat requires endless practice and a willingness to hike your body out in a continual sit-up that sets your abs screaming and thighs trembling. But when you get it right, it's a gasping thrill ride. Big wind and waves make Cabarete perfect for learning how to tame the Laser, with a flatwater training area inside the reef break and heart-pumping big rollers on the outside. The conditions are so good that the Laser Training Center is a regular midwinter tune-up for many world-class Laser sailors. Which means that Javier Borojovich (a.k.a. Rulo), the head coach鈥攚ho spent five days last February teaching me, a family from Canada, and a couple of curious walk-ons how to stay upright and sail fast鈥攃an pass on all the latest techniques and tricks used by Olympians and pros.

“Don't let the sail out too far, and stay ready to counteract the roll,” Rulo said, slaloming downwind with abandon as he showed me how to throw my weight across the boat to avoid a death roll. Video, good coaching, and day after day of screaming winds worked wonders. I am no longer the death-roll king. 鈥�Tim Zimmermann

Skillhunting 101: The Master List of Master Classes

You鈥檝e learned the basics. Now take your game to the next level with these top schools.

Kayaking
Nantahala Outdoor Center; Bryson City, North Carolina
Nantahala was founded in 1972, the year of whitewater's Olympic debut, and has been using Olympians as instructors ever since. During the five-day Advanced Creek Week course with U.S. Freestyle Team paddler Andrew Holcombe ($1,099), you'll learn crisper eddy turns and combat rolls in Class III runs.

Sailing
Boston Sailing Center; Boston, Massachusetts听
With I-93 now passing underground, Boston feels like a proper harbor again. At the Sailing Center, a 30-year New England stalwart, you can start with courses in electronic navigation ($350) and night sailing ($295). Advanced Sailing ($795) covers tuning, spinnaker handling, and navigation over five days. Then learn coastal passage-making on your way to Nantucket (five-day cruise, $1,290).

Surfing
SurfCoach USA; Oceanside, California
Get ready to compete. With former pro Sean Mattison guiding you from the lineup during his weeklong Boot Camps ($375), you'll polish your backhand cutbacks all morning and run mock heats in workable breaks and hollows. You'll get a surf-specific workout plan, too: Mattison preaches physical training and stretching to keep you primed for your next session.

Saltwater Fly-Fishing
Florida Keys Fly Fishing School; Isla Morada, Florida
You've waded western rivers and can drop a pale evening dun in front of an 18-inch rainbow. Now head to the Florida Keys, where eight-time Grand Champion angler Sandy Moret andfly-fishing icon Flip Pallot will prepare you to battle 150-pound tarpon. Small-group weekend lessons ($1,250) teach casting technique and strategy; actual fishing comes later ($585 per day).

Wilderness Survival
Boulder Outdoor Survival School ; Boulder, Utah
BOSS's Seven-Day Field Course ($1,350) covers friction fires, water purification, navigation, and thermodynamics all with only basic equipment. Think you could be the next Les Stroud? See how you fare on BOSS's more strenuous (and minimalist) 28-Day Standard Field Course ($3,875), which they've been teaching in southern Utah for 40 years.

Skiing
National Alpine Ski Camp; Mount Hood, Oregon
“We get the fanatics,” says NASC director Brad Alire. Well, who else would go to a ski school that runs from June to August, on the glacial ice of Mount Hood, a training site for USSA team racers? At the ten-day Ski Training Master's Program ($1,995), you'll fine-tune steering, edging, and pressure control, hitting nearly 500 gates a day.

Cycling
; Various Locations
This is what it's like to be a pro. A veteran wrench has your rig humming, and Chris Carmichael has just personally set your target= watt range. If you flat, the SRAM support vehicle is there. Meanwhile, a fleet of coaches helps you improve pacing and dishes tips on group-ride dynamics. Weeklong spring training camps ($4,000) load up on miles; two-day performance testing ($1,000) hones technique.

Snowboarding
; Whistler, British Columbia
The same folks who developed Whistler's legendary Dave Murray Ski Camps have turned their attention to boarding. The two-day Quiksilver FreestyleFreeride camps ($229) work slope and park technique on terrain that ranges from GS lanes to superpipes.

Mountaineering
; Talkeetna, Alaska
AMS's 12-day advanced mountaineering course ($2,850) is run like an expedition. On day one, a ski-equipped, fixed-wing aircraft drops you deep in Denali National Park, and the coursework is full-time from then on, from glacier travel and crevasse rescue to route finding and rock, ice, and aid climbing. They also teach guide courses (12 days, $2,850).

Rock Climbing
; Boulder, Colorado
From Eldorado Canyon to the Flatiron Range and Rocky Mountain National Park's Lumpy Ridge, Boulder's perfect granite and sandstone is a great place to step up your climbing. And CMS, which traces its guiding lineage to 1877, is the best place to start. Its one-day Big Wall Clinic ($170) teaches hauling, hygiene, and hanging camp, while the Crack Clinic ($170) gets you hand-jamming without pain.

Triathlon
; Various locations
Eight-time Ironman world champion Paula Newby-Fraser is among the stars who teach three-day camps ($795) at the sites of Ironman events, seven to nine weeks before race day, to get you fit and familiar with the course. Five-day winter training camps ($1,145) include video analysis, an anaerobic-threshold test, and lots of miles. Newby-Fraser and coaches like '97 world champ Heather Fuhr and former pro Roch Frey can also be hired for a weekend of one-on-one ($3,500). 鈥�Matthew Fishbane

Stupid Party Tricks that Might Not Kill You

1. Instantly Freeze a Beer
Place a bottle of beer in the freezer for about two hours and don't agitate it. Thanks to a thermodynamic effect called supercooling, the stillness will allow it to remain liquid below its freezing point. Take it out and gently tilt it so your friends can see it's not frozen, then remove the cap and firmly slam the bottom of the bottle on the counter. It will freeze instantly. Now take someone else's beer, since the frozen one is useless.

2. Tie a Knot One-Handed
Fold a piece of rope over on itself about two feet from the end. Grab both strands in one hand, near the end, so that you have a loop hanging down to the ground. Holding it like a lasso, begin to twirl the loop at your knee. It should start to twist. As soon as the second twist enters the loop, pop the rope up into the air and pass the short end through the hole in the loop as if you're threading a needle. Voil脿: one-handed figure-eight knot.

3. Turn a Match into a Rocket
Tightly wrap the head of a paper match with a small piece of tinfoil. Take a needle and pierce the tinfoil at the very tip of the match head. Place the match on the mouth of an empty bottle. Hold a flame to the tinfoil for a few seconds. Liftoff! (As with most tricks, this one will impress children most.)

4. Breathe Fire
Everybody loves fire. Which is why this trick is so awesome: You get to blow it like a dragon. First you need a fuel source; a cotton ball soaked in white gas and stuck on the end of a wire works well. Now pour half a cup or so of cornstarch into a cup. Head outside, light the cotton ball, take a big mouthful of cornstarch, and blow it at the flame. The good thing about using cornstarch rather than, say, alcohol, is that it's flammable only when highly oxygenated, so you don't have to worry about igniting your esophagus. Which is nice.

5. Be a Human Flag
Technique, practice, and a sturdy, chain-link-fence-size pole are all you need. Your bottom arm鈥攅lbow locked, palm facing backward, thumb pointing down鈥攊s the brace, pushing into the pole. You'll pull yourself up with your top arm鈥攆our to five feet above the other, palm forward. Get a good grip and then hoist your legs with a hard kick. Go horizontal and try to hold it. The world record is just under 40 seconds. You should expect about two.

6. Sabre a Champagne Bottle
Remove all foil and wire from a chilled bottle and find the seam running from top to bottom. You're going to use the flat edge of a butcher knife to strike the glass lip right where it meets this seam. Point the bottle slightly up and away from anything you care about, with the seam up. Run the blade along the neck a couple of times to perfect the motion鈥攕triking perpendicular to the neck. When you're ready, one forceful sweep of the knife should send the lip鈥攚ith the cork still inside鈥攆lying away cleanly.

7. “Levitate”
Wearing loose pants, stand with your feet together and your back at a 45-degree angle to your audience. Press your heels together and lift onto the toes of the foot that's away from the audience. Keep your other ankle cocked, so it rises parallel to the floor. The dimmer the light, the better. Ditto the audience.

The post That Which Does Not Kill You… appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Ski the double diamonds, surf bigger waves, run your first race, or just take better snapshots. No matter what skill you want to acquire, there's a pro ready to show you how.

Learning the Ropes of Tow-In Surfing

I tend to heed directions听best when they're screamed. So when big-wave champion Garrett McNamara gunned his personal watercraft (PWC) toward my face at 30 miles per hour and bellowed, “A 20-foot wave is going to crash on your head! Grab the sled鈥攓uick!” I did as I was told. Never mind that I was actually bobbing safely in warm, two-foot Indonesian surf.

So goes training for tow-in surfing. It was our fifth relatively flat day of a 12-day live-aboard surf mission through the Mentawais, an archipelago of 70-odd islands full of legendary breaks, about 120 miles west of Sumatra. The beverage brand SoBe had chartered a 65-foot luxury yacht for team riders McNamara, 40, Kealii Mamala, 29, and the three pubescent wunderkind Florence brothers鈥擩ohn John, Nathan, and Ivan. After some luck and scheming, I convinced SoBe to allow me鈥攁n average surfer who paddles to shore when the waves crest above double-overhead鈥攖o come along, so McNamara and Mamala could teach me how to catch a monster.

Popularized in Hawaii during the nineties, tow-in surfing gets riders onto waves too big and fast to paddle into. It's now practiced around the world, but it will never be an everyman endeavor鈥攊t's too difficult and dangerous. McNamara and Mamala are two of the discipline's most accomplished stars. In 2006 they won tow-in contests in Hawaii and Oregon, catching waves with 40-foot faces, and last year McNamara won the Billabong XXL Overall Performance Award. To prepare himself for the giant drops鈥攁nd massive wipeouts鈥攈e follows an agonizing fitness routine that includes everything from jogging underwater while weighted down by rocks to pedaling a unicycle on a trampoline. His ultimate ambition is to ride a 100-footer, surfing's holy grail.

I had a more modest goal: to catch the wave of my life. My training began in flat water, where I slid into the foot straps and learned to ride behind the PWC, wakeboard style. “Watch the rope,” McNamara warned. “If it wraps around your neck, it can pop your head off.”

A few days later, Mamala taught me how to short-rope, a quick-escape move in which a floating surfer pops up by grabbing a knot in the tow rope instead of waiting for the handle to float by. The guys let me drive the PWC, though my affinity for the throttle made this a rare privilege. When we weren't surfing, I'd do push-ups and shoulder dips while holding my breath. (Me: “How many?” McNamara: “As many as you can, until you're about to black out.”)

McNamara also abused me with the occasional pop quiz. During one flat-water practice session, he suddenly turned the PWC tightly, yanking the tow rope taut and slingshotting me out of the foot straps. I hit the water rib cage first.

“What the hell was that?” I gasped when McNamara came puttering around.

“The whip,” he chuckled. “You OK?”

“I think I broke a rib,” I whimpered. “How fast was I going?”

“With the centrifugal force, probably 50,” he replied jubilantly. “I can whip you as fast as I want.” Turns out I would need to handle this kind of speed if I actually wanted to drop in on serious big waves. And, as the weather fax would soon indicate, they were finally coming our way. The forecast was calling for consistent 20-footers on our last day. “I packed an extra pair of balls in my bag,” McNamara cackled. “You can use them if you need to.”

I wish I'd had the chance. Unfortunately, the surf only rose to eight feet. Still, as our boat anchored on an empty left reef break, we fired up the PWC. While the Florence brothers sucked up surf on the inside like little blond vortexes, McNamara drove me up the reef and whipped me into wave after wave. I must have caught eight in 30 minutes, and the rides were three times longer than they would have been had I paddled. Sure, I was cheating in a way鈥攂ut I was also training.

“We have to practice for when it gets big,” McNamara said at session's end. “When Mother Nature makes the call, we have to be ready.”

I flew back to Northern California the next day and waited for the phone to ring.听鈥擳hayer Walker

国产吃瓜黑料听Mocked Skydiving. I Paid the Price.

I'm 6,000 feet off the ground听over Belen, New Mexico, free-falling at 120 miles per hour. It's noisy as hell, and the wind is rippling my face, turning me into a human shar-pei. Holding on to one side of me is my instructor, Ken, who's spent the past six hours teaching me how to survive Category A of the Accelerated Free Fall (AFF) program. On the other side is Kelly, who's giving me hand signals so I'll improve my arch, correct my leg position, and check my altimeter. But mostly I'm looking straight ahead, at the videographer, Krishan, and the desert landscape beyond him. Which is a problem, because in five seconds we hit 5,000 feet and I'm supposed to pull my rip cord to make sure that pretty landscape doesn't pulverize me.

It started as a dare. A few months ago, 国产吃瓜黑料 published a snarky but well-intentioned little piece on skydiving's slow fall from the pantheon of cool extreme sports. Inevitably, the 's Robert Arends sent in a miffed but well-intentioned (right?) letter reading, “We challenge听国产吃瓜黑料 to experience skydiving firsthand.” Push came to getting shoved out of an airplane, and there I was at 10,500 feet, afraid of heights but plummeting out of a Cessna.

That was two weeks ago, a tandem jump that required just an hour of instruction before I was on the plane, reciting the Lord's Prayer as we rose above the arroyos. When we got above the target=, my instructor, Elijah, strapped me to him like a baby鈥攈ey, it's the only way鈥攁nd I faced my biggest challenge since the day in fifth grade when I asked Julie Cook if she liked me. (I was hoping for a better outcome this time.) I swung my feet out the open door and into the 90-mile-an-hour wind, climbed onto an eight-inch step, and said, “Ready as I'll ever be.” Elijah launched us, and the chaos felt less like gliding than thrashing around in a swimming pool. Wind buffeted my face as we rocketed to 144 miles an hour, the air inflating my nostrils like balloons. After 25 seconds (which felt like five), I opened our single canopy and Elijah flew us to earth. My work was done.

Or so I thought. The next week I ran into Henry, a dad at my kids' school, who'd been in Belen on the same weekend, doing the real deal: AFF, in which you wear and deploy your own rig as instructors flank you鈥攕tep one toward solo certification. I had assumed that Henry was about as extreme as I was (my previous highest-speed pursuit was tennis). But the bar had been raised, and after six more hours of lessons I was back in the Cessna.

I breathed deep, found myself getting鈥攈ow you say?鈥攁mped, and scooted out into launch position while my new best friends got a good grip on me. I executed the jump perfectly and got into a half-decent belly-down arch, and now here I am, thrilled at last with the sensation of free fall. Goal achieved.

Or so I thought. I'm gazing dreamily at the Rio Grande, embracing life, thrilled that I'm thrilled about this, when Ken thrusts an index finger in my face鈥攖he signal for “Deploy now!” I finally glance at the altimeter and see the needle at 4,800 at the exact moment Ken gives up on me and yanks the rip cord himself. Ohhh, riiight鈥攖he save-my-life part.听鈥擶ill Palmer

The Chainring Gang:听Putting an End to Years of Sloppy Mountain Biking

Certain words shouldn't be thrown听around on a mountain-bike trip鈥攍ike “broken collarbone,” “concussion,” and “raspberry face.” But that's exactly what I heard when I showed up in Moab, Utah, last fall for a led by retired pro Alison Dunlap. Several returning students were sharing stories from last year's camp鈥攁bout the German guy who rode off a huge ledge and ended up in the ER and the rider who went home with no front teeth. I began to feel very afraid.

On a mountain bike, fear makes you do stupid things, like clip out at the wrong time or yank hard on the front brake when you know better. In my nearly 15 years of riding, I've made all these mistakes, and I have the scars to prove it. But that's why I'd come. If anyone could tame my terror on fast and technical descents, it would be Dunlap. At 38, with one cross-country world championship and 13 national titles to her name, she's the most decorated American mountain biker ever, and she's been coaching full-time since retiring in 2005.

But my pre-clinic jitters only intensified when I learned whom I'd be riding with. My fellow students included a pro from Venezuela, an expert-class racer from Michigan, and two Dunlap groupies back for their third camp. Most worrisome was Kyle, a bodybuilder-turned-mountain-biker from Marin County who'd graduated from beginner to expert after just one year on the competitive circuit. With shaved legs, rippling quads, and head-to-toe Lycra, Kyle was a machine custom-built to crush us.

The first morning, after four hours of drills in a local park, we headed out to Moab's Slickrock Trail. I'd ridden it a few times before, but as I swooped along the bald sandstone, trying to ignore the drops on either side, all I could think was: Holy crap! I knew what to do鈥擠unlap had taught us to shift our weight back on tricky downhills鈥攂ut I was too panicked to try. “Flap your arms like a chicken to relax,” Dunlap suggested when she saw me hesitate on a lip of rock. By the time we'd finished, I'd wimped out on more than one descent.

From there we graduated to a more difficult trail, a staircase of steep, technical ledges that I wouldn't have ridden on my own. The climbing felt easy, but, coming down, I lost it鈥攁ll I could picture was my body somersaulting off the edge, my teeth scattered like candy corn along the trail. I scolded myself as I pushed my bike, shamefaced, through the worst of it.

The next day, after breakfast, Dunlap pulled me aside and suggested I ride what my map called “the best beginner trail in Moab.” I was too mortified to protest, but by the end of the day, careering down washes and launching off mini-drop-offs, I realized I was finally having fun. I'd stopped thinking so hard about technique鈥攁nd mangling myself beyond repair鈥攁nd started remembering what it felt like to ride, and love, my bike. The feeling carried over into the next morning, when we all drove to Sovereign Singletrack Trail. Snaking up sandstone ledges on Kyle's back wheel, I thought I'd never get tired of looking at the hoodoos and cliffs spackled in red and orange and green. On the descent, I found myself drafting behind Dunlap. I felt her momentum and let it become mine.

“We give you the tools to open a can of whup-ass!” Dunlap called over her shoulder. She was right. I'd been waiting for her to give me confidence when, in the end, it was something only I could give myself. I let up on the brakes and let it roll.听鈥擪atie Arnold

Beginner鈥檚 Pluck:听Triathlon novice? I don鈥檛 even know how to ride a bike

It's a snowless winter day and I'm riding a bicycle for the first time ever and making terrified, wobbly loops around Brooklyn's Prospect Park. “That's it!” says an encouraging voice. “See if you can take one shoe off the pedal.” I dangle my foot toward the ground and roll to a white-knuckled halt. Sadly, it's not Christmas, and I'm not six years old. I'm 28. And the man running beside me isn't my dad; he's my triathlon coach.

That's right, I signed up for a triathlon without knowing how to ride a bike. (I had a horse as a kid. Bikes held no interest.) My friends thought I was nuts, but the good people at (TNT) didn't flinch. The national endurance-sports program threw me into a group with lots of fit 25-to-40-year-olds but also with Sam, a 68-year-old guy who doesn't swim well, and Carissa and Amy, who are both in remission from cancer. After an hour of encouragement, our bike coach, John Stewart, has me riding a three-mile lap around the park.

This inclusiveness is a big part of TNT's draw: They prep newbies like us for events we might otherwise never consider. Signing up means pledging to raise money (usually $3,500 or more) for the organization's parent charity, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, which funds blood cancer research and patient services. In return, TNT members get four months of training from top coaches, plus airfare and accommodations for a major event鈥攊n my case, St. Anthony's Triathlon, in St. Petersburg, Florida.

TNT works with about 39,000 racers annually, making it the world's largest endurance-training program鈥攁nd an annoyance to some athletes who grumble about swarms of first-timers. Most, however, agree that TNT has changed endurance sports for the better. “I've heard complaints,” says six-time Ironman champion Dave Scott, now TNT's national triathlon coach, “but an influx of athletes is good for these sports and huge for retail.”

Retail, indeed. I will purchase new sneakers, a tri suit, a wetsuit, and a road bike. Still, my body works harder than my credit card. To prepare for the one-mile swim, 25-mile ride, and 6.2-mile run, our group of 60 meets three times a week for one-to-three-hour sessions. Cycling Saturdays require endless circles around Prospect Park. Swimming Wednesdays involve technique work, like everyone elbowing in the same lane to simulate race conditions. Running Tuesdays demand six-mile slogs. “You need a mantra to get through the run,” Stewart advises. I chose: This means more beer. This means more beer.鈥� For two of our weekly “days off” we're prescribed solo work. (“Bike two hours.”) And there are evening clinics on topics like nutrition and equipment.

On race day, my big goal is to survive in good-enough shape to celebrate with the six family members who have traveled here to cheer me on. Alas, I pace myself too well, finishing in three hours and 39 minutes鈥攋ust behind the winner of the 75-and-up class. At the victory party, my swim coach taps me on the shoulder, mid-mambo. “If you're dancing that hard,” he says, “you probably could've put more effort into the race.”听鈥擬egan Miller

Reclaiming My听Youth at the Skate Park

“Daddy, why do you have corn听in your pants?” My three-year-old son was poking the improvised ice pack on my right hip, which partially covered a purple-and-blue bruise the size of a small pizza. After two straight days of skateboarding for six hours a day, I felt like I'd been mugged by a kung-fu gang.

Sure, it hurt. But for the first time since 1985鈥攚hen a high-speed wipeout scared me away鈥擨 was skateboarding. And my teacher, eight-time World Cup champion Andy Macdonald, was confident that tomorrow I would achieve my goal: learning, at age 34, how to drop down the vertical face of a ramp, the boarding equivalent of hucking onto a black-diamond ski run.

I wasn't alone in my quest. According to a 2006 study by industry watcher Board-Trac, two million of this country's 11.9 million skaters are over the age of 18, including 205,000 between 45 and 54. Even Tony Hawk's turning 40 this year. And Macdonald, 34, further eased my apprehensions. He has an easy manner and dry wit polished through the free pointers he gives kids at his local park and the 18 years he's spent as an instructor with the famed . Woodward had put me in touch with him to set up my three-day course.

We started at an empty outdoor skate park in Poway, California. First lesson: crash technique鈥攄rop and let your knee pads take the blow. We then rode around the bottom of a concrete bowl, with Macdonald holding me. The carnage began when we added speed and difficulty.

“It's not a trick until you do it three times in a row,” Macdonald said of the steep drops he made me repeat. “The first is luck, and the second is coincidence. But three times and it's a trick.”

The only thing I did more than twice in a row was fall. Hard.

On day two, Macdonald took me to a three-foot-high quarterpipe. He held my wrists as I balanced the board on the edge. “Slam it down and keep your knees bent,” he counseled. I crouched, stamped hard with my front foot, and rolled down the wall. No way! We walked through three more, then it was my turn to go solo, which went: Wipeout to hip, wipeout to hip, wipeout to hip, successful drop in. I tried again. The board shot out, and my head smacked the concrete.

“You OK, man?” a kid asked. I nodded, trying hard not to puke.

On day three, I met Macdonald at his home park in Clairemont, 53,000 square feet of concrete and wood operated by the YMCA. Macdonald had talked them into opening early, just for us. We warmed up for 45 minutes, then skated to a five-foot quarterpipe. I took a deep breath, leaned forward, and nailed my first try. Hell, yeah! I climbed up for another and crumpled face-first.

“Three times and it's a trick, right?” I asked, leaning on my board to stand.

“Yep.” I climbed back up, ignored my throbbing hip, and dropped in cleanly. Then I did it again. Macdonald joined me on the ramp and nodded. I stared hard at the front of my board, stamped on the nose, rolled smoothly down the ramp, and headed home to a freezer full of frozen vegetables.听鈥擬ark Anders

How I Got Here

The Pros Dish on Their Rises to Success

Chris McCormack:听34 years old, 2007 Ironman World Champion

I entered my first triathlon for fun at age 19. I won, and the prize was a vacation at Club Med. I was hooked. But I had a running scholarship to the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, so I went back to running. After two years I lost my scholarship鈥攆or partying鈥攁nd didn't take sports seriously again until I graduated. I got a job at a bank but quit after six months: I wanted to travel the world, and I thought the best way would be to compete as a triathlete. I sold my surfboards and bought a ticket to Paris. I entered the first race I heard about, in Avignon, and got fourth. After six weeks I entered a World Cup circuit race in Paris and finished sixth. This guy came up to me and said, “Who the hell are you?” He was the head of the International Triathlon Union, and he invited me to the next World Cup, the following week in Canada. I came in first and won $10,000. I was 22. I called my dad and said, “Guess what?”听鈥擜s told to Abe Streep

Seth Morrison:听34 years old, Big-Mountain Freeskier

I started skiing at age six, when I was living in Madison, Wisconsin. But I didn't get serious until my family moved to Vail Valley, when I was ten. I wanted to be on the U.S. Ski Team but realized pretty soon that wasn't my path; I was an average racer and preferred the moguls. When I was 19, I entered the 1993 U.S. Extreme Freeskiing Championships in Crested Butte. I had no idea how they judged it. I just skied a line I normally ski and placed second. A week later I was invited to film with Warren Miller, and a few weeks after that to the World Extremes in Alaska. Now my schedule is full-on from New Year's all the way to June.听鈥擜s told to Grayson Schaffer

Jimmy Chin:听34 years old, 国产吃瓜黑料 Photographer

After college, I bummed around Yosemite and lived out of my car. I was climbing El Cap with my climbing mentor, Brady Robinson, who taught me how to shoot his camera. We slept on the summit, and in the morning I took his camera and snapped a shot of him sleeping. He submitted his film for a Mountain Hardwear catalog, and mine was the only one that sold. I felt bad about it, but they gave me $500. I couldn't believe you could get paid that much for a picture. Five months later, I was on assignment for The North Face with Conrad Anker. I wasn't thinking about making a living; I was thinking about supporting a lifestyle. My best moment? Shooting Kit and Rob DesLauriers above the Hillary Step on Everest in October 2006. It was one of those unexpected shots. I remember framing them on their skis at 28,800 feet and thinking, I've never seen this shot before. It ran as a full page in 国产吃瓜黑料's January 2007 issue. I see a lot of material, so I'm always stoked to get a chance to capture an image that I've never seen.听鈥擜s told to Grayson Schaffer

You: On the Podium

Why watch the Winter听Games听when you can be there, burning up the ice?听Gymnasts are washed up by 14. The Chinese scout for athletic prowess in the womb. At your age, you have a snowball鈥檚 chance in Cheney鈥檚 house of ever making an Olympic team, right? Nope.

Let鈥檚 call them the fun-slide sports鈥攂obsled, luge, and skeleton. Among previous U.S. Olympians in these events: retired San Francisco tight end John Frank (size helps); skeleton racer Eric Bernotas, who made the 2006 Games four years after picking up a sled; and Katie Uhlaender, a softball player who finished seventh in the skeleton junior nationals 15 weeks after her first ride. If you can run very fast for two seconds and hang on for an- other 45 at speeds topping 80 miles an hour, your glory days could be ahead.

鈥淏obsledding is dangerous,鈥� says U.S. Olympic coach Brian Shimer.鈥淏ut I don鈥檛 know many other sports you can pickupinayearortwoand compete for your country.鈥�

Opening ceremonies for the next Winter Games are February 12, 2010. If you want to make it in Vancouver, here鈥檚 where to start.

Utah Olympic Park;听Park City, Utah
Bobsled or Skeleton: Four-day, all-inclusive camp, $1,800; full day, $500; half day from $200; olyparks.com
Luge: Four-day, all-inclusive camp, $2,000; usaluge.org

Lake Placid U.S. Olympic Training Center; Lake Placid, New York
Bobsled Or Skeleton: Four-day, all-inclusive camp, $2,000; usbsf.com
Luge: Four-day, all-inclusive camp, $2,000; usaluge.org

Canada Olympic Park; Calgary, Alberta
鈥婤obsled: US$150 per ride
Luge: $20 per ride; canadaolympicpark.ca听鈥擩oe Spring

School鈥檚 In: The Best Places to Learn

• 国产吃瓜黑料 Racing:听,听Salem, Virginia; run, swim, rappel, bike, and orienteer at the country's longest-running adventure-racing school. Six days, $1,750
• Alpine Skiing:听,听Lake Tahoe, California; owner Eric DesLauriers has starred in 22 ski movies and is recognized as one of the top 100 instructors in North America. Group lessons from $90 per person
• Avalanche Safety:听,听Telluride, Colorado; study with professional avy forecasters in the San Juan Mountains, home to the most slide-prone snowpack in the U.S. Three-day clinic, $210
• Backpacking:听, Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming; spend two weeks in Wyoming's Wind River Range with a school that has taught 85,000 students over the past 42 years. $3,005
• Canoeing:听, Wesser, North Carolina; learn whitewater basics with instructors like former freestyle world champion Eli Helbert. Four days, $925
• Canyoneering:听, Utah, Arizona, California; take beginner to advanced courses with the group that sets the guiding and accreditation standards for the sport. $100 per day
• Cave Diving:听, Gainesville, Florida; get certified in the limestone caves of north Florida. Two-day intro course, $275
• Dogsledding:听,听Fairbanks, Alaska; ush with the largest听dogsledding-tour听operator in Fairbanks.听Overnight clinic, $700
• Extreme Skiing:听, Jackson Hole, Wyoming; drop into extreme terrain with top instructors and guests like resident Olympian Tommy Moe.听Four days, $730
• Fly-Fishing:听,听Lampe, Missouri; lay it lightly at the 10,000-acre Dogwood Canyon Nature Park, home to some of the biggest rainbows in the lower 48.听Two days, $470
• Hang Gliding:听, Nags Head, North Carolina; the world's largest hang-gliding school includes beginner training on the听wipeout-friendly听dunes of North Carolina's Outer Banks.听From $69
• Kiteboarding:听, Cape Hatteras, North Carolina; two dozen full-time coaches will teach you to rip in the gusty shallows of Cape Hatteras,听kiteboarding's听best classroom.听Three days, $1,095
• Mountaineering:听, Washington, Alaska, California, Colorado, Nevada;听cegin听with a six-day intro to听alpinism听in the North Cascades, then carry on to Ama听Dablam听whenever you're ready.听Introductory course, $1,025
• Paragliding:听, San Diego; become a certified pilot in two weeks with the country's largest paragliding outfit.听Certification course, $1,625
• Rock Climbing:听, Joshua Tree, California; climb in Joshua Tree National Park with veteran American Mountain Guides Association鈥揷ertified instructors.听From $105 per day
• Sailing:听, Annapolis, Maryland; become a skipper in two days in America's sailing capital, at the country's oldest adult school.听From $375.
• Sandboarding:听, Florence, Oregon; four-time world champ Josh听Tenge听is the resident instructor at this听sandboarding听shrine.听Group lessons from $10 per person.
• Scuba Diving:听, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; the first听PADI听five-star dive center in the U.S. trains more instructors than anyone in the world.听From $295
• Sea Kayaking:听, Cape Cod And Westport, Massachusetts; paddle with one of the four outfits rated as a “pro school” by the American Canoe Association.听Half days from $65
• Skimboarding:听, Laguna Beach, California; practice in the California听skimboarding听mecca听of Laguna Beach with top pro Paulo听Prietto.听Four-day camp, $240.
• Snowboarding:听, New Hampshire, Vermont; two-time Olympic听halfpipe听medalist Powers leads a posse of top instructors.听From $329 for two days
• Surfing:听, San Diego, California; the longest-running surf camp in the U.S. has offered custom lessons since 1972.听Six days, $1,250.
• Survival:听, Boulder, Colorado; BOSS has been teaching wilderness survival in places like the Utah backcountry for 40 years.听Seven-day course, $1,095
• Trail Running:听, California, Colorado, Washington; private lessons with Scott听Jurek, seven-time winner of the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run, cover training, technique, and nutrition.听Weekend camps from $300
• Wakeboarding:听,听Pompano Beach, Florida; four-time wakeboarding world champ Dean听Lavelle听teaches beginners to听backflippers.听$160 per hour
• Whitewater Kayaking:听, California, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon; top American Canoe Association instructors take you from wet-exit newbie to Class IV stud.听$270 a day
• Windsurfing:听, nationwide; learn basic to advanced skills with the sport's oldest professional traveling school.听From $350 for three days

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