OUR PHILOSOPHY
Loveland Ski Club provides world-class alpine ski racing and all-mountain training, within close proximity to a large population base of motivated skiers. LSC also has an incredible relationship and partnership with Loveland Ski Area.
In the racing arena, we offer a high quality, dedicated race training environment at Loveland Valley. This arena is meticulously prepared, technologically advanced, and well staffed. In this setting, each athlete is provided every opportunity to reach his or her fullest racing potential. In the All-Mountain arena, Loveland Basin provides a wide variety of intermediate to expert terrain, which allows for high quality training for all LSC athletes.
We are passionately committed to acquiring, developing, and perfecting fundamental skills. We place a priority on helping our athletes develop their fundamental skills because we firmly believe that these fundamentals provide the structural basis for becoming both a successful racer and a lifetime skier. We are wholly committed to how fast an athlete will be skiing as they progress through their career, not just short term horizon.
There are simply no shortcuts to reaching one’s true potential. Real skill development takes place over a long time, beginning with learning to perform a movement correctly and then repeating that movement correctly, tens of thousands of times. Only then does a movement become instinctual. The Loveland Ski Club is committed to the long-term development of the “total skier” through this fundamentally focused approach.
LOVELAND METHOD OF PROGRESSION
We coach the “Loveland Method of Progression” which focuses on three arenas of skill development: gateless training, gated training and directed free-skiing.
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“The importance of repetition until automaticity cannot be overstated. Repetition is the key to learning.”
- John Wooden, You Haven’t Taught Until They Have Learned
GATELESS TRAINING
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During Gateless Training, Loveland athletes are focused on Skill Acquisition. This is the first step in the learning process. This time is spent on relatively easy terrain working on acquiring fundamental movement patterns. As these fundamental skills are acquired, the athlete will then progress to Skill Development. During this time, the athlete is repeating the newly acquired skill correctly to engrain the movement. It is crucial that new skills are first developed outside of the gates and are then transferred to the gated environment. Following Skill Development, we progress to Skill Application, at which time the athlete is applying the new movements in increasingly more challenging environments, including Gated Training.
GATED TRAINING
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During Gated Training, the athletes are applying the fundamental skills acquired and developed during Gateless Training. We begin this process with simple brush corridors and short rhythmical courses. Once the athletes are applying the fundamental movements correctly, we progress to more challenging courses, steeper terrain, timed runs, and race simulation. Our primary gated arena is the Twist trail at Loveland Valley and the gentle Boomerang trail which is reserved exclusively for our D-Team on Saturday mornings. Additionally, we enjoy access to training on a variety of trails at Loveland Basin, including full-length speed training.
DIRECTED FREE-SKIING​
During Directed Free-skiing, Loveland athletes are exploring the mountain environment. Steeps, powder, bumps, trees, etc., play a crucial role in the development of the skier. During this time, the athlete is under the supervision of a coach and being taught by the mountain arena. In this environment, the athlete’s developing fundamental skills are further applied, tested and refined.