Action sports usually include some danger and personal challenge. The levels of both are often further increased when the sport is placed in a competitive environment. In this paper, we consider the Olympic disciplines of freeskiing and snowboarding in park and pipe. We consider some pertinent theoretical perspectives, then offer some insights on their operation using a range of data from ongoing research and support work. Finally, we offer a number of practical steps which can be taken to optimize performance, both in learning and practicing new tricks and in executing them under the pressures of competition.

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This study offered a first examination of skill development within freeskiing and snowboarding, using semi-structured interviews to examine trick progression. Participants were purposefully recruited as performing at world top 8 level in 2014, the most recent Winter Olympic Games. A semi structured interview protocol, using a personalized progress chart, enabled the examination of trick progression across disciplines, with at least one participant from each of the events represented at the Games.Trick progression was achieved intermittently, moving through different stages during the year subject to experiencing the right conditions, training facilities, balancing time for progression with time for consolidation, competition periods and rehabilitating from injuries. There was high variance in the duration of trick progression between individuals and also high variance in the number of repetitions required in order to land a trick in competition. Imagery was a mental skill widely used and universally supported by our sample. Athletes and coaches should take directionality into consideration when planning their progression, ensuring all four directions are included and that pre-requisite manoeuvres are included in an athlete's training repertoire at the right stage in order to facilitate the learning of more complex manoeuvres at a later stage of development. Our data found a 60-40 balance between time-spent training on and off-snow, further research is required to determine the best combination of traditional strength and conditioning versus movement conditioning approaches, both from an injury prevention and a performance enhancement perspective.Keywords: training modalities, directionality, skill acquisition, Olympic, quadrennial, A retrospective analysis of trick progression in elite Freeskiing and SnowboardingIn an earlier paper, we highlighted the tensions inherent in the new Olympic disciplines of slopestyle and half-pipe freeskiing and snowboarding (Willmott & Collins, 2015).Specifically, the training challenge-athlete health balance was considered: a usual issue for most sports but a particular one for these high-risk disciplines. In this regard, Kotler (2014, p. vii) what are the levels of psycho-emotional loading which characterize elite athletes' development in this high-risk environment? How might differences in the developmental template across individuals inform and enhance practice? Accordingly, in order to inform coaches on the safe but optimum progression of athletes in these sports, a current and detailed picture is required.Providing further complication, evolution in the sport has resulted in an increased variety of training approaches and modalities, combined in a number of permutations and schedules.As a result, athletes and coaches have tended to either follow the anecdotal/biographical accounts of established elite athletes, or to be overly influenced by the waves of new but unspecific sport science support now available to move towards an apparently well-structured but, so far...

In a recent paper in ISCJ, Ojala and Thorpe offered a culturally based observation that questions the role and application of coaching in action sports. Their critique is focused on the action sport of snowboarding which, despite its’ comparatively recent inclusion in the Olympics, retains a different, almost collaborative rather than competitive culture more akin to other action sports such as skateboarding and surfing. Ojala and Thorpe then present Problem Based Learning (PBL) as the solution to many of these perceived ills, describing the positive characteristics of the approach and promoting its cultural fit with action sport environments and performers. In this paper we offer a different perspective, which questions the veracity of the data presented and the unquestioningly positive view of PBL as the answer. Our alternative, data-driven perspective suggests that action sport athletes are increasingly positive, or even desirous of good coaching, of which PBL is a possible approach; suitable for some athletes some of the time.

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