'Tis the season to be skiing

'Tis the season to be skiing and December camp is less than a week away. 

The off season is well and truly over, the summer foundation work is done, the new Head skis well waxed and my fitness is ever getting stronger. Even my packing is getting neater.

From almost the moment last season concluded I have been working overtime on my fitness because I knew it was a key goal and an area for development as an athlete. I feel that over the past six months I have gained a lot of power, endurance, core strength and overall good physique and I'm hoping that I'll be able to feel the benefits of this in my skiing over the course of this season. 

The Anglo-Scottish championships are only four weeks away and soon I'll be sitting down with coaches Mark Vinter and Sally Bartlett to see what short term preparation has to be done, what I want to achieve and exactly how I am going to make them happen. 

However, for now attentions have turned to the more mundane things about being a young athlete, like getting school work for the trip, packing clothes and preparing skis. Its going to be a hectic week and I'll be glad when I'm sitting in the back of the LDV this time next week. Those long sixteen hours of endless roads will give me plenty of time to think about what is hopefully going to be a memorable four and a half weeks. 

As usual, Alpbach and Hintertux are both looking amazing and I'm hoping the snow is as great as at was last winter. Looking at the webcams I can see that the boys in Alpbach have been blowing the snow like there's no tomorrow. Currently a cold front is in the process of passing over the area and that's ensured that there's been a nice heap of snow falling for a while now. 

I'll keep you posted on how December goes. I'll hopefully be able to squeeze in a couple of Austrian local & regional races between next week and the Anglo Scottish - keep your fingers crossed for me!

Have a great Christmas!

October Camp

So I’m back home again after an amazing week in Hintertux. It feels almost like a second home now.

The week out in on the glacier was a dream week. Perfect snow and clear skies all day provided us with perfect training conditions all day, every day.  The weather gods even treated us to 2ft of powder on the final day of the camp so it would have been rude not to take advantage.

My training was great. Every day I learnt something new and a lot of credit goes to Sally Bartlett for this.  The main goal I set out to achieve was to try out my new HEAD skis and to see if I was comfortable on them, how they would turn and what type of new challenges I experience with a longer length of ski.

However these were only minor achievements on my camp. Happily I learnt how to get more acceleration out of my skis, how to get more grip at the top of my turns in both technical disciplines and how and when to adapt my line on a change of gradient on the slope. In addition to this I also managed to iron out a few problems with my skiing and to refine my technique. 

I even managed to squeeze in a few runs of GS down a FIS length course and felt like I more than held my own on it.

 It would have been impossible to do this without Sally’s hard effort, support and time spent on all of the athletes from Telford Ski Club. If we weren't working on the hill we were either analysing video of various training runs, doing fitness in the gym or helping get equipment ready for the next day. It was a non-stop effort on her behalf and I would like to thank her for her time and effort. It was appreciated and certainly wasn't wasted.

So October camp has been and gone and now it’s only 5 weeks until December camp starts, in Alpbach. December camp is always something to look forward too because you can get some great foundation work done and the first races of the season appear at the end. The Anglo-Scottish races and I have enjoyed a good relationship in the past and I still believe I can carry on this form over the New Year period.

 

Firstly however I need to continue to train hard with my fitness before the camp so I can get maximum benefit from each day on the mountain, making the most of my on-mountain time from both a quality and quantity perspective.

 

Schladming 2013

A free week in the mountains always sounds nice. Even more so when you get a free week at the World Championships in Schladming next February!

A week before the 2013 English Alpine Championships I have been chosen, with Honor Clissold, to represent Britain as an ambassador for skiing at the Alpine World Championships. The week consists of training from top Austrian coaches alongside athletes nominated from around the world, mixing with the other athletes in the village of Schladming, attending ceremonies, watching the races and most importantly having lots of fun whilst learning the tricks of the trade with the best guys in the sport.

Of course I wouldn't have been able to get this without a serious amount of help from Chris Blagden with my application. The fact that he gave up his time and put so much in the effort to develop and boost my application is very much appreciated. Without his input I seriously doubt that my application would have been successful.

Thanks also to CESA Snowsports Association for publicising my achievement before anyone else - http://www.cesnowsports.org.uk/cesa/racing-participation/congratulations-jordan-fellows

Elsewhere it's been very much back to basics over the past couple of weeks, getting a bit of plastic mileage in preparation for the 2012 All England Champs. My time spent on dendix is getting more and more rare these days, as I do a lot of fitness work instead, but I still try to get up to Telford once or twice a month working on balance and foundation work. Alan's Tuesday session is still tops for this kind of training.

I squeezed two sessions in last week, preparing for Norfolk and whilst the weekend didn't go anywhere near to plan I went in feeling ready to battle it out. The video below is where I was last Wednesday

Skiing strong, I was feeling confident of chasing the big boys in advance of the race, however a mid course run 1 straddle essentially ended the weekend before it had started.

Thoughts now turn to the winter and the first part of this is being united with the hardware that's hopefully going to help me generate speed in 2012/13 - namely my new Head skis. The guys at Bartlett's have done a bit of shuffling and with a bit of luck I should be getting some wax in them by this Sunday morning.

Hintertux summer training video

So here is the video I made from Summer Camp in Hintertux this year!

 

Thanks to Mark Vinter, Sean Langmuir, Lynn Sharp, Eilidh Mc Leod and Dougie Mills for the footage.

 

Enjoy the video and share please!!

Back home!!

So I'm back home after a long, tiring but exciting month on the Hintertux glacier with the British under 16's Team and Telford. The month was long and hard but the extended length of time spent training gave me exceptional improvements in my skiing and to work key areas of my fitness.

Snow conditions weren't great, however when there is snow on the mountain there is always an opportunity to improve, which is what I try to do every day. Some days you can feel improvements, some days you can't but after a month on the mountain the changes in my skiing were pretty evident.

The vast improvements were made with the help of my coaches Mark Vinter, Lynn Sharp, Dougie Mills, Eilidh McLeod and Sean Langmuir (as well as some hard work and dedication from me!). I'd like to thank those 5 people for the hard work they did in the month I was at Hintertux and last but not least Julie Vinter for looking after all of the boys and girls at the Telford camp.

The goals set for the camp were as follows

1. Keep my hands up when skiing
2. Keep my hips up during the turn
3. Move my pressure points and line before the gate NOT after it
4. Keep on top of good fitness, work on weak areas and develop them into strong areas

I think I achieved all of these goals and hopefully my coaches will agree. 

Now summer camp was great but as an athlete it is always good to plan for the future and October camp promises to be a great week or two for me.

A definite week in Hintertux, with a schedueld but not yet finalised extra week, sounds a great prospect to look forward to. In addition to this I'll have new skis to look forward to getting on the white stuff and this very exciting. It looks to be a challenging camp with conditions being colder it should stay hard under foot for longer during the day and provide better conditions to train in. Personally I think that it will be interesting to see if I can put what I have learnt throughout the summer on my existing skis can be put into my skiing on newer longer skis. 

   Thanks to HEAD for the continued great sponsorship and support deal.
 It is very much appreciated 

The new skis I will be getting very kindly from HEAD are 165cm slalom and 188 GS skis, compared to last season and summer camp where I had 155cm slalom and 183cm GS skis. Going from a 155 women's slalom ski to a 165 men's ski is a huge adaptation but offers the real opportunity to find a bit more speed!

Looking forward to October Camp !! 

Finally if anyone is interested there will be a Youtube video coming in the next week with a montage of this summer camp 2012 including on and off snow as well as some video footage from Laax freestyle academy - which was ace! 

Skiing Blind

Just over one week into the Hintertux camp and the conditions continue to challenge us. Melting snow, thunder & lightening, on-piste rivers and poor visibility have all combined to create arguably the most testing conditions I've ever skied in. I'll certainly never moan about the snow in Meribel ever again!

Today was another tester. Visibility was very poor and made things harder than we expected but we managed to get something out of the day and if nothing else, skiing blind certainly improves the feeling I get and the information I can take from my feet.

Given the softness of the snow and unreliability underfoot we couldn't ski gates so we used the 3 hours we had to cram in as many runs of drills and exercises as we could, making use of time to improve basic foundation and technique.

It's really not an ideal training environment when you can't see your hand in front of your face but what ever you get from the day is something you wouldn't have got back at the hotel and I feel that I had a pretty profitable day on the hill.

The weather forecasts contradict each other for the coming 10 days so it's a case of keeping fingers crossed for colder weather and the chance to nail some gates.

All systems GO!

With summer camp only four days away its all systems go in the Fellows house!

With my bag slung open across the bedroom floor, Clothes piled on top of more clothes, Ski prep half finished and Mom going crazy at me for not starting packing yet I just thought I'd take some time out and think about the next month.

Realistically it could be the biggest month in my skiing career so far. The 4 weeks in Hintertux sets the platform for the season ahead and with only a year left in children's racing until I enter FIS its a good opportunity to improve without worrying about time left until I enter the start gate for real. Although the snow may not be amazing in Hintertux I still see it as time and a huge opportunity to improve and like many people say "if you can ski rubbish snow good, you should ski good snow exceptionally"

I'm looking for big improvements in my skiing over the four weeks which would make me very happy and with almost month on the snow without the worry of races at the end I can not only learn the new concepts in my skiing but adapt them into my technique and have time to consolidate them. Hopefully the adaptations to my skiing will fit in easier than past years because of the massive amount of work I have put into my fitness over Spring and Summer and I am looking forward to seeing what impact this has on my skiing. Last year's injury nullified much of the fitness summer work I had in my legs so I have high hopes for what lies ahead. Certainly I've never been fitter, stronger or more ready to go.

Looking forward to Tuesday afternoon when we finally leave!!!

Waiting for the winter and fitness training

Waiting for the winter and fitness training

Winter is ever coming closer and with the prospect of Summer Camp with the British Team only 3 weeks away, fitness training is becoming ever more a necessity. After a few weeks off post Meribel the fitness regime has been intense ever since and I now have a heavy packed schedule - the idea being that I can get the most out of training sessions in Summer and October camps, develop my skiing further and hopefully convert more races into wins next year. 

The ultimate goal from the pre-winter camps is simply to improve all aspects of my skiing that are weak - essentially lay the foundation and build upon and strengthen the aspects that are good. With the help of my coaches Sean Langmuir, Andy Freshwater and Mark Vinter I hope that the summer training goes to plan well.