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Coaching China’s great leap upward

From Pemberton Secondary to the Chinese National Ski Team Cindy Thompson’s hard work and guanxi paying off

By Cindy Thomson, MEd.

Last June, as I was preparing the Whistler Water Ramps for another summer of jumping, I received an e-mail from the Chinese Ski Association, asking me if I would be interested in offering my services as a strength and conditioning coach to their World Cup aerial team. This likely happened because I was recommended by someone who the Chinese Ski Association trusted. Here in China it is all about connections or "Guanxi".

The Chinese aerial team was in need of expertise regarding injury prevention, strength and conditioning, and some fine-tuning of their high performance program. Despite consistently good World Cup results, the team had not reached the podium in a major event since the Nagano Olympic Winter Games in 1998. More importantly, seven Chinese athletes ruptured their anterior cruciate ligaments in as many months last year, two of whom were marquee athletes: Nannan Xu the first Chinese citizen to win a winter Olympic medal, and Xiaotao Ou, the first Chinese male to win a FIS World Cup.

I felt confident I could help them out, having studied sports in university and coached several alpine ski teams. I had just finished four years with the Canadian aerial team and in that period we had achieved some great results (two Olympic medals, five World Championship medals, a World Cup title and two Nations Cups), and we had a relatively low injury rate (two ACL ruptures in four years).

This was an opportunity not to be missed; the beginning of the real development of skiing in China. I promptly sent them my resume and after some negotiation and visa dramas, I arrived in Shenyang City (population 7.4 million), the training base for their national team.

So began my challenge. My initial program was to be quite specific in nature, but my contributions have been diverse. Training of athletes here is all about volume and little integration of the science of training, specifically motor learning, recovery and regeneration, psychology, injury prevention, nutrition and periodization of training.

The most difficult concepts for the coaches to apply are rest and recovery, and that basic skills are key for the development of complex skills. Which is totally understandable when one considers the culture here. "Work hard and do your best" is the national mantra, therefore high volume at the highest degree of difficulty makes sense. Unfortunately, aerials is one of a few sports where if you have some basic technical issues or an off day it can really hurt.

Challenges

In September we implemented these concepts at a very successful four-week training camp in Park City, Utah as guests of the United States Ski Association. It was a great opportunity to train on the best water ramps in the world, beside the American, Canadian and Australian teams. We followed Park City with a four-week conditioning camp at the Shenyang Physical Education Institute, where the athletes learned a lot of Swiss ball exercises, Olympic lifting technique, plyometrics and mental skills.

For me it has been a great challenge. The facilities were built in 1954 and not much has changed since. And some (many) things are easily lost in translation. However, like any challenge it has diversified my creativity in training, I have had to make many training situations work here that I would never have dreamed of at home. For example, all the floor surfaces here are concrete, making jump training (plyometrics) unsafe. So we moved training to a gymnastics hall – only the boxes for jumping in the hall are all nailed together (and about 50 years old) and therefore too high. So we found ways to adjust surface heights through mats and spring boards. And so training, and adaptation, has gone on every level.

It was during this period of intense creativity, that FIS freestyle race director and fellow Canadian Joe Fitzgerald came to Shenyang for a site inspection – which was great. I hadn’t seen a westerner since we left Park City. The fact that Joe is a good friend was an added bonus.

The Shenyang FIS World Cup site, is a small ski area about 20 minutes outside the city. This ski area’s purpose is two-fold: the first is to develop Olympic athletes for freestyle, cross-country and snowboard halfpipe; the second is to host international competitions. It was built by the Physical Education Institute and is the base for the World Cup aerial team and a sports school. There are lots of little kids and teenagers going to school and specializing in speed skating, snowboarding, boxing, weight lifting, Nordic skiing and, of course, aerials.

The facilities make for a great training atmosphere; the halfpipe and the aerial sites have been built to exceed FIS specifications, they have snowmaking, and the dormitories and classrooms are at the base of the hill. From a coaching and training perspective this is an ideal training situation, and I expect we will see the benefits of this facility through athlete performances, in 2010 and 2014.

Skiing and winter sport are relatively new to China. Their first winter Olympic medal was a silver in Nagano in 1998, by Nannan Xu. Currently, the focus and interest is clearly on the summer sports, a reflection of China’s desire to do well as host of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. However, last year China demonstrated its commitment to skiing by hosting its first ever FIS World Cup near the northern city of Harbin. This season they will be hosting two FIS World Cups, in the cities of Shenyang and Changchun.

The development of skiing will continue as this generation of athletes moves and develops through the system. Currently, not many Chinese people know how to ski, nor do they have the free time or money to learn. Everyone works six or seven days a week and wages are still very low.

But as China moves toward a market economy things are changing quickly and dramatically on many fronts. Among the changes is the growth in skiing, which has gone from about 10,000 Chinese in 1996 to more than 2 million people today. About 20 of those skiers are on the Chinese national team.

The beginning

Aerials in China started when the Chinese Winter Sports Association decided it would develop a women’s aerial program. For athletes it looked towards gymnasts and acrobats. That is where they found Nannan Xu and her coach Chen Ho. In 1993, Nannan was a competitor with a regional acrobatics team and Chen was coaching with the Chinese National Acrobatics Team. Nannan decided to switch from acrobatics to aerials as it offered the opportunity of the Olympics. Shortly after coach Chen followed. Five years later Nannan made history in China when she won her Olympic medal in Nagano.

Most of the current ski team members were young gymnasts who began aerials at the age of 10 or 11, when they started at one of the two sports schools offering an aerial program. The World Cup team currently has nine healthy athletes, four women and five men, who range in age from 18 to 23 years. There are also seven athletes who are in various stages of knee rehabilitation.

In preparation for the upcoming World Cup season and the 2005 Ruka World Championships, we are training in Aershan, Inner Mongolia (it is really, really cold here), for five weeks until just before Christmas (not really a big holiday time in China). Here on snow, I support the coaches in developing and implementing effective training plans – daily, monthly and seasonal. The goal during this season is to work out technical, mental and physical "issues", so that next summer and fall can be spent fine-tuning the skills required to podium in Torino.

The men have been coming on strong in the last two years, and the women have been performing well since Nannan Xu’s performance in Nagano. The women’s team has five girls who have a degree of difficulty high enough to be medallists at the Olympics, two of whom – Shuang Fai Dai and Guo Xinxin – perform triples on snow. Nina Li had the second highest score on the World Cup last year and was ranked fifth overall on the World Cup. She was third at the opening World Cup this fall in Mount Buller, Australia.

The men face challenges. With greater competition and higher degrees of difficulty it takes longer to develop the skills required to win. It has only been in the past few years that the men have started to show their potential. Qui Sen, Han Xiaopeng and Ou Xiaotao, all found the World Cup podium last year, and Xiaotao had the highest score on tour.

This group of athletes is just like any other; they work hard, they want the dream of the Olympics and they love technology – MP3s, cell phones, you name it. Cell phones are really big here in China; one in four people have one. I have two, even though I can’t speak the language.

Cell phones, the development of skiing and athletes aside, I never thought I would go from Pemberton Secondary to training the Chinese National Ski Team in Inner Mongolia. It is amazing how a lot of work, some good luck and a few connections adds to one’s life. I am now fortunate enough to cheer for two teams as I watch the 2006 Olympic Games.