How to Stay Strong, Mobile and Active at Any Age with Elite Ski Coach Warren Smith #600

Today’s episode is with someone who is regarded as one of the best ski coaches on the planet, yet this is not a conversation about skiing. The things my guest has experienced over the years through teaching, coaching, and working in the mountains in unpredictable conditions hold valuable lessons for us all. Warren Smith is one of Britain’s leading professional free skiers, an Internationally Qualified Performance Coach, creator of the Warren Smith Ski Academy and someone who has spent several decades helping people understand their bodies better to help them move and ski with more freedom. Warren has been a sponsored Volkl athlete for over 10 years and is one of the most innovative instructors working in the Alps and is held in high regard for the research and development he carries out combining Ski Technique, Ski Biomechanics and Ski Physiology. As well as coaching tens of thousands of recreational skiers, he is also well known for being the ski instructor that many high profile individuals seek out when wanting to improve their skills, including Prince Harry, Heston Blumenthal, Laurence Dallaglio and Bradley Wiggins. I myself have known Warren for around two decades having sought him out in my mid 20s when I first started getting into skiing because I was deeply fascinated by his philosophy, which made a lot of intuitive sense to me. In our conversation, we discuss: Why so many of us feel limited by our bodies and how simple, five-minute functional exercises can help Why differences in strength or mobility between the two sides of the body are incredibly common, and how they affect everything from skiing to running to daily movement. What Warren’s injuries have taught him about resilience, patience and rehabilitation. Why fear on the mountain mirrors fear in life, and how breaking challenges into smaller steps can help us stay calm and move forward. The mental and emotional benefits of elevation and nature, and why gaining perspective from a higher vantage point can help us reset and unwind. The life lessons Warren learned from surviving an avalanche and losing friends in the mountains Warren’s incredible life story from growing up in a council state to living in one of the most prestigious ski resorts in the world. This is not just a conversation about skiing, but one that reminds us that when we prepare well, stay curious and look after ourselves , we can keep doing the things we love for longer. I hope you enjoy listening. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.vivobarefoot.com/livemore https://thriva.co/ https://airbnb.co.uk/host https://www.boncharge.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/600 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 4:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  A boy from a councillor state in Hemel Hempsteads end up doing what he's doing today?

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was quite lucky. My councillor state, you know, in Hemel, I liked it. I don't see, you know, to me, it's got a lot of qualities that could be higher than than the town of Verbier, and it taught me quite a lot of principles in life, you know. I was lucky, this is where the luck part comes in, or it's destiny, that they built a dry ski slope, which still exists all over the UK, and they're mega accessible, they're mega affordable. Even if someone never ever goes skiing on snow, it doesn't matter, you can still learn this brilliant sport on a dry slope, and it costs next to nothing. In fact, quite a lot of other sports

• 4:58Speaker 01

  cost more. So nowadays, skiing's become really accessible. From where I learned, I used to BMX as a kid in my sort of area, they built a skateboard park in the late seventies, early eighties, which is phenomenal. You know, it was like, if anyone's ever seen Dog Town or Z-Boys, we were lucky enough in Hemel Hempstead to be in that wave. So they built a skateboard park, we were in the, we lived in the skateboard park. And then they demolished it, and we were all, you know, we were very unsatisfied kids in our local area.

• 5:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Unsatisfied is a nice way of putting it.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, they built a dry ski slope, right? So they built a dry ski slope.

• 5:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  So they knocked down the skate park where you and your buddies hang out?

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  And in its place, they put a dry ski slope. So how were you and your mates feeling?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  We weren't too happy about it. So we would spend our time, you know, probably not doing great things to this slope, don't want to get them into some trouble. But yeah, we used to do things like burn it and whatever, we used to key the cars, we did some horrible stuff.

• 5:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  So you were kind of, you and your mates were showing your frustration?

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  With a bit of vandalization?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  Keying some of the cars, stuff that, you know, you're a lovely guy, you would never do, you know, this is, this is back in your youth, right? It's a long time ago.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  But weren't you caught?

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that was, that was one of the sort of things that happened, getting caught by the local Bobby on the beat. And one of the local Bobby on the beat's solutions was to work at the the dry slope. Yeah.

• 6:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  This policeman who caught you.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  I guess there are a number of options that were available to him, right?

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  He didn't have to do that, right? So was he quite, do you think he was quite understanding and thought, God, I get why these kids are like this? Let me see if there's a way where I don't have to either take him into the station or what? Do you know what I mean?

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That, I mean, I've, I've often reflected on that. It's the same with my school teachers, because our school was at the back of, of the dry slope that was built. There are many people along that journey that, that were critical at the point of your, your career development. And it could have gone the other way really easily. But, but someone that had a, a positive outlook on life, rather than sort of drawing on the negative, helped me through a situation and just redirected me, redirected my energy.

• 7:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  So you had to, as I guess, part of your punishment, I think, was working the ski slope.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 7:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  So do you remember how you felt the first time you went in? You know, this, this kind of slope that was put in on top of your fun place, right?

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  Were you a bit resistant when you went in for the first time?

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Weirdly enough, I think there was a, a bit like a skateboarder can relate to snowboarding. A skier has a really strong crossover with cycling. Any cyclists out there that know the feeling of pushing your left pedal down, pushing your right pedal down, and the continuum of that is what relates to skiing, is how we ski. We put pressure against one ski and then the other. And it's, it's very much like having sort of leg extension and flexion movements. Soon as I jumped on skis, I kind of slipped into skiing. Quite naturally, so I, I was sort of straight at it. I, I felt the balance of skiing. I learned everything for my career. And this is one thing I'd love people to understand, that everything I learned for my career

• 8:18Speaker 01

  was accessed locally in the UK. A council dry ski slope, council funded. There's many, many dry ski slopes around the UK. If you look up the guy, James Woods, you know, he won an Olympic medal, X Games medal, learned to ski at the Sheffield Ski Village, Sheffield Dry Slope.

• 8:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  Wow.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  That isn't there anymore. But there are hundreds of these venues around the UK. I was skiing on one in Dublin on Saturday. Uh, running a ski instructor training program for them and they're there, they are accessible. You can go and see how you, how you get on with skiing. But that's what helped me with my career. I was lucky enough, stone throw away from where my mum lived. Um, and skied on Hemel and lived there. I mean, that became my second home. I spent more time at the Dry Slope. I was, became fanatical at the Dry Slope and, and then that linked to me into a connection of someone who skied at the Dry Slope, who said, oh, come out and ski in this resort. Uh, we'll get you a job and you can be a ski instructor and learn the ropes. And then my passion was kind of, you know, ski coaching.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Um, and then free ride skiing, off piece skiing, that was my goal.

• 9:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  And that, that led me that pathway to Verbier. So I, I'm, I'm forever grateful to what is now the Snow Centre in Hemel. It was the Dry Ski Slope, the Hemel Ski Slope. Um, you know, those guys sparked my career and, um, and I'll, I'll never forget it.

• 9:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  You said that growing up in a council estate was,

• 9:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  was really impactful. It's taught you many lessons and that you really enjoyed where you grew up.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? One thing

• 9:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  I've noticed being around you and knowing you for a good two decades now.

• 10:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's how calm you always seem to be. Right. I've seen you in stressful times or when things are going off or whatever, but you always seem to have this calmness, which I can see why it would be so important for a ski coach. You know, with clients feeling stressed, whatever, you know, you need someone who's not getting caught up in that. But do you think that ability to stay calm in the face of a lot of stress or perceived stress by others is something you've learnt as a kid?

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Possibly. Yeah. I mean, I was very lucky in my upbringing. I had two loving parents, but I, but my, my, um, parents were divorced. It's a broken sort of home. Um, and there was money issues and, you know, things like, um, making sure the electric's on, the electric meter, putting fifty Ps in, um, sort of.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  I guess it taught me the challenge of like, didn't really have time to sort of be upset in the moment about something, had to go and do something about that moment. Mine was going out and washing cars or cleaning cars in the local neighbourhood.

• 11:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  To get money for the meter.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  To get some money to stick in the, yeah, the, the, the electric meter. And my mum was brilliant, you know, she had two or three jobs. Um, and, and my dad, my dad, you know, he, he did his best, but he didn't really um, manage to provide in, in the way you'd sort of need to financially. So, so what ended up happening in my scenario, I kind of went out to work a bit early. Um, weirdly, I, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I mean, for me, it built resilience. Um, for me, it taught me to get on with it, you know, that no one else is going to get on for it for you. Uh, you know, not in my scenario anyway. And it gave me um, a bit of independence, made me feel good actually, going out and earning a few bucks.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  And, and I, and I remember paying for my first ski trip myself. Um, and I don't think anything's ever been that different in, in my life, you know, I've, I've gone out there and got it. But my, my job, um, and the success perhaps of, of our academy and pushing my way. I mean, again, you, you, you become quite pushy, not in a rude way, in, in a respectful way, but you become quite pushy to achieve. And that's what I sort of, that's what I did, you know, I, I kept on going with it. And I, I think it's installed something in me and there's an inner engine, I think, that got, got developed from perhaps coming from the background I did.

• 12:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. What you teach people to help them ski better and more efficiently and what you've learnt along the way, I think absolutely apply to non-skis as well. So this idea that, oh, you know, to ski well, you need to keep your upper body facing down the slope.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  And, you know, your legs and your hips should be rotating around your upper body. So you don't want the whole thing moving together, you need that separation, right? And then I think I saw a video of you online, or I read it in the multiple magazines you were in, you said something like, what's the point of me trying to teach a client on the mountain to do that if they don't have the biomechanical capability? And so let's talk a little bit about that because one of the things you're really big on with your skiers is the importance of preparation. You can get technique coaching for something, but if your body isn't able to apply that technique, well, you're probably better off spending time on your biomechanics first.

• 13:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  That applies to anything, whether it's running, golf, swimming, whatever you want to do. Because preparation for me is also about biomechanics before technique.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you've just hit the nail on the head. If you want loads of things to go right, whether it's the psychology of the sport, whether it's the fatigue you might get that could lead to psychological issues, you know, whatever it might be in the odd day that goes right or wrong in skiing, the biomechanical functional movement pattern of the left and right side of the body being even is essential. And nearly everyone, and this is a bold statement to make on your show, but I would say, in 35 years of coaching people, I have rarely come across a person that is even. And the work that goes on during that thing you said, the lesson, is usually always focused

• 14:25Speaker 01

  on the side that's starved or strangled of a movement range. So if people went away and did the preparation work, it doesn't take as long as it sounds, but skiing is based around turning left and right, unless you're going to plan on skiing in a multi-story car park and work your way around it on what are your turn directions. You're going to get caught if you haven't prepared, and you're going to get caught on biomechanical restrictions on one side of the body. Now, it's not because you're walking around and like, my God, that person is so unfit. Look at the state of their biomechanics. Biomechanics, sort of functional movement patterns, are way more simple than that. It's just you need to be made aware of simple exercises. And like you just Said if you if you want to take a lesson and let's let's say skiing as one, you know,

• 15:10Speaker 01

  you you could hire me for the day. And if you're blocked and I'm spending my whole day screaming, finish your left turn off, mainly because you've got a restriction in your inner rotation of your outside leg steering towards the left. Now, on a test like that, measuring leg steering, there is a national average. This is this is no word of a lie. We've just finished our UK tour of thirty degrees as average. So people before they've even started to put skis on will have this left and right side difference. It will one hundred percent affect their turning.

• 15:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  Let's just go into that. So what do you mean thirty degrees? So we're currently talking about, just for people who are listening, like, I guess if you were, if you had your back against the wall.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  And you weren't moving your pelvis to the side.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  How far could you sort of rotate your leg in your hip?

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so to explain this for people that can't see, if you stood up and you were looking in the mirror and you held your hands on the sides of your hips and you stepped your feet to one direction, let's say towards the left, you'd measure your right leg's ability to inwardly rotate to the left.

• 16:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  It would feel quite blocked on one side. You'd go the other way towards the right, you'd inwardly rotate your left leg. And when you score yourself, one leg will normally feel quite free in movement and the other leg will feel like it hits a brick wall, gets blocked halfway through the movement. Now, that that for me fundamentally is one of the biggest secrets in learning and understanding why technique doesn't always feel perfect when you try the sport.

• 16:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, so you've just been on this UK tour, you're teaching your ski technique lab approach to lots of people around the country.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  But the principle applies beyond skiing. It applies to martial arts.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, hundred percent.

• 16:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, yoga, to running, to even one sided sports, it probably applies to as well.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  That's exactly it.

• 17:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  And what should we have rotation wise in our hips?

• 17:06Speaker 01

  You should you should have you should have the ability to rotate your leg to a degree where your foot eventually ends up at seventy degrees.

• 17:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  Seventy degrees, right? So we should be able to go seventy degrees in both directions.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  And what are you saying most people do?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  National average of what we've just completed with another two thousand people we tested is sixty five degrees one way, thirty five degrees the other way. That's a national average.

• 17:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right, so the average, so hold on, sixty five degrees one way, not bad.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right, it's nearly at seventy degrees. But this is one of those other universal principles, I think, that we can take from skiing to non-skis. This idea that you're only as good as your weakest link.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 17:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  So if one side is only going to thirty degrees or thirty-five degrees and you put yourself on a steepish ski slope, it doesn't matter how good your coach is.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 18:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  It doesn't matter.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  How good your skis are.

• 18:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  It's irrelevant.

• 18:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  You're being limited by the movement of your body.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Which still comes down to what you've just said, by a lack of preparation.

• 18:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  That's it. Preparation is everything. Finding this stuff out before you go is your responsibility to yourself, but also people you're skiing with. You're better as a person on the mountain and safer and better to help your buddies if you've already unlocked this. And then when you've learnt about it, pass on the knowledge. The thing about the inner rotation of the outside leg, let's just say for the sport of skiing, you don't use that rotation in day-to-day life.

• 18:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  It's a really unused movement. And yet you rock up on the Sunday morning of a ski holiday, or if you're going to an indoor snow dome to try and practise it, or a local dry ski slope. If you haven't sort of figured this out and worked on it before, like you sort of said on the start of this point, it's going to affect your day, it's going to affect your experience. And the annoying thing and frustrating thing is your side that got to sixty-five degrees will soak up and absorb all that information and you'll frustrate yourself psychologically when like, ah, I'm hitting a brick wall, why can't I do this? And people usually, because we're humans, start beating themselves up with the...

• 19:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, and they try and, you know, push harder and try harder, but that ain't going to fix it because you would have benefited from spending the last three months doing five minutes a day, trying to bring that thirty-five up to forty-five.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  Or to fifty, which again will not only help you if you choose to ski.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's going to help you for life, right?

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 19:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  So I know we had a joke when you got here because your Ubers didn't turn up this morning.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 19:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  And so you were about, what, ten to six?

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  In the morning.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Stressed.

• 19:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  stressed out because you know you have to get here and you had to sprint all the way to Hammersby Tube. But I just said to you when you told me that, that... Yeah, but that's why I think fitness is so important.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's not necessarily fitness for skiing or fitness for running, which of course is fun if that's what we want to do.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's being fit for life.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  Like you had to, you had to make a call. I'm gonna miss my train up to the northwest.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm not gonna make the slot for Rangan podcast. I have to sprint now.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  It's an interesting part of the chain. I say the chain of like preparing with your own physiology. I would not have made today and in the finite moment of like living in a different country to being in the UK for a limited amount of time to this point where we talked for however long we talked for to try and bring this, this, this conversation about on your show. The sprint I did, and this is not a joke, you know, I'm 53 now and I've, and I've had injuries and when I was younger, I used to box, I used to play basketball and I've always biked and always cycled. But I could feel myself like I made it, thank God. And the sprints between stations and you know, getting off at Green Park to get onto the Victoria Line to get up to Euston, those sprints that I did to get to the train where

• 21:00Speaker 01

  the guy was blowing the whistle, you know, got on the train. Like you said, if I hadn't kept fit over the course of the last couple of years, because I've been through injury, I should have probably lost my fitness level and I was quite conscious going through injury that on the rehab side, I had to stay fit.

• 21:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, that brings up an interesting point about confidence. So to perform well at anything in life, we need a degree of confidence.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay. And I feel from what you just said, that confidence or part of confidence can be related to preparation. We're talking about this big theme that preparation is really important, right? Preparations go up on the mountain, preparation before you go to work, whatever it might be, right? Preparation before you take your kids away for the weekend camping. If you've prepared and got everything you need, even if the weather goes off or whatever, it doesn't matter because you did the work, so you can you can cope, right? So the confidence comes from the preparation. So you, for example, by, yes, you had knee surgery. You've done your rehab. You're always paying attention to left and right symmetries to make sure your body is as balanced as you can be.

• 22:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  That then means in a kind of, you know, I was gonna say a stressful situation in life. Look, I get you making the train to come on my podcast. It's not life threatening, right?

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  We're mates.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Had you missed it, we would have set up another slot, right?

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  But the point is, is that you actually have this inner confidence and trust in your body because you've prepared and you've done the work.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. That's kind of, that's what's keeping me in my game of skiing, you know? I have an element of my my job is office based. But my job relies on a physical part to make the whole job work, obviously, because I'm on the mountain. I'm skiing, I'm up at altitude. And I wouldn't say I've been unlucky, but I've just had accidents in cycling, bike accidents, actually, that have really unraveled me a bit, you know, got me off the track. And that thing that happened with a mountain bike accident in 2023 has now finished its three different surgeries on the left knee to get back in the game of skiing.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  The other thing I noticed about today, and it sounds like it's quite unrelated, but it's not, it's really related. That sprint didn't hurt my knee. And I took away from today, you know, I don't know now how deep you want to get on it, but I sat on the train when I finally made it and like went to the loo, took my shirt off because I was literally dripping with sweat. But I was like, God. That's brilliant because actually now I've just run that at that pace, that distance, like launching up steps. I've never been put through that tolerance test yet.

• 23:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  And now I'm like, oh my God, I'm skiing on Sunday. I'm going to take my little one in Verbier, Verbier, the resort, I mean, opens tomorrow. Um, I'm going to take him skiing. My confidence level, because I'm a preparation, got given an extra little gold medal today. And because it could have easily have gone wrong. I didn't have a choice, but because there was two month, three month lead time of prep, which is what we're trying to get across to people for skiing, but it applies way beyond skiing. It applies to every sport you do. And if someone wants to avoid injury.

• 24:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  Today's episode is sponsored by the daily health drink AG1. The clocks are about to change, the mornings are darker, everyone around you seems to be coming down with something, and suddenly that wellbeing you felt in the summer seems a long time ago. I certainly know that feeling, and that's why at this time of year, I remind myself to lean into the fundamentals. And one of those fundamentals is AG1. AG1 is a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over eight years. And one of the many things I like about it is the fact that many of the nutrients it contains, for example, vitamin C, vitamin A, zinc and selenium, supports a healthy immune system. Some of the other things I really like about AG1 is that they are committed to continuous improvement and updating their

• 25:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  formula as a scientific research involves. And each batch is independently tested for quality and safety markers, including heavy metals, allergens and banned substances. This is how they can guarantee what's in your scoop and what's not. Right now, AG1 is offering a free AG1 flavour sampler and AGZ sampler to try all the flavours, plus free vitamin D3 and K2 and AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription order. That's $87 in free gifts for first time subscribers. All you have to do is head to drinkag1.com/livemore to claim this offer before it ends.

• 25:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Today's episode is sponsored by the daily health drink AG1. The clocks are about to change, the mornings are darker, everyone around you seems to be coming down with something and suddenly that wellbeing you felt in the summer seems a long time ago. I certainly know that feeling and that's why at this time of year, I remind myself to lean into the fundamentals and one of those fundamentals is AG1. AG1 is a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over eight years and one of the many things I like about it is the fact that many of the nutrients it contains, for example, vitamin C, vitamin A, zinc and selenium, supports a healthy immune system. Some of the other things I really like about AG1 is that they are committed to continuous

• 26:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  improvement and updating their formula as a scientific research involves. And each batch is independently tested for quality and safety markers, including heavy metals, allergens and banned substances. This is how they can guarantee what's in your scoop and what's not. Right now, AG1 is offering a free AG1 flavour sampler and AGZ sampler to try all the flavours, plus free vitamin D3 and K2 and AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription order. That's $87 in free gifts for first time subscribers.

• 27:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  All you have to do is head to drinkag1.com/livemore to claim this offer before it ends.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  You know, this is a really key point that if someone gets an injury, especially at my age, it's a really long, it's a much longer comeback. So if anyone is out there doing after-work sport and activity, which people try and cram in because it's such a limited time scale. If you are going off to play paddle or, you know, whatever it is, you're going to go off to run or you're going to go and bike, that preparation could be as something as simple as being in the office and thinking, right, I ain't going to go and just do this stuff blind. I'm going to get out there, I'm going to get put 15 minutes aside, or I might even do it in my lunchtime or whatever, because I'm going to do something active. People don't do that.

• 28:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  They don't do it and there's two elements for that which come up for me. One is to do with...

• 28:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  Enjoyment and what it has to do with health, right? So enjoyment, which is, which is an important part of health. We know that people who enjoy their lives or do things that they love are more resilient to stress. So it's absolutely very, very relevant. But how many people think that, I don't know, skiing is not for them? And I'm conscious that a lot of people think skiing is not accessible. And that, of course, for many people, there is a cost element to skiing. And I'm very aware of that, which is why I want to make sure these principles are universal and go beyond skiing.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  But some people will maybe go on a week ski holiday.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  And go, oh, skiing's not for me. Well, maybe it's not for you because you haven't done any preparation. And this imbalance that you have in your day to day life, you're taking on to the mountain. So of course you're going to get found out because skiing is a symmetrical sport. You can't just turn one way. So if one of you, you can get away maybe with tennis one way.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  Or table tennis one way, or do you know what I mean? To a degree.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  You may not be as to a degree.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  But it'll still affect you one element of your game or even, even five elements of a game.

• 29:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. Or how many people think that running is not for them?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? And it's, it may not be that running's not for them. It may just be that they haven't put in enough time.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  To actually work on their imbalances, you know, turn their weakness into their strength. Figure out, oh, my right quad, for example, is way stronger than my left quad. Well, you can address that in five minutes a day.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  I talk a lot about this five minute strength workout I do every morning.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  That is five minutes.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  And that keeps me in really good shape because it's a diligent daily practice. What I'm constantly working on this, so if I need to sprint up some stairs to get a train.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're ready.

• 29:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  I am ready.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  And, and what I think people don't understand is that this is how you build trust in yourself and confidence. It's through doing that small bit of prep consistently.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Do you know, it's really interesting what you just said. It really brings home a big point, which we tried to get across on this year's tour. So Ski Technique Lab, if anyone's listening to the show, if they Google it or look at what it is. It's basically looking at six functional movement patterns where you need to gain range of movement. You're usually going to be different on left and right. And you have to gain stability of movement, that quality of the control of it. And on our tour this year. Like I said, we got through about 2,000 people and people asked us like, so what's the key point to, you know, what is going to be the bit of this? So, well, you've got to do it. And actually, no, no, but we said, go and get your phone out now, or your phone, go to your calendar. And what you just said really hit home. So we just said, put in

• 30:47Speaker 01

  an actual reminder, but do it now. Because you'll forget about what we just talked about. It'll, the intensity of the talk will die off a little bit. And it was all great and it sounded brilliant. And wow, this is going to change things. And in two weeks, it'd be like, you'll be cracking on with the, the busyness of life. That also lets go of all these kind of key points sometimes. And one of the things we tried to push across this year was, open your calendar, put it in now. It's the ski technique lab, five minute session, every night. We've called a boot flexing test, a Netflix ski boot test, you know, trying to gain muscle memory in your ski boot, because you think it's going to work when you clip onto your skis on a Sunday morning, and finish skiing on a Friday. Do you know what? You haven't even rehearsed it. And it's not like you go down

• 31:30Speaker 01

  to the local supermarket in your ski boots and have all that muscle memory. You don't go and run for a train in your ski boots. They're on for this alien tiny bit of time. So now go and do the prep work. But that's just hit home with me, what you've said about the five minute a day. And we're finding already when people are putting this in, preparation, not just of your body, preparation of the preparation.

• 31:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Which sounds ridiculous, but it's actually, that's sometimes the only way you're going to get it.

• 31:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, but the thing is, a lot of people might be thinking, well, I'm not that obsessed about skiing, or running, or hiking, you know, I just like to go and do it now and again and have fun. And I get that, and I have to respect that, because everyone's their own person, they're entitled to see life in the way that they want to. I would frame it slightly differently. You may, it's not about obsession. It's just about basic preparation. It's about, you know, there's all, there's all kinds of beliefs about life, and actually what this life actually is. Do we have one life? Is there life after death? You know, everyone's got different views on that stuff, right?

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  We've only got this one body to experience this current life.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? And I really feel I owe it to myself.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  And this experience of being a human for whatever the 90 years I'm going to be on the planet, or 80 or 100, who knows?

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  To keep this body in as good a shape as I can so that I can enjoy things like skiing or running or hiking with my mates. So that I can help someone on the plane who needs me to lift up their suitcase and put it up for them.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  So that when hopefully one day I become a grandfather.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  I can lift up my grandchildren.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  And still ski with them.

• 33:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  And ski with them. But I honestly feel on a personal level, me spending at least five, 10 minutes a day on mobility and making sure both sides of the body are equal, I guess it's a sign of love to myself.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's longevity, it's love, but it's going to give you longevity because whatever happens is, you know, you get people, we get people certainly from the ski environment, like, oh, my left knee is getting worse, da, da, da, da. And you look up the chain of the body, the chain of the body, if it's out of alignment, it isn't going to go on that longer journey, isn't going to last to 80, 90, it's going to conk out at 70 years old because it got ground down, it was off alignment. And quite often in skiing, as you said earlier, that, that left and right side of the body imbalance will interrupt the flow of someone's experience in the sport. I certainly know that from a personal perspective, I have to on a daily basis manage my body now.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  If I don't, I will, I feel it, I know that I can't usually perform to my best of ability and I can't give to the clients.

• 34:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  And it feeds back into confidence.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? So a lot of confidence comes from preparation. The more you repeat it, the more you prove to yourself that you can do it.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  The more confidence you start to build. You mentioned injuries before, and you've had a lot of injuries over your career.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right?

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  But.

• 34:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  You can get away with stuff when you're younger.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  But you can have these big imbalances and somehow kind of sail through, right? But as you get older, injury is not just about that injury, right? Let's say you're out of something, you can't run for three months because you pushed it too hard or whatever. That three months where you can't move, it's not a neutral three months. What I mean by that is, it's not only are you not, you know, you can't do that sport that you love.

• 35:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  By you not being able to move your body properly, your body starts to atrophy, your muscles start to atrophy, your tendons, your ligaments. So even when you do pick it up again three months later.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  You are way further behind than where you would have been had you not got that injury.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Does that make sense?

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. There's something that happens like around the the joints, the parts of the body, the whole system slows down.

• 35:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  You can't afford injuries too much as you get older.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  What happened to me wrong? And I was skiing, I'm not sure if I was, I mean, it was in Japan, basically, I was skiing in Japan. I was unlucky, a tip of one of my skis went under the root of a tree. Root of the tree caught the ski, ski moved forward, I was going forward at 30 miles an hour. But my binding on my ski didn't release for a very variety of reasons, whatever it was. And my Achilles went bang, like as in like shotgun sound. So I snapped my Achilles in Japan.

• 36:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  Was this 2010?

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  Mate, I've got a memory of this.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  So I, and we were the first people, we kind of ground broke the whole thing in Japan, like you're not allowed to ski off peace in the sacred trees. But we did that in 2008, got arrested, got my lift pass taken. We just went in the forbidden area. Turns out it wasn't forbidden. It was only forbidden because it was privately owned land or something like that. Long story short. By two thousand and ten, we'd opened up a resort of Ferrano to allow us to ski off piece legitimately. So that's the big thing. A lot of people, when they learn to ski, a goal for some people is to ski in the powder. It's a bit like what surfing would be like for, you know, anyone going near the water, that sensation. So for us, it was to get people

• 36:55Speaker 01

  into powder, that incredible feeling around the body. We'd achieved it in two thousand and ten. We'd had quite a lot of groups, about fifty people go into Japan with us. And it sort of backfired on me because when, when we did it, all the security guards in the resort were being used with our groups to delicately, carefully take them into off piece environments. I was filming for Vocal, which is my, my ski brand, and I was being filmed by a young British athlete called Nick Southwell. He put the camera, I skied down, had a great run. And then the tip of my ski, unlucky, went under a tree branch. It was out of sight. And it went under the tree branch. I went flying forward, ski stayed

• 37:38Speaker 01

  back at the tree at thirty miles an hour, I was travelling. And then I heard the Achilles snap. And it was an awful feeling, if anyone's ever done that, listening to the show. But what, what I had to do was get my ski back on. And we waited for a little while to try and get the security to come and help me. And all the security guys are gone. And then it was like, oh, oh, no. So, so we, I, I skied down with this snapped Achilles on my, on my leg. And it was like one legged skiing all the way from the top of the resort down to the bottom. And it was going great. And I thought this is going to be fine. So I just skied down very slowly on a, on a Blue Run style piece, hit a mogul field. Anyone that doesn't know what moguls are, they're a kind of an undulating thing going up and down, up and down. They're bumps. So I skied down.

• 38:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Like an inverted sort of egg container, right?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Inverted egg container, the best way to describe it. Went through that with this snapped Achilles, got to the bottom, got fixed, had the surgery. But the problem with that is that, that Achilles that got snapped, yes, psychological effect, massive pain on the moment, loads, you know, having your boot, ski boot calf with a, a Dremel or that sort of thing. All of this happened. But the weirdest thing was, a year and a half later, I had surgery on my, my back, my lumbar spine, because the, the compensation of hobbling around and getting around off balance, off alignment, you know, even with the best will in the world, it has a knock on effect. The knock on effect was in my hip positioning.

• 39:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  So everything goes up the chain, everything's connected, right? So you're, you're managing your Achilles, not having surgery, but you're walking differently, you're moving your body differently. So the strain goes up.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  After you, it was in your back, which then causes a back issue, which goes back to the point we're trying to make, which is.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 39:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  You shouldn't, don't ignore these little nickels.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Or if, I don't know, if every time you do your Saturday park run.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  If at three K N, you're always getting right hammy discomfort, but you push through and you do it, great, but you keep doing that, week after week, month after month, something's going to happen at some point. You're, you're, you've got an early warning sign saying, hey, listen, you're able to do this.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  Your body's strong enough and resilient enough, but there is an imbalance here.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, go and see some, or maybe, you know, even if you're a runner, I would say the ski technique lab program that you've got.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  There's sort of six core moves that we all need, right? So even a runner could go onto your website, for example, and look at them and do them. And it would help them identify these imbalances.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  The ski technique lab applies to nearly every other sport. Okay. So ours is just based around skiing, but the general point is it is functional movement patterns of the body. And, and you know, whether you do or do not sort of understand it, once you've dipped your toe in it, you're very quickly, within half an hour of trying and testing yourself, be like, oh my God, I can see, I can feel the difference between left and right.

• 40:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, you can't, you can't unknow it. That's what I found the first time I did it with you many years ago, is that once you've done it and you're like, oh wait, like to my right is super easy.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Seventy degrees.

• 40:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right. But then to my left, it just feels stiff. You're like, you can't unknow that.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I think fear comes in here as well, right? Because.

• 40:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  This core theme of preparation being important for skiers and non-skiers, I think is massive. The more you prepare, the more confident you become. At the same time, a lack of preparation can massively contribute to an increase in fear, can't it?

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So like even on that point there, the preparation that should be in there by doing biomechanical functioning, testing.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  When you apply that to, let's say I'm skiing down a slope, I'm going from a blue run to a red run, or a red run to a black run, for example.

• 41:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  And for someone who's never skied before, can you just explain what that means?

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so blue run is what your first week of your skiing is going to be on, probably. Red run will be your second, third, fourth week exploring and getting better at skiing.

• 41:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  They're getting steeper and steeper.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  They get steeper and steeper and more challenging. But when you're on a slope that's quite steep and you're being tested and it might technically feel more difficult, but the outcome is like, oh my God, I'm travelling 40 miles an hour faster here. I'm dropping 40 metres where I should have only been dropping four on the descent of the slope. That can get really scary. So what wasn't prepared for from a physiological point of view, simple preparation can lead to a huge psychological challenge. And the psychological challenge sometimes can even put you off doing the sport. It can make you walk away. Or it can put you at a much higher risk of injury because you are being put into a situation or a zone which your body wasn't prepared for on one side.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  And that can get quite confusing. It's like, hang on a second, I can do this one way. I'm really confident. That first turn got you into a very confident place, but the second turn, in my world, this is ski specific. Unfortunately, you skied across a slope and that second turn was on 10 degrees steeper, just happened to be. But you, unluckily, were on your weaker turning direction to the left. Now, that adds up. That's where you're working in terrain and working with biomechanicals.

• 42:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, there's another point there for me, Warren, which I think is really, is really key, which is this idea that... So we're talking about these gradients of a ski slope, but you can apply that to, you know, you know, just as your sport gets harder or you're running steeper and steeper hills, whatever it might be, okay? It's the same principle, but the blue slope being quite shallow, the red being a bit steeper and the black being the steepest, right? If we just, if we just take blue, red and black as a way of simplifying this. Those imbalances that you have in your system, they're still affecting it on a blue slope, but you're getting away with it.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because it's not steep enough to push you. You've got enough compensation within you to get away with it. So you think you're fine. But actually, to your eye, and I would say my eye now, you can quite eas- you can easily see it in people on a blue slope. But they're thinking, well, I'm sailing through a blue slope. My skiing's great. I can ski both ways. And then the reason they're struggling on a black often is because actually, no, you just, you sort of didn't address the problems that were there even when you skied on a blue slope.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is brilliant, what you're saying. In fact, if anyone wants a ski lesson, that's one of the most important points is the prep work done at the lower stages. I can relate to this when we do instructor training programs and you take someone who can already ski quite well back to a beginner scenario. I've learned to do a snow plow. And in fact, someone, a journalist, who was, who came to a ski session of ours in Hemel, the snow centre, which you guys in Manchester have one of those as well, the indoor snow dome. We were running a ski course and it was for advanced skiers, you know, in all fairness.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  And the lady that was interviewing me sort of said, oh, you know, ski technique lab, it's tech and it's, you know, lab and it's all this stuff. It's obviously just for advanced skiers, right? And I was like, do you know what? Absolutely not, if anything. And I was so lucky, in this moment, there happened to be a beginner lesson going on. So anyone like trying to dip their toe in like, do I want to do snow sports? You know, we'll come to it later. Like, there's one big reason from a psychological point of view why it's worth trying that snow sports. But in terms of what this woman saw, I was like, I know what you just said. You think it's tech, it's tech, it's high tech, it's advanced. It's like this, that and the other. We saw the beginner lesson going on and it was just about to get to that stage, which some people might be experiencing this winter for the first time,

• 45:20Speaker 01

  where you're, you're snow plowing. Snow plow is your first part of your progression. And they were just about to learn to snow plow a turn. And I said, I know you say what you say, but just watch this. These guys, for the first time in their life, are going to do a turn on skis. And every single person, like clockwork, thankfully for me, trying to explain this to a journalist who thought it was just advanced. Naturally steered one way, their success was so, so apparent. And they went to turn the other way. And rather than just repeating back the other direction, they swung their shoulders and upper body into that direction because something down there didn't function.

• 45:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  Didn't work.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  It didn't work and it was like, there you go, point blank, like right at the beginning of the journey in skiing or in this sport, let's just say this sport. Could be something else for someone else, you know, it could be cycling, it could be tennis, it could be whatever it is you do in your, in your leisure. Um, but straight away there, it happened. Now, I relate a solution in this kind of point as well. My solution to most people is to say to them, go away and prep yourself for skiing with Pilates or yoga. But in yoga, when I go to yoga after having a break for, you know, three or four months away from it. I feel good one side and I know, you know, I know damn well on the other side, it is really tricky for me to hold that same stance, whether it's stability or make that same range of movement.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  And if anything, I almost feel quite pinched and unbalanced, sometimes painful on one side. But yoga for me shows it up.

• 46:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. Fear is quite an interesting one when we think about it through the lens of skiing, right? So people are up on a mountain.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 46:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  Which is an unfamiliar environment to many people, right? But let's say a client with you and you guys have gone down far enough where there's no real way out. You've committed to getting down the mountain on skis.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? But let's say either you or your client has suddenly got the fear.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 47:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Or it's like, oh, wow, this is way harder, we shouldn't be here, but you know, this is what happens in life, doesn't it?

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 47:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  You still, you still have to deal with it.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  So I guess a couple of questions, Warren, how do you stay calm in those situations? Or how do you help a client stay calm? And then the second part is, well, what do you actually do?

• 47:45Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 48:28Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 49:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  All you have to do is head to drinkag1.com/livemore to claim this offer before it ends. Today's episode is sponsored by the daily health drink AG1. The clocks are about to change, the mornings are darker, everyone around you seems to be coming down with something and suddenly that wellbeing you felt in the summer seems a long time ago. I certainly know that feeling and that's why at this time of year, I remind myself to lean into the fundamentals and one of those fundamentals is AG1. AG1 is a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over eight years. And one of the many things I like about it is the fact that many of the nutrients it contains, for example, vitamin C, vitamin A, zinc and selenium, supports a

• 49:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Healthy immune system. Some of the other things I really like about AG1 is that they are committed to continuous improvement and updating their formula as a scientific research involves. And each batch is independently tested for quality and safety markers, including heavy metals, allergens and banned substances. This is how they can guarantee what's in your scoop and what's not. Right now, AG1 is offering a free AG1 flavour sampler and AGZ sampler to try all the flavours, plus free vitamin D3 and K2 and AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription order. That's $87 in free gifts for first time subscribers.

• 50:37Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 50:51Speaker 01

  So to calm them down, you've got to visualise the pathway for them. If they've just seen a moment, a glimpse and don't, you know, they're, the fear is in them because they've looked down a gradient they don't want to ski. You take them very calmly over to that gradient and you pinpoint and you map out and say, right, our first process is to get ourselves to that point. That's point number one. Okay. Point number two, we're going to try and side slip down to this next area. In that next area where point number three is, we'll be able to start making ski turns. In their mind, in their mind, they're going to turn, turn, turn, turn to get down this slope. You actually have to intervene and spell it out like a children's book, literally going back into the point of like, that's point number one, we are stepping down here. Point number two is side slip.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Point number three, we're going to put in some basic turns. We may even use a snowplow turn at that point. But if you don't break down the map of this entry point that builds fear, if it's all just chucked into like, it's that.

• 51:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. The whole thing is how am I going to get down?

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. They're going to, the fear is going to sit in them.

• 51:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  So it's the explanation of a real tactical approach. The tactical approach has to be broken down into bite sized, smaller pieces. This run. It might only be twenty meters, but I've broken that rundown into two meters there. Those that that next three and a half meters is this part, the next four and a half is there. And every little part of this jigsaw puzzle has a different tact tactic, has a different technique, has a different part of it where we're going to be holding hands to step down this little area. Cause I don't feel I want you in an environment independently. I'm going to be your buddy. I'm going to hold your hand. We're going to step down there. And by the time you've finished it, you've segmented this this horrible dark gloom

• 52:34Speaker 01

  into bite sized little chunks of something that's achievable there, achievable there, achievable there.

• 52:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's life, right?

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 52:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  You you you end up in a situation you don't want to be in. Instead of looking at the totality of that situation or how, I don't know. You you my to do list is through the roof. How am I going to get it? It's like, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  You've done you've done this with me, you know, you've done this with me on my physical state sometimes.

• 52:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  You know, and I've come to you and like, Jesus, yeah, I've got all this going on and da da da. Mine's the same brainstorm, you know, my brain goes like that. It goes over speed and it doesn't stop to think sometimes. So it's exactly the same.

• 53:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  I love what you said about breaking it down because that is how we get through anything in life. Yeah, a a big problem. Well, it's kind of five mini problems.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I love that, you know, what you say like, oh, that bit, you're just going to sidestep down. You're not going to ski it because the person's scared because they think they have to ski it. How will I stop the ski there?

• 53:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  We'll step that bit. And then I guess what you'll also do, and I know you do this, is that you'll know that ah, their strong turn is their one to the left, their weak one is the one to the right. Ah, you know what? So on that little steep bit where they have to make a turn, I'm going to make sure that they are approaching it where it's on their strong side.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 53:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  And not their weak side. Cause then that that you then help them build the confidence.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  By a strategic approach.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  But it but it's in day to day, Rangan, because like one of the things that will affect my my job. It is part of my personal life. So if I've got, you know, with my, my eldest is almost, uh, youngest is almost five, my eldest is twenty four. And with my, with my youngest, he's sort of neurodivergent. He's, you know, he's, um, he's a great kid. He's always smiling, super happy. But my preparation work that I've had to learn, which I didn't actually have, you know, I didn't have it before, for him is make or break. It's make or break on, whether his, his mood changes, if it's regulated, it's make or break in terms of what he eats and how it affects his mood. It's make or break in trying to, almost like seeing two steps ahead.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Or it changes very greatly his day, which I don't want to do, and it changes mine as well, because my fatigue by not prepping, planning strategically, tactically his, his day of his, his things we need to do, can end in an explosion, like an eruption. It's literally like skiing somewhere steep where you lost it, lost the turn and your, your, the equipment came off and you started tumbling down the hill. It's, it's an eruption. It's an explosion. But in ski terms, you, you're exactly right. And, and like to, it, it's the best explanation of that steep face where someone can only see down the whole of that radius. And if you want to sort of calculate it, it's five hundred meters down and it's seventy meters across.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  That's what they see. And what we're talking about is literally twenty meters at a time in that space.

• 55:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  But what do endurance runners do? Or people who run half marathons or marathons when they're feeling tired, they break it down. Like, oh, I'll just go to that next lamppost.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  Let me just do one more mile and see how I feel. They don't think, or the best ones are not looking at, man, there's still fifteen miles to go, because it doesn't help you. You, you have to break it right down

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  into those small bite sized pieces. And then, you know, you do enough of those small bite sized pieces before you know it, you're at the bottom of the mountain or you're the end of the race.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? It wasn't the big thing. It was the small things. Yeah. And I've got one thing I will say, because I've been on many of your five day courses.

• 56:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because I love the approach that you and your academy take, always have done. It's always made sense to me that you do it the right way. But, you know, you guys at 10am when everyone meets up, you split us into groups. We're doing warmups for 10 minutes, right? A lot of people don't want to do a warmup. It's like, what are you talking about? I've got my gear out, I just want to, let me ski now, right? Now you're doing warmups. Then we're doing low speed bracage drills, right? Which actually are really difficult when you first do them, right? Because you don't have momentum. So you're having to just in a very small area, rotate your skis around without using your upper body.

• 56:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  But then, as I reflect back now, I think that's why your, you know, your flagship five day courses that you guys run for people are just so phenomenal. Because you get to do all the cool, fun stuff that you're hoping, but you guys might spend the morning preparing us so that in the afternoon, we can go and do one of the cool slopes. But we, you know, going back to preparation, we prepared all morning. We built up our skills, we keep getting better, our confidence gets higher, which means by the time you take us up there, we're like, yeah, actually, you know what? And we've also built trust in you and your instructors, which then it's less likely to freak us out because we built that confidence in ourselves and with you guys, right?

• 57:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, absolutely. Another one of these universal principles that apply to skiers and non-skiers, I think it's to do with perspective. Yeah.

• 57:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  So you are lucky enough to live in the gorgeous mountains of Urbier. Okay, so the views are stunning. And you shared before that there have been some challenges in your personal life. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, over the last few years. Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about perspective? What?

• 57:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  What does it do for you when things are going off in your personal life?

• 58:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  But then for your job, you get up out into the mountains. Like, what, what, do you help us understand that?

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so for me, personally, having the view or the perspective of looking out and seeing, when you're elevated, you're sort of, you're not just elevated in terms of altitude. It feels like you're elevated in perspective where you can see a greater distance. And there's something, just for me, and I know other people do feel this, that you're, it kind of weirdly for me, I find it difficult to switch off, right? So I sometimes, I'm not brilliant at sleep, brain goes about a thousand miles an hour. And I, and I have to like, you know, sometimes, you know, figure out a way that I'm going to get, get the sleep to try and get the energy back up.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  When I've got the perspective of a huge view and a spass of like a distance, I naturally, something in me naturally switches off and unwinds. We've, we've often done things with a charity we work with called Snow Camp. So Snow Camp is where we get a chance as skiers, you know, so we've, we've, we've done all right in the ski industry. We, we want to give back to things that we've, we've been lucky enough to come from. And we've taken a lot of kids who have been in really sort of rough situations. It's usually London based, South London based, but the Snow Camp charities exist all over the UK. The ones that we worked with were London sort of scenarios.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  And we, we got kids out of bad environments, bad environments that were triggering them to do bad things. Wasn't their fault that they were just in the place where, whether they liked it or not, there was a strong percentage outcome, things would go negatively for them if you measured it. When they came out to the Alps, the same kids put into a perspective where they, that, that, let's just say their vehicle was the fact they did our ski instructor training program. Right? So they came to Verbier, we sponsored these guys through Snow Camp. And they did a ski instructor training program and they, it was incredible to watch how they turned up in the resort, quite edgy, quite, not chippy is the wrong word, but quite tense and stressed, you know?

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Their natural perception and demeanor within a week completely changed. Their performance, their ability to perform was excellent. A lot of these kids who had survived through, you know, a lot of street life and broken homes, came out and ended up being like the upper, upper level of performance in our skiing structured training program. They worked for us. One of them came out and worked for us, ended up teaching members of the royal family I was skiing with. And you almost couldn't explain it, but it was like, wow, you know, I'm in a, I'm in a completely different environment. Now, not so much to do with us and what the content of the program was.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  The, the individual you could see by perspective and elevation and distance and like, you know, forget about the postcard looking beauty of the place or a lovely shalay, but you forget about that. Just the simple elevation of seeing a greater distance as opposed to the opposite of being low down with a really tall skyscraper around you, whatever you want to call it. But basically, if you're, if you're continually down there in an environment that's trapped, you know, that's darker, it's more dingy, you're boxed in and whatever, and you flip it upside down and this person then gets elevated and stuck on this. For us, we're lucky, it's on the mountain and get even cooler when you're really high up and you've, you've achieved and you hiked up to a peak.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  But the mental side of that and how it physically reflected, if you just look at the shoulders and someone's stance and someone's, you know, you've seen it where someone's got the tension in their body, where it kind of, for me, the mountains unwinds, people just switch off and everything becomes a lot more like, ah, I can breathe out. Personally, I actually used it. And we talk about personal scenarios. I had a really bad road cycling accident in, uh, two thousand seventeen when my front tyre blew out and I ended up in hospital for 10 days and shattered my hips, dislocated my shoulder, twisted my lower leg the wrong way around. It was all sort of terrible for my ski career. And I ended up having to have therapy for it because I didn't get knocked out when, when

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  I hit, my bike was going downhill about seventy five K, front tyre blew out, bang, hit the ground quite hard. And I, I, I kept having these things at night where I was like, I was re-pitchering it, I couldn't switch the picture off. And I went to a therapy session which was labelled EMDR, right? So, and I didn't believe in it because I kind of, I'm the hardest person, like, you know, lights going, like, zoom, zoom, it just reminded me of Clockwork Orange. So I was like, I don't believe in this stuff. So this woman was persistent, she was brilliant, and she said, I went to a place called Cognacity or Cognicity in London. Anyway, I did this thing, sat in front of the lights and we went for a pro session. She was writing these notes and she asked me to pick your happy place, right?

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  And at the time I was breaking up in a relationship with someone that was quite stressful and it had other factors of like the sun being involved and all solutions were made and it was all ended up well and good. But in her process of where she found me my happy place, what is your happy place? I couldn't really think of anything and I just said, actually, it's my balcony. It's my balcony of my house, where I live in Switzerland. And actually, over, I bought the house in 2002, that has been my happy place. It's been the only place I think I could go outside and like, take a breath out and feel, not that I'm protected, but just feel like I've got a moment of peace, you know, moment

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  to let the body, let the mind sort of reset, recover. And weirdly enough, there was almost like a delayed effect of this EMDR therapy working. And to this day, whether it was how she used my happy place, being elevated in my balcony and my view, I've got, I'm lucky and I've got like a 180 degree view. I could see over to the face we were talking about there from my château, there's lots of memories that are positive stuff. But there's a lot about it, it's like the breathing in of the fresh air. You know, wherever you are, in the UK, I can pick any number of places I choose to go to, jumping the car, saying, right, I'm driving up to the top of that, the air's fresher,

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  the view's more, the emotional state of it's calmer.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  So elevation for me, you know, is one of the reasons it's magnetized me towards the mountain in my day to day job, which I love, but elevation is a cure for a lot of the day to day that we get sort of sucked downwards into, you know.

• 1:04:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  And I would recommend it, I'd strongly recommend it. I did a thing for one of my partners, a sponsor, Helly Hansen, and it was mountains. It was about getting people to go to the mountains, go to the hills. And we've got loads of them in the UK, you know, it's, I mean, I know this goes out internationally, this show, whichever city or town you're in, close by, you ain't going to be that far away from something which is elevated, which gives you a view back down looking at everything, you know.

• 1:05:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's profound and it's, again, as you, as you sort of mentioned, we're not all lucky enough to live in the mountains, right? But many of us do have access to some form of hilly area. Not everyone, of course, but many of us do. And if you can access it, if you're struggling in your life.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  If you're feeling stuck, if you're feeling lost, if you don't, you can't see through the problems, you think you're in the wrong job, whatever.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  It is amazing how getting some elevation, getting out into some awe inspiring nature, if you can, will just start to shift your perspective.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  And, you know, hearing your individual experience was wonderful. And, you know, I love hearing people's individual take on what it's done for them and how being in the hills, for example, gives them a different perspective. There is also a lot of science now to support it. There's science showing us that simply being out in nature will lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, so it literally changes you physiologically.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  There's also science showing us that when you have this big panoramic view and your vision becomes more peripheral, right? So, you know, if we're on a screen, right, our vision is not peripheral.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  It just.

• 1:06:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's central.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's all locked in in front of us, right? Which, actually, if you think about it on an evolutionary level, that's kind of where we look when we're stressed, right? We're not looking around us, we're just focusing on the problem at hand.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  When people get out into nature, whether it's a mountain or not, frankly.

• 1:06:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  And if they're not looking at their phone at the same time, right? Which of course these days a lot of people are. And you just soften your vision and you start to take things in from the side and more peripheral. We know that that turns down the dial of your stress system.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? Your sympathetic nervous system, the stress arm of your nervous system starts to come down and the parasympathetic arm, the relaxation arm, starts to get amped up relatively.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? So it's not just, oh, it feels good. It's literally changed. Well, yeah, it changes you physiologically. So I think what you guys are doing with your charities to try and get people out to the mountains to experience this just helps people see a different perspective on life.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Do you know, if you, I totally agree. And if you, if you look into it, I mean, Snow Camp's a brilliant thing.

• 1:07:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Is that S N O?

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  S N O, a W and then camp.

• 1:07:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  Snow Camp.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just, you go online, you Google Snow Camp, you'll find it straight away. But Snow Camp operates at, you know, many venues around the UK. But even if you don't go to Snow Camp and you don't ski, go and have a look at where the local ski slopes are, the dry slopes, and go walk up to the top of one of them. It is incredible. In Dublin on Saturday, when I was coaching there, the view that we got, just because the dry slope was situated on a hill, it has to be, right?

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  Was incredible. We saw right into the bay in Dublin. You, you saw more. And that was a buzz. I mean, I'd strongly encourage, I mean, this weekend I get to Verbier, right? So I'd be in Verbier, I'd be getting back in the swing of things. And the first thing I'll do is go and enjoy the altitude and the view. Now, elevation doesn't have to be going up to a ski resort high. Elevation could be going up a hundred meters or two, somewhere around the hills, you know, in anywhere you are. But take in a few deep breaths and just let your system switch off and reset.

• 1:08:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Talking about perspective.

• 1:08:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think about the fact that you were caught in an avalanche early on in your career.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I'm really interested to know, Warren, well, if you could tell us a little bit about that experience.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  And what you learnt or what changed in you from going through it.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the avalanche I was caught in, I was quite lucky, actually. You can be in an avalanche where you're caught in it and you're sort of a bit like been in a washing machine effect. You can end up when everything stops, head down, feet up. I was the other way around, my head was right next to the surface. Anyway, I got caught in it and I was lucky, I got out.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  But to me, it really, it made me reflect a lot on life. I remember getting in the car that afternoon and driving to a trade show to go and see one of my ski sponsors, like you mentioned, Vocal.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  And going through your mind all that drive is like, God, what if, you know, what if that was just a bit different? What if the outcome was different? What if I was further across, an extra 10 metres over, would it have been a more intense strike by the avalanche? If I was 10 metres lower, would I have ended up the other way around, upside down? So it really woke me up.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  I dealt with scenarios in skiing in my early days where I did silly things, took high risk. My first child came along and I definitely lowered the tone of the risk taking, but I still took the risk. After the avalanche in 2008, I definitely changed a lot about it. You know, sometimes we are just caught in the, with the blinkers on and we're just going full speed ahead with not much time to think laterally or sideways. And that moment, that incident definitely made me wake up a little bit, think about the sort of longevity, how long is life for me? How long does that picture look like?

• 1:10:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's kind of.

• 1:10:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  We're talking about avalanches and when you come close to death, how it changes the way that you value life and appreciate life.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right. You have an increased sense of gratitude usually.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  But of course, skiing these days, not certainly not when you guys teach or an academy, which is very, very safe, but a lot of people out with those things, a lot of people by themselves often will go into some quite gnarly ski terrain.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  I've done a couple of ski seasons in Chamonix with my band earlier on, you know, maybe 20 years ago or so. And, you know, every year people die.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%.

• 1:11:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  Usually not when they're being coached and doing stuff. It's off doing crazy stuff usually, right?

• 1:11:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  You've had friends, I believe, who have died when out in the mountains.

• 1:11:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  What has that done to how you view life?

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think knowing and seeing the repercussions, it's made us try and raise awareness for sure. One of the first things that, when you see the damage it does when someone's taken before they should be and leave, it's something that affects such a big wealth of people that you want to do something about it and you want to raise awareness. And in our game, we often see scenarios nowadays where someone didn't expect it. Someone did all the preparation work, but because of the environmental element of the way the planet's warming up and the way that things are changing in the winter, preparation, preparation, preparation didn't always get the outcome.

• 1:12:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  Because there was some chance involved. But it still remains the fact that if you can educate someone a little bit, I mean, our bigger issue at the moment is temperature shifts. So we are getting now in a winter season, unless, like you said, more and more people have been caught in avalanches in recent years especially. But in January last year, you've got a temperature shift of minus 10 to plus 10 in the space of 24 hours. That's too much. And what people are not understanding yet, not to my knowledge in terms of the degree of the volume of people who want to understand it is that, you know, It's the the temperature shift that's making the snowpack weak, which wasn't there twenty thirty

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  years ago. Now it is. We've got to be more aware of it. And if there's one thing that someone's life being taken in the mountains in an avalanche has done for me is waking up the idea that let as many people know about it as we possibly can, educate people, help them prepare, you know, help them realize that there's a a set bunch of pointers you've got to check before you go there. And it comes back also to greed and want and desire for, you know, you now look at a traverse line to traverse into a beautiful off piece. Imagine that lovely open powder field. And there's tracks in the powder field. But do you traverse the extra ten or twenty meters to get something

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  that visually had a perfect flat surface, but above you took a huge amount more risk and risk to life because you were just a bit too far out in that risky zone? Or do you sort of back away from it a little bit and say, I'm going to ski this line. It's still awesome. It's ninety percent of the awesome that the one that took high risk was going about the ten twenty meters further across. They're the bits we want to get across to people. And that's playing with a few different, like, technical knowledge of the mountain, but also the ego as well. And like, do we do we go and grab that part? I mean, I certainly know that the client of mine that wants, wants, wants, wants, get that, got this, got to grab it, take it home and turn the trophy on it on the Instagram

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  photograph on their phone. That's the extra twenty meters that can cost a life. And so we're playing with technical knowledge, but also ego.

• 1:14:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, it's amazing. Greed and desire get humans into all kinds of problems when unchecked.

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yes, on a mountainside.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  But also in life.

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, that desire for more.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, I want to keep pushing. I want more. I've got enough already, but I need more. I need more money, more promotions, more whatever.

• 1:15:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, again, it depends on what your start point is. It depends where you are in life.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I think one thing humans are not very good at is knowing.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  When enough.

• 1:15:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  When enough is enough.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  And it's something, you know, I've said it before on the show, but I can't reiterate enough. One of my very favorite phrases is from the old Chinese philosophy text, the Tao Te Ching. True wealth is knowing what is enough.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I think about it all the time. What does enough look like? Because often the quest, the greed for more starts to decimate what you already have.

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  And of course, on a mountain, that can be fatal.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's really important is to, is to get some form when someone's learning in our world of this is your expectation. This is what we're going to go for. The problem in the modern world is the videos you watch online. The videos you watch online now, every kid coming up, age fifteen to twenty, have got to prove themselves because the videos are so much more extreme. They're jumping off of a bigger cliff. They're doing more backflips. They're skiing powder in the most remote places. Then it's coupled with the ego and the expectation of what their Instagram feed compared to their mate's Instagram feed is looking like and what at risk have they got to take to

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  go and get the better picture. It's really important, education at this stage. It's where education is key. It's where education kicks in and says, right, you've got to learn. Like we work with We Mountain. We Mountain is a bit like, if anyone's dived, it's a bit like the Paddy explanation book for off piece knowledge. We've got to get people with more off piece knowledge. And when they get that knowledge, they pass that knowledge on, definitely passing on to your friends and family. Once you've got the knowledge, you can then go and exercise your technique and practice it safely. But within all of those elements, you've got to respect the current situation of what the weather history is like. You can't just get out there and just run for the mountains like you used

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  to. You've got to have preparation, so much more so now, because we're dealing with a different type of. Media, we're dealing with a different type of expectation that you've got to be, you know, putting out this content on your, on your, on your Instagram, which is crazy in our environment. It's just like a mega risk taking side of things. Coupled with an environment that's a hotter planet, you know, so it's like, it's really difficult to manage that. But the best we can do is make people better technically, prepare better in what they do.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  But respect now, like more so than ever, respect the mountain itself, because that, there is no, the mountain doesn't forgive, you know, you, you get one chance to sort of look at it and treat it the way it should be treated. But it's really important to respect that.

• 1:17:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  As someone who's been a coach for several decades, what would you say is the number one skill that you need?

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  The number one skill to ski?

• 1:18:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  No, the number one skill you need to be a good coach.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  Listen.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  I mean, for me, it's listening and understanding the person, because my job is to give that person a great experience. And it's very easy to get carried away because we've got the knowledge to give them all the right ingredients. But you've really got to know who the person is you're going to coach and what their expectation is. You've got to listen to, not just verbally listen to them, but listen to the, the way that they portray themselves, their expectations, what they want to get, gain from it, what their history and their profile is. Listen to what they've done, listen to the fact of they, have they done a lot of sport in the past? Are they fragile? Are they agile? Are they, you know, are they confident? Are they underselling themselves? What type of a person is it?

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  You know, so the, the listening game covers way more than audio, way, way more than audio.

• 1:18:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think that's the same thing I would say as a doctor. I think the number one skill is your ability to listen, listen without.

• 1:19:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  Preconceived ideas.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  Warren, I could talk to you for hours. I love what you have given to me over the years.

• 1:19:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  I love what you brought to the ski industry and I love the fact that you are keen to get these principles, particularly around our body, right, our biomechanics out to everyone, skiers and non-skiers alike.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  If people want to find out more about you and sort of ski with your academy or get hold of this gorgeous ski technique lab sort of program now, where should they go?

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  So, I mean, that's a big question there. Ninety-five percent of people don't take ski lessons, five percent of people do. So, in terms of the millions of people that ski, if you're a skier that doesn't take ski lessons, the ski technique lab that sits within our academy, and it was called the Warren Smith Ski Academy, you can Google that, but the ski technique lab is the content that will help someone that doesn't take a ski lesson improve their skiing technique, just because of being better at functional movement patterns. And there's an understanding that goes with that. You can find a lot of that content online. If you are a person that likes ski lessons, the chances are globally, you probably might not be skiing with us. You'd be skiing with a ski school, in a resort, wherever you go.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  If you're going to invest money in a ski lesson, we'd urge you, like beg you, to go and work on the functional movement patterns of ski technique lab. Because if you do so, the value for money out of your ski lesson will be at least doubled because the one side of the body is going to absorb it, which might not have done. And it goes the same for someone buying Skeakit as well, you know, one side usually works better than the other. If you are skiing with us, fantastic, you know, come and say hi. We're based in Verbier, but also we're quite often accessible in the UK at the Snow Centre in Hamel Hempstead and the Snow Centre in Manchester. And then these are brilliant indoor ski venues.

• 1:21:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  That gives someone the chance to ski on real snow, which is unusual.

• 1:21:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  And this sort of new magazine, well, it's not a magazine, it's your Ski Technique Lab Expert Program.

• 1:21:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  Which I love, I'm looking through it and although it's revolves around skiing, you think, well, actually, anyone's going to benefit from trying to do these simple exercises. If they go to your academy websites, can they find the ski technique lab stuff and this little program on there?

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  If they go to our academy website, along the top bar, there's an option that says technique lab. And if you go into technique lab, you'll find the content in there. One of the things we'll evolve and people can do is if they don't get a chance to ski with us is run an online coaching session with somebody. And that's a way that, okay, I'm not going to VBA, not going to get a chance to see you guys. But if you want to access and work through the functional movement patterns, you can hire us, you can book that online. And quite often, that might be all you need.

• 1:21:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. It's been so fun talking to you. To finish off, Warren, for that person who's been listening, and let's say that they don't ski.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  But they want to stay active. And there are sports that they want to do, but feel that they can't do because they're scared, or the state of their body, or whatever it might be.

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  You are an elite coach. For that person, what would you say to them?

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  I would say to get out there and try. I would say that you, you have to look at the idea of your sport you want to do, how you're going to prepare for that sport. And in the preparation phase that we've been talking about, you know, being functional and moving, movement itself, is something that will improve so many elements of life. If you choose a sport, and let's just say you want to be good at paddle, or running, or whatever it might be, go behind the scenes of your body, you know, go behind the scenes and see what your body can do. You're going to, quite often, as we've been mentioning throughout today's talk, you're going to find a difference between left and right side of the body. Once you've identified

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  it, you might find that it was only one side of the body that drew you away from something, that stopped you going there. And you can, you can make the changes in that, you can make it balanced, but you can only make it balanced by finding out about it first. That's how we've made our life and our business work in skiing. In terms of that word, in terms of preparation, I think the big thing for me personally is, you know, I've got through areas of my life where outside of work, in personal life, with preparation, I've learnt to be a better dad. With preparation, I've learnt to manage my time and try and find a balance between

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  sort of work life and home life, which is a really important thing for me. And then the other part, I think from today, from what I would advise to someone is I want to personally, and you were saying the same, I want to do sport until I'm older, much, much older. I want to enjoy all these things for as long as I possibly can. And if you get to work at it right now, by trying to look at what your body's capabilities are, your machine will go on lasting longer and longer and longer. But if you're grinding down one side of your unbalanced body, you're going to know about it and those joints won't last forever.

• 1:24:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, love it, Warren. Fantastic advice. It's been fantastic having you on the show. Such a fun conversation. I really hope we get to have a little ski adventure at some point over the winter.

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  Absolutely, mate.

• 1:24:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  And until next time, I'll ski you later, mate.

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  Hey, ski you later. Cheers, mate.

• 1:24:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday Five. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused

• 1:25:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails. That you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free at drchatity.com/Friday5. Now, if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world, covering all kinds of different topics: happiness, food, stress, sleep, behaviour change and movement, weight loss and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks and as

• 1:26:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  audiobooks, which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family, or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the episode notes in your podcast app. And always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more.