Athlete Spotlight: Tate Garrod
We caught up with Airhouse athlete Tate Garrod, a 17 y/o skier who uses Kelowna’s facility to progress his skiing passion with dryland training, tramp-ski control, aerial awareness and spatial control.
When you come to airhouse, do you consider yourself to be training or playing - is there a difference between the two for you?
I would say that it is both. When I come to the airhouse I have a specific training plan with tricks that I would like to learn or improve on but it is really fun to me. I really enjoy trampolining and I think it is a great way to progress my skills so I would consider it both training and playing.
What does your pre season training look like? How has airhouse helped to train and condition you?
My preseason training consists of a lot of trampolining, a summer setup for skiing and fitness. Most of my tricks start on the trampoline so I spend a lot of time practicing the tricks that I would like to learn in the upcoming season on the trampoline. Airhouse has great trampolines for learning all tricks from singles to triples so I use the facility as much as I can especially in the offseason.
“I did a lot of visualization in this competition, practicing my run over and over in my head until I felt very confident that I could perform the skills when it counted. ”
Do you set goals for any of your comps?
In my most recent Mammoth comp, the initial goal that I had set was to make finals but that changed in the weeks leading up to the competition to a more performance-based goal. I still wanted to make finals but my focus shifted towards consistency. I wanted to put down four runs (throughout both comps). To do this I came up with challenging runs that I could do consistently. My strategy was to land a good run that I had consistent and then step up certain parts of the run to bump up my score.
We know that you use visualization techniques, can you tell us a little more about that in your latest comp that you did?
I did a lot of visualization in this competition, practicing my run over and over in my head until I felt very confident that I could perform the skills when it counted. This process worked well and by the second competition I was ready to add in a new trick which I had not yet done into my comp run (switch double cork 1260). I landed this trick for the first time in practice on the day of the second competition and put it into my run. By the end of the second competition, I had exceeded my expectations in terms of my competition run.
What would be your main takeaways from your latest comp?
This competition was a great experience and I learned a lot. My main takeaway is the importance of dialing in a competitive process. I focussed a lot on upping my runs throughout training and being constant rather than aiming for a difficult run and not putting much thought into plan B. This really improved my confidence throughout the competition and led to me performing much better. It was also great to get a feel for what it is like to compete at this higher level with skiers that I have looked up to for years. Overall I am very happy with how I performed in Mammoth and I feel that I am finding my slopestyle groove.
“Airhouse is a great tool for progressing in skiing and If you get some good foundations, you can learn any trick you want in the future.”
— Tate
What is the driving force behind skiing - What makes you keen to for these competitions?
My favorite part of skiing is learning a new trick. I love how there is an endless list of tricks that you can learn and there is always something to be working towards. This pursuit of progression is what motivates me and keeps me excited about skiing. I think that competing is a great way to test your skills. I enjoy the pressure of competing and the mental challenge that it provides. You only have so many opportunities to perform at competitions throughout the season so it takes a lot of preparation to make sure you do your best at each contest.
Can you give a piece of advice either that you’ve been given by someone else or that you would give to others when starting out or progressing in their sporting journey?
My advice to someone relatively new to the sport would be “Don't be discouraged by your current skill level relative to others around you.” Everybody starts off somewhere and you truly can achieve anything you want in sports and life if you put thought and time into it. I was not the most naturally talented athlete when I started out and didn’t see much progression until I put in lots of time on rails and on trampoline. Airhouse is a great tool for progressing in skiing and If you get some good foundations, you can learn any trick you want in the future.
