By Kristy Bishop in 2023.
Proprioception is “sensory information derived from neural receptors embedded in joints, muscles and tendons that enable a person to know where parts of the body are located at any time”[a] according to English neurophysiologist Sir Charles Sherrington in 1906. In other terms, its having a great awareness of where your body and joints are in space. If you relate this to snowboarding it is a crucial skill to build as our skeleton and muscles are responsible for directing the desired outcome of our snowboard. So we better know exactly where and how our body is moving before attaching something else to our feet.
We don’t snowboard in a predictable environment, so having stable joints from proprioception training is going to give us the coordination and confidence to adapt to the constantly changing terrain. ‘Evidence shows that those with greater levels of proprioceptive ability are less likely to be injured, and in athletes, higher proprioception also correlates with higher levels of athletic performance’[B]. This can relate to prepping for new skills in the park; if our muscles/joints are familiar with the positions we are about to combine into a more complex manoeuvre then our risk of injury is lowered and our chances of landing safely are increased. Even if the new skill results in a fall, having enhanced body awareness and sturdy tendons and ligaments as a result of proprioception training will decrease chances of
the fall being harmful.
Think of top athletes who’s sports comprise of acrobatic abilities. Gymnasts, slopestyle athletes, skateboarders, platform divers, aerial skiers, BMX bikers. These athletes are incredibly in tune with their spatial awareness, and this is trained through hours of safely controlled repetitions in predictable environments. Before the skill becomes completely autonomous, physical preparation (strength, flexibility) has to be optimal. Physical preparation is another huge part of looking after our bodies, but for now let’s focus on a base level of proprioception. What I am encouraging is something all instructors could easily fit into their weekly routine. Entry level training can be done at home with minimal equipment or can even enhanced by participating in a variety of other sports outside instructing.
A great place to begin proprioception training is focussing on our lowers joints. We are trying to increase the neurological connections from brain to joint to enhance efficiency and accuracy of movements. “Learning movement skills means developing new patterns of movement by processing proprioceptive information appropriately. New neural programs are developed, refined by repetition and transferred to the more fundamental regions of the brain, from where they are executed with less effort and relayed much faster.”[a] According to Journal of Sport and Health Science Volume 5, issue 1.
Knee and ankle stability is imperative to snowboarding, so being able to balance on one foot on a firm surface, hands on hips, eyes on the floor for 30 seconds should be easy. Instructors with prior or current injuries may struggle with this simple task. This task is something a physio gives as joint rehabilitation exercises, so let’s think of it as pre-habilitation for us. Over time the exercises can increase in difficulty and be shaped to sports specific movements.
Examples are; standing on one leg with eyes closed, standing on unsteady surface such as a mattress/trampoline/bosu ball, throwing a tennis ball from hand to hand, having a partner throw a tennis ball deviating from the centre point of your balance. During this exercise your muscles in the knee and ankle joint are firing to continuously bring your body back to centre. Your core is also a major muscle group responsible for overall stability, but as it is a large muscle with a lot of power, you may not feel it fatiguing as quickly in the previously mentioned exercises. A snowboard specific movement that could be done as a higher level activity is a jump 180 from a small height; this could be done with many different focusses.
See examples below;
– How far the pre-wind needs to be through the upper body/core
– How much push is needed through the take off
– How retracted your lower limbs are in the air
– How braced the core is to only spin 180
– How gently and well timed the ankle, knee and hip joints absorb the landing.
Success at this task will take repetition, however every attempt, sensory information is being sent from joint receptors to the brain so these neural pathways are training to become highways! This begins to cross into Plyometrics, and studies have shown that sport specific plyometric training results in significant improvements in proprioception. Implementing more styles of training becomes necessary the further you wish to progress in the industry and stay healthy.
Overall as instructors, we rely on our athletic abilities to preform our jobs safely. Therefore it’s recommended to have a combination of proprioceptive skills, strength and flexibility to remain healthy. For instructors at a Level 1 standard, proprioception training is encouraged to mitigate injury and maximise confidence to learn new movement patterns.
This can also be transferred to being more ‘trainable’. If a candidate is body aware at how much they are flexing in a joint and can feel it without needing to see it, their rate of improvement from feedback will be quicker. The more qualified you wish to become the more taxing it can be on our bodies so increasing the intensity of proprioception training will give your bodies the capacity for training harder. Knowing your body is well prepped for snowboarding will result in higher levels of confidence to pursue new movements patterns.
Give yourself a helping hand and get one step ahead before training starts next season.
Remember all movement is good movement!
References:
[a] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095254615000058#bib0050
[b] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1440244019312599#preview-section-references