Warner Nickerson Alpine Ski Racer

Trying to make Better Decisions

warnernickerson — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:43:31 +0000

I pulled out of the Newport-Bermuda Race last week. It was a hard decision, but certainly the right one. The Newport-Bermuda Ocean Race is definitely full contact sailing. I think my back could handle it, but being on the foredeck for 3-6 days depending on wind probably isn’t the best plan. The races starts off Newport, RI on June 15th so maybe I’ll go watch the start. And I’m already signed up for the 2014 race so my day will come.

Here are some shots of the race.

Instead, it’s time to put Pressure in the water with Buck’s help! There isn’t all that much work to do to her so I’m psyched.

Cheers, w

A new outlook!

warnernickerson — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:26:19 +0000

I am sooo pumped. I spend all of last week in NYC with a group of therapists and am overjoyed with how my body is currently functioning!! It’s not ready for racing, but it’s finally working. Now I have a dream team between IPA in NYC, Perfect Postures in Newton, and Diamond Chiropractor in Boston. I am meeting up with Perfect Postures and Diamond today to keep hammering this thing home.

Last week right now, I was in a bit of a panic. My psoas still wasn’t properly firing and from my last post you can see just how pathetically small my left leg was and is. Not idea.

Over the last week in NYC Greg Johnson, Dean Hazama, and Brad Gilden got my psoas muscle firing properly.

This is the psoas, and in my opinion, the most important skeletal muscle in the human body. It is where everything comes from. Without this guy you can’t use your leg, at all. And when I was in NYC we got it working again, hallelujah. I’m sooo pumped. So this is what we worked on in NYC:

Tuesday with Gregg and Brad:

pelvic girdlel, coccyx, sacrum, and pelvic bone
mobilizing psoas – getting it to initiate contractions

Wednesday with Gregg and Dean:

Breaking down ski positions (lateral positions)
dissecting alignment in both positions (right and left footed turns) working from feet up
correcting foot ankle position by soft tissue and some manipulation
working on fibular head and soft tissues surrounding (old injury from 2007)

Thursday with Dean and Brad:

Integrating all of those movement to get muscle firing sequence
Soft tissue of Tailas, ankles and calfs
lower back manipulation and soft tissue work working on a more natural walk

Friday with Dean:

Worked psoas and proper pelvis movements. Also freed up left shoulder
Went over exercises to do without them around (I have been doing 3-4 minute psoas firing every two hours while I’m awake and it’s still firing nicely!!!)

Time to get ready for the sesaon!!!

Dual GS and 18 holes of Golf = Awesome

warnernickerson — Tue, 01 May 2012 12:22:08 +0000

Bend, Oregon – I spent 36 hours in Bend this past weekend to compete in the Race and Ace. It was an epic event with a short 20 second dual GS and 18 holes of golf all for the World Cup Dreams Foundation. Erik Schlopy and Bryon Friedman founded World Cup Dreams Foundation to create a safety net for injured world-class ski racers. This is their biggest fundraiser. Scott Macartney, the organizations CEO, put together a great event and even the weather was perfect. The event will be on the ski channel in the upcoming months. World Cup Dreams is a super cool organization that has helped many ski racers find their path back to World Cup competition. They have been instrumental in helping me pay medical bills for my back injury.

Laureene Ross, Will Brandenburg, Hailey Duke, Cody Marshall, Brooke Wales, Scott Snow, Steve Nyman, Bryce Bennett, Brennan Rubie, and I all came out to support the cause. Actually Laureen lives in Bend so it wasn’t all that challenging or impressive that she made it haha.

I have to say Bend, Oregon – one of the fastest growing cities in America – is one heck of place. It’s kind of like Denver as the climate is very moderate. They only get snow a few times a year, but they’re only 25 minutes away from Mt. Bachelor, a killer mountain with tons of snow that was open on the 4th of July last season. Bend’s elevation is 3,444 feet while the main lodge at the base of Mt. Bachelor is 6,350 with a peak of 9,068. It’s a pretty unique, sick set up.

Wilbur gettin fired up!

The Marshall, Cody!!

My team, the Hackers and Slackers, yeah we killed it… mostly. In order we were John, Richard, Phil, and our semi pro golfer Benji didn’t make it up for second run and our team pic. As far as the race went, I was 4th… not that good haha. Congrats to Steven Nyman for winning. He was understandably pretty pumped coming back from his achilles injury. And congrats to Scott Snow, and Scott Macartney for rounding out the podium. Mac beat me out by a hundredth and I beat Will Brandenburg by a hundredth so it was pretty tight. But this is about raising money, not who won. However, I have to admit I am not ready to be racing yet by any means. It was super fun to ski, but you can easily see just how pathetically small and weak my left leg is in this picture. I’ve been doing good posture exercises with Perfect Postures for almost three months and my back is getting much straighter, but my psoas still isn’t firing rights so I’m going to New York this morning to see a nerve specialist. I’ll keep you all posted on how that goes.

My favorites – the TV talent that interviewed us and videoed the entire event. The edit should be coming out in a month or so… actually I have no idea; but when it does come out, I’ll tell you all.

The Marshall remembering he’s almost as good as an average golfer.

Broken Top Golf Club was a really fun course.

Mac making it happen!

Another angle of Mac killing it!

Seriously, where the hell is Tommy Ford? We were in his hometown and spent all day with his parents!! You’re a terrible son, Tommy!! Terrible. What I’m trying to say is: we really missed you . And Nolan school is no reason not to help out! Yeah we missed you too.

Even Cody and Laureene dominated the piano late night like 9:00ish… well, mostly Laureene!

All and all, it was a great event. It was epic to see so many friends old and new. Special thanks to my team the Hackers and Slackers for almost winning, 5th place aint so bad. And to Scott Macartney, the CEO of World Cup Dreams, for making it all happen.

What it takes to be a ski bum.

warnernickerson — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:28:19 +0000

I just saw this video and totally loved it.

It’s Ace Mackay-Smith winning as a ski in 1992.

Cheers from San Diego, w

YES! Gala Tonight

warnernickerson — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:16:02 +0000

I’m off to Boston in an hour to go to Perfect Postures and do a workout with them. My back has been struggling the last couple days so I’m fired up to see those guys. I did something to it yesterday that got it pretty inflamed, which is not all that sweet, especially since I don’t know what did it. I kinda feel like my late grandfather right now. Backing up in a car, I’m just using mirrors – never a good plan. Not awesome haha. I’m looking forward to seeing what Aaron has to say. It held up pretty well thru JOI considering. That was an amazing event. I have a post to come from JOI and my four days in Zermatt, Switzerland before it.

After my workout at Perfect Postures, I’m off to the YES! (Youth Enrichment Services) event meeting with kids and then going to the YES! Gala sponsored by T2, my biggest sponsor. It should be super fun. We had a great time last year hanging out with younger inner city athletes that have the same skiing fever we do. Check out their website for more info on YES! YES! is a non-profit started in 1968 to give youth a chance by taking city kids off the street corners and let them ski down a mountain.

Cheers, w

In Pursuit of Perfect Posture

warnernickerson — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:14:15 +0000

Newton, MA – When I left Vail, CO, I made a shift in my rehab plan. For the first couple months of my injury, I was at Howard Head focusing on strengthening my inner core muscles surrounding my spine, getting my left leg, psoas, glute max, and piriformis firing properly while keeping a high level of fitness so I could bounce back and salvage my season. Unfortunately, I wasn’t rebounding as quickly as I hoped.

Upon realization of my futile effort to get back in the gate ASAP, I was referred to Aaron Brooks of Perfect Posture in Newton, MA – thanks to Tyler Gannon for the introduction - to try to get my body straight again. When I arrived my hips were twisted from left to right making me look 10 degrees that direction if I closed my eyes and let my body relax. Rather than focusing on strengthening my left leg and core, I have completely gone back to the basics. For the past two months, I have religiously been doing two workouts a day that average 30 minutes each session.

Unfortunately, we don’t have images from the first day I arrived at Perfect Postures, but these are from last week. As you can see my back is sagging to the left so I have been doing these corrective exercises. I am significantly straighter now than when I arrived so I’m totally fired up about how it’s going.

This injury has given me a chance to make a big difference in my alignment. I have always had problems at the top of my left footed turn because my hip mobility wasn’t letting my body line up properly on my left footers, which made me lean in a little as my hips weren’t switching from side to side very well. This has been an issue that I really haven’t been able to tackle until now. Once I’m lined up, I will start hamming harder workouts and strengthening my left leg as it’s still comparatively very weak.

Here are some exercises, I have been hammering out.

Doing some upper spinal twists. I love this one!

Doing some kneeling wall exercises that are far more challenging than they look.

And a little door squat action!

Thanks to Perfect Postures and Aaron for committing to my alignment. This is us chilling after a posture session.

Cheers. w

MOVEMBER and L.A.

warnernickerson — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:26:48 +0000

Santa Monica, CA – Movember known for “Changing the Face of Men’s Health” and putting nasty – or really ridiculously awesome – mustaches on men around the world for the month of November is an impressive cause. Originating in Australia, these guys have raised $174 million since 2003.

They nearly have exponential growth functions demonstrated in these graphs – insane.

What is Movember really about?
Not only is it about having an epic mustache, it is a month long fundraiser that is designed to raise funds for the awareness of men’s health issues by supporting prostate cancer programs and other cancers affected by men worldwide. It’s about people feeling good and obviously looking good for a cause.

United States Movember Headquarters:

The U.S. Headquarters – in Santa Monica, California – is about as low key as you can get. It doesn’t even look like an office from outside. The way the wood paneling on the 7 foot fence is set up you can barely tell there is a door. The only thing that gives it away is a 3 inch by 1/2 an inch Movember sticker on a door bell/intercom looking system that is partially pealed off. This is a pic of the same sticker:

Once inside the 12 member staff was small and all about efficiency which is exactly what I expect from any well run non-profit. Here are few shots from inside. In my opinion, any extra overhead costs are taking dollars away from the cause so it was great to see such a sweet group of men and women working with no more space than they need.

Here is a look at part of the office. I wish I took a picture of the other side where people were working in tighter quarters.

JJ Owen with the best skateboard ever!

Why the axe? Because it’s sweet!! I’m pretty bummed I got sick of my beard and mustache two days earlier.

The Mustache station with part of the crew!

Pretty psyched about the sweet Mo goodie bag they gave us. My favorite part is the iphone case and the Mo shoes. Sick.

I have to give a shout out to Mike Janyk and the Canadian Men’s Ski Team for showing me how Movember works three years ago. Here is a shot of their team looking dapper as ever after 21 days! The way it works is you shaver your entire face on November 1st and just let the magic commence.

All I know is that I’m already fired up for next Movember!!!

Thanks to Adam, JJ, and Ellie for making it such a sweet day in L.A.

Nastar Nationals takes out Charles.

warnernickerson — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:50:21 +0000

Winter Park, CO – I want to express my deepest condolences for Charles Christianson who ended his season three days ago at Nastar Nationals. It’s not Nastar’s fault and later in this blog I applaud them for what their doing, but it just sucks all around. Charles hasn’t gone a single season in 5 years without a big injury so I was pretty impressed when he was in the final stretch a week ago with only a mostly broken hand, beat up shoulder, and bad back. It was looking sooooo good. Charles went to Nastar Nationals because he pretty much doesn’t back down from a single opportunity. If you ask him what “opportunity cost” is he probably has no idea because he fits absolutely everything into his schedule. When he got a call to attend Nastar Nationals, win a fully paid berth to Chile with the ski team, and get some great notoriety he jumped at the chance and flew out to Colorado. There wasn’t a single GS race in the US and Canada – they were all cancelled due to weather – and his mostly broken hand couldn’t handle cross blocking so Canadian Nationals Slalom was out. He looked at it as a way to get ready for U.S. Nationals a few days later at the same resort, Winter Park. It was a good plan.

He sent me this picture of his bib a couple days ago showing just how many participants there are in Nastar Nationals. It’s a huge event. I’d say he didn’t quite nail the bib draw haha.

The first day, he had the fastest time qualifying with a 0.01 handicap, which means he’s basically the fasted dude in American on GS skis. As you look at those results a little closer, an old superstar AJ Kitt is the pace setter and based on his time a zero handicap is 4 tenths behind Charles. So day 1, Charles was looking good. Ted Ligety and a few others were there to keep everyone on their toes. It’s is really cool that Ted attended the event because for many it’s the first time they get to see the fastest GS skier in the world. One of ski racing’s biggest challenges is that very few people understand how impressively fast the athletes are skiing. The general public can’t see where they stack up against the best. It’s not like golf. Golf is such a great sport because you see progress very easily and on every single course you know what a scratch golfer will shoot. If you shoot in the 90s where par is around 72 and the best pros would shoot in the low 60s or high 50s on relatively easy courses you can appreciate and understand how impressive the best golfers are. The general public can’t show up at Solden and compete. Nor can they even see how icy and steep it is on the couch from home.

This is exactly what Nastar is doing. They are have done a great job at creating a handicap system that explains where the general public stacks up against the best skiers in the U.S. and I applaud them for that. I remember racing Nastar in my early years and have always been impressed with what they are doing. It’s just too bad that the weather was so soft.

And as you can see there are a ton of people there.

The race started at 10:30 AM that’s when Ted looked like this:

Ted the fastest GS skier in the world is hoping for his downhill ski to hook up in the soft snow.

After Charles won the first day, he start last the next day based on the seeding… not good in extremely soft snow. By the time Charles pushed out of the gate, it was around 1:30 PM after tons of snowboarders, telemark skiers, and racers competed all on one course. Charles was hammering the course and half way down coming into a left footer Charles explains in mid air in between turns, “I saw the big hole and tried to avoid it. My inside ski landed first, but directly in the hole. It twisted, I felt things shift…” In that situation, you just have to make the best decision you can, brace for impact, and hope for the best. His right ski smashed into the hole and basically stopped as the rest of his body to continued. He skied out of the course, not falling, knowing things were very wrong with his right leg. Unfortunately, the intense impact of the hole in the course tore his ACL, meniscus, and fractured his tibia. Not awesome. Charles gives a more detailed description on his blog.

This is a similar situation as Benni Raich and Resi Stiegler blowing out their knees in the Team Event at World Champs and World Cup Finals, respectively. You never know when you’re going to get hurt. It can happen in training, racing, or even walking across an icy street. You can’t blame anyone for what happened; it just sucks and is inherent in this sport. After the injury on Sunday, Charles immediately drove to Vail, Colorado. He had an MRI done Monday morning and went into surgery Monday night. They repaired the meniscus and now he’s on crutches for 6 weeks with only 90 degrees of mobility in his right knee until his next surgery in 8 weeks on his ACL. It’s too bad they weren’t able to do both surgeries at once. As Charles explains, “The second surgery is really bumming me out.”

Heal well.

What a great place to park, Charles.

warnernickerson — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 03:37:50 +0000

South Boston, MA – When I flew into Boston this morning, I knew Charles had left my father’s truck at the intersection of E Street and First a couple days ago after using it for nearly a month. E Street is my favorite place to leave a car because it’s free and there aren’t any street cleaning closures, ever. It’s perfect to dump it there for weeks and even months on end. I took the Silver Line since I didn’t have any skis and walked nearly a mile with my two roller bags getting more and more nervous each step as there was construction at the intersection of E and 1st.

When I could finally see the truck was still there; I was overjoyed. I just hated the idea of walking any further with my roller bags as I was overly pumped about only spending 2 dollars to make it all the way there.

And yes, this is what the sign said in front of it. Charles, you’ll be happy to know that I was nervous for the first time after letting you borrow it. I’m just happy it wasn’t towed. I wonder if that was there when you parked it haha!

Living the Dream: Heli Skiing and Flying Private

warnernickerson — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 18:28:45 +0000

Whistler, British Columbia, Canada – In 2010, Dane Spencer and I raced almost the entire Europa Cup Circuit under the name Dreamin the Life (DTL). We certainly weren’t living the dream; we were taking extra food at breakfast and traveled with a food box filled with coffees, olive oil, pepper, cheese, cookies, crackers, and anything else we either won or found on the road to save money. But last week, I definitely was on the other side: living the dream. I flew up to Whistler for the Director’s Cup (DISC), which is a super fun event with a lot of business men and women that come together for great food, great times, and some ski racing pro style. Upon arrival it was dumping so we skied Whistler for a day in blizzard conditions, then went heli skiing for two days, before the DISC commenced with time trials and some racing on a flat, straight, 20 second very open paneled slalom course. The whole thing was epic. For me it was great to get on snow in a very easy, simple racing environment and be able to get some confidence racing again. My back ached a bit, but I think it was really good for it. Here are some shots from day one of Heli skiing (my first time, btw):

It was 8:00 AM and time to get dialed in!!

We had a sick group. Manny, Tim, Chris, and I were just having way too much fun.

Perfect.

Santa Claus even showed up for lunch after sending it off a little jump and packing it in.

What a crew. Thanks Julie for the sick shots!

Kelly, Chris, Andrew, Annabelle, Julie, me, Manny, and Tim had a perfect blue bird day. Thanks for making it all happen Tim.

After we got back, Tim asked Manny and I if we wanted to go again since some of the group was fired up for more heli action. Tim, a director of DISC, had a bunch of stuff to do so he couldn’t make it. We both said, “No, thanks. That’s OK. We have a bunch of stuff to do tomorrow as well.” Then we looked at each other and thought, “what the f%$# are we thinking. Heck yeah I wanna go again!” We just had the best day ever rolling in a B3 A-Star with two groups of 4 and lapped for 13 runs skiing some where around 26,000 feet of vertical. It was the best day of skiing in my entire life so I certainly wanted to go do that again. Day 2 wasn’t blue bird, but it was still the second best day of skiing I’ve ever experienced! There is nothing quite like Heli skiing – that’s all I can say. Here are some shots of day 2 thanks to super camera women Kelly VanderBeek:

Steep and Deep!

Nick ripping on his new hip

Manny Osborne-Paradis loving the pow!! He also has a back injury that is sidelining him. We had a great group of injured skiers haha.

There’s no doubt Annabelle is loving the powder!!

Christian catching some unexpected air off a small tree.

Andrew’s true passion is powder skiing. Every time I saw him all week he had just come off the mountain. On his 50th birthday, in that 24 hours, he had 101 heli drop offs in Alaska.

Kelly VanderBeek ripping some fresh pow!!

Kelly explained how the only way she could ski right now – coming back from a knee injury – is on untracked perfect powder. Everything else irritates her knee. Skiing on that snow was magical.

Our ride home.

The crew.

Some serious Glory!!! Thanks so much to everyone that made the week just soo sick!! Since this post was so long I’m going to do another one later about flying private.

Cheers. w