Action and intention
Our skiing actions are expressed through visible motor behaviors in relation to our surroundings (the environment) but there is also a subjective behavior (our intention) that precedes our actions. Each action’s performance has intentionality, but it is not enough if isolated since it is the action itself that produces an effect.
Our actions should be understood as the pretension to interact with snow and terrain through our skis performing movements with clear goals, and this is why our skiing actions are not just clustering movements; they are also intentions.
Skiing actions are not merely something corporeal, not simple motricity or just body motion in space; they are our aspirations. In skiing, actions are associated with the intended effects, which not always correspond to our intention. Our mind should generate the pretension to perform an action, being aware of this intention, and is in that resolution we must keep in mind the necessary movements to execute the pretended action.
Movements’ goal is to execute a specific action. Motor intentions lead us not only in the actions’ projected direction (where to direct it); they also take us to be conscious of those actions results. But the intention of achieving a particular result sometimes leads us to perform unnecessary movements and not the generators of efficient actions. This is because we concentrate only on the final goal instead of focusing on the initial action.
Perceived actions
Our behaviors on snow are determined by our perceptual system based on environmental properties and each specific situation. Appropriate environmental perception allows us performing proactive actions instead of reactions. In proactive skiing, actions should be always preceded by goal-directed perceptive mechanisms.
In the Perceived actions concept, action and perception are dependent processes. It exists a bi-directional functioning between perception and action in which the execution of an action modifies its perception transforming, at the same time, the way to perform the next action optimizing it, leading to the correction and precision of the technical gesture execution.
The occurring actions during motion generate sensory perceptions (touch, vision, hearing, and proprioception) that the expert skier knows how to interpret them. Instead, the beginner relies more on muscle information while performing his actions.
Sensorimotor and ideomotor action
The sensorimotor action, which is also called real or physical action, is applied from the very first performing moments. We interact with the surroundings through perceptions and our motor actions are executed as responses to external stimuli. We consider people as inborn performers while executing actions based not only on perception but also on imitation as for example, in our case; observing pole use in other skiers may intuitively promote the execution of that action.
The ideomotor action, also known as imagined or thought action, is based on intentions that are the starting point of our actions’ execution. We learn the effects of our own skiing actions, such as pole use, and repeat it several times. Thinking about that action in particular triggers in our brain the image of that same action. According to this approach, the action refers to movements performed with a particular purpose to produce a certain effect, proposing that actions are previously imagined on the basis of its consequences: we create mental images of the pretended action before executing it.
Action and reaction
Every action is, in a certain way, a reaction to the environment. Our skiing performance should not be reactivebut proactive. It exists a proper execution time and when it is lost, we will react as a consequence of lack of anticipation and prediction. Skiing should not be a continuous reaction to each presented situation, but a constant performance with fluidity and harmony.
While the beginner uses a reactive control of the situation, the expert skier does it through a proactive one. In the reactive control we base on our emotions to defend from the situation. Instead, in the proactive, we perform fast motor actions in response to the encountered stimuli. This capacity of operating favorably is closely linked to the execution speed, to the intellectual and to the adaptation or change capabilities we possess. We undertake the situation using all our senses and we can say that the beginner reacts by instinct while the expert skier acts by intuition.
