Skiing behavior is understood as the interaction between us and the environment and its purpose is to maintain the equilibrium between both. As the environment presents permanent changes that put pressure on us and in turn we try to adapt to the environment, disruptions occur designated as ‘balance of rupture’, that is, they generate the need or reason for action or impulse that will lead to a determined behavior.
These actions, that are performed to cover a need, reflect the energetic aspect of our behavior and this function allows the pertinent actions, which not only depend on our needs or motives but also require the ordering of the information we perceive from the environment, in other words, our cognitive functions allows adaptive responses.
Likewise, our different relationships with the environment determine that the meaning of our behavior resides in the context in which it is manifested and with the correspondence of behaviors against past situations. This refers to our actions in relation to the environment in which we develop, integrating our own needs with the possibilities offered by the environment in a constant search for balance between both aspects.
It can be assumed that when skiing we acquire a ‘conditioned’ behavior due to the conditions of the environment. A beginner skier exhibits behavior conditioned by the environment, but also innate behaviors of reaction to it. In turn, an expert is also conditioned by the environment but no longer relies on innate behaviors due to the accumulation of experiences.
Each one of us, when adapting to the context we are involved in, generally do not act in the same way but do so in response to our own motives. We are tied to our affective life, that is, to pleasurable feelings that we seek through our behavior and that are our ultimate goal: to seek pleasure in what we do because all behavior is oriented to obtain pleasure and avoid suffering.
Skiing behavior can also be considered as a form of adaptation: we adapt to the environment through active responses that satisfy our needs. As this process is continuous, each behavior is a readjustment, that is to say, a learning process, then we could call it as the process by which we gradually modify and organize our actions according to our experiences with the environment.
Faced with new situations, we tend to use previous known procedures to solve them. But to lay the foundations to generate an efficient skiing learning process, we need to attempt new and more efficient actions, which are then integrated to form new ways of behaving. Although our behavior can become a mechanical action in each new situation in which it does not allow the dissolution of primitive patterns, through learning it we can incorporate the creation of new and better forms of behavior.
Our needs appear in our interaction with the environment in the form of ‘impulses‘: to each need corresponds an impulse. An impulse is an emotional charge that promotes a specific behavior to satisfy an immediate need.
The impulse to act is the trigger of the necessary energy for the act. Skiing is based on the impulse to activity, to self-movement, and to gliding. This impulse to activity sought by the recreational skier contains a functional value on which he develops his capacity for movement. On the other hand, in the athlete there is a tendency to satisfy performance giving it a value through effort.
Surroundings, situation, and stimulus
The study of skiing behavior is carried out taking into account the relationship of the factors in the situational context in which we find ourselves at a given moment. It is convenient to clarify the different meanings between surroundings, understood as a generalized framework in which the behavior develops; situation, interpreted as a transitory and changing frame; and stimuli as components of the situation.
The surroundings are everything that surrounds us and constitutes our ‘vital space’, containing all the facts (physical and psychological) that promote and condition our skiing behavior. All behavior is interpreted in relation to the environment in which it occurs, so it is also necessary to keep in mind the situation in which it is externalized in order to understand it. This covers a certain period of time and includes the set of facts, relationships, and concrete internal and external conditions of the activity with which we are confronted and which form our experience, testing our qualities and interpreting situations by assigning them a meaning that will have an impact on our evolution.
The prediction (anticipation) of a situation is also considered as a behavior, having consequences on the development of our future behaviors. Since situations are not identical even if they are perceived as such, they vary according to the level of our own evolution. We are not always the same skier, nor are the environmental conditions always the same: each situation is unique because it is not repeated completely in the same way.
Behavior and emotions
When skiing, we face new situations in environments for which we are not prepared, so we base our behavior influenced by affective aspects, especially our emotions. As we have seen, fear directs us preventing realistic evaluations and governs many of our behaviors, being a way of judging reality and reacting to threats.
An effective response comes from the perception that appropriate individual behavior can prevent a threat from becoming paralyzing. ‘Threat’ is a circumstance considered dangerous of which we may or may not be aware. Fear, which is an emotional arousal caused by the personal perception of a threat, can significantly influence our behavior. If channeled appropriately it motivates us to act proactively, but it can paralyze us or cause us to deny that we are at risk.
Anxiety, which like fear provokes a disordered behavior, functions as an alarm signal that after a certain period of time tends to restore the psycho-affective balance, but if disorganization persists it would reach a limiting level. It should be clarified that the optimization of behavior is not obtained with the total absence of anxiety or fear but with a convenient level.
When skiing, certain situations are unpleasant and generate negative emotions like fear and anxiety. These contexts have a common core that causes the origin of discomfort: we experience a lack of control over skiing and, at some point, the need to restore it will arise. According to psychologist W. A. Kelly, the maintenance of control constitutes a primary motivational stimulation of human behavior. This ‘need for control’ arises when we are faced with situations that generate uncertainty, insecurity, and hesitation in which we are prevented from performing with control.
The exercise of behavioral control
Skiing behavior is not created and executed without an end. We strive to exert control over events through our behaviors with the goal of obtaining appreciable results and preventing undesirable ones. A question to be debated is whether we exercise control over situations because we are driven to do so by an innate drive to control, or because we are motivated by anticipated advantages.
The innate drive may become an intrinsic need, a primary motivational inclination that pushes us toward a desire for competence. Often, personal control of our own competence is relinquished because at the moment it is the easiest thing to do. The conditions under which this happens may be:
- In certain cases, the effort that would be necessary to manage an activity with ease seems to exceed the possible advantages that could be derived from it.
- Contexts in which faulty performances have been made in the past may trigger a sense of incompetence that impairs subsequent performance in the same environments. For example, an athlete fails to perform well on a discipline that he has learned to consider difficult because it has been the scene of poor performances in the past, and the same could be true for a skier with a given slope.
- In unfamiliar situations, paying attention to irrelevant elements rather than what is familiar influences our skills and can hinder effective performance of our abilities, leading us to give up on our ambitions.
Conclusions
- Skiing behavior is considered a totality in which there is a unique process insofar as it is partly conscious and partly unconscious.
- Although we convince ourselves of the rationality of our actions in order to feel safe, we are not the owners of all our actions since certain aspects of our behavior are of unconscious origin.
- If it is recognized as the combination of the totality of actions directed towards an end, the behavior makes sense when it is related to concrete situations of skiing in which it is externalized in a given context.
