USA Ski Jumping Coaches on Building Confident, Resilient Athletes

PARK CITY, Utah — USA Ski Jumping recently hosted a virtual Q&A with Men’s National Team Head Coach Tore Sneli, Women’s National Team Head Coach Trevor Edlund, and New York Ski Education Foundation Coach Colin Delaney. The discussion explored how coaches help athletes manage pressure, simplify technical feedback, recover from frustration, and progress safely from first jumps to international competition. 

In ski jumping, an athlete at the top of the inrun has only seconds to apply years of physical preparation, technical training, and mental discipline. Performance can be decided by millimeters, but the greatest challenge is often mental: staying clear, calm, and committed when the pressure is highest.  

The discussion followed a successful stretch on the international circuit, including New York Ski Education Foundation athlete Henry Loher’s international victory at an FIS Cup event in Einsiedeln, Switzerland. In the abridged discussion that follows, USA Ski Jumping and club coaches share how they support athletes through technical development, competition pressure, frustration, facility limitations, and progression to larger hills. 

PART I: TURNING DOWN THE NOISE 

“When you’re analyzing constantly, you see every little flaw. Sometimes the best coaching is knowing when to step back.” – Tore Sneli  

Q: Henry Loher recently earned a major win in Einsiedeln. When an athlete is approaching a breakthrough, how do you coach without over-coaching?  

TREVOR EDLUND: Henry had been jumping really well overall, but he arrived in Switzerland carrying a lot of internal pressure. He went into the event with the specific goal of securing top-30 FIS Cup points so he could step up to the Continental Cup circuit, and that qualification threshold created a lot of stress for him.  

To pull him out of his head, we sat down before the competition, pulled up video of one of his best previous jumps, and used it to isolate just three core mechanics for the entire jump. Then we let Henry pick two or three simple cues for each section:  

1. Coordinate into position (establishing posture on the inrun)
2. Patient through the curve (holding stable through the transition)  
3. Push vertical (driving directly off the takeoff) 

We did not spend the weekend talking about dozens of micro-adjustments. By Sunday, he checked those three exact boxes twice in a row during competition and took top spot on the podium.  

Q: Do coaches have a tendency to over-analyze when the pressure is on? 

TORE SNELI: Absolutely. We are all guilty of it at times. When you’re constantly analyzing and looking at video, you see every tiny flaw. But athletes—especially younger ones—will nod and say, “Yeah, I understand,” when, realistically, they are completely overwhelmed by the length of the list.  

That is why training and competition require different approaches. In training, you unpack the puzzle and test adjustments. On competition days, your job as a coach is to strip all of that away, reduce it to the absolute basic fundamentals, and give the athlete one simple, clear idea they can take up the tower.  

PART II: BREAKING THROUGH FRUSTRATION 

Q: What happens when an athlete starts to spiral, becomes overwhelmed, or gets stuck in a rut? 

TREVOR EDLUND: You often see it during video review. An athlete makes a bad jump, watches the replay, gets emotional, and just keeps repeating, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”  

As a coach, your instinct is to step in and try to answer it for them or guess what’s wrong. This usually just adds to the noise. When that happens, I stop and flip the conversation: “Okay, what DO you know?” 

It takes them a second because they’re usually battling anger or disappointment. But asking them to identify even one thing they executed well can break through the emotional barrier. It can stop the spiral, give you a new baseline, and let you start rebuilding the jump step-by-step.  

Q: You just mentioned athletes responding differently to coaching cues. How do you maintain a common technical standard when every athlete has a different learning style and personality? 

TORE SNELI: It starts with building a solid technical foundation off the hill. In the gym, we use video-recorded static jumps and countermovement jumps to help athletes understand what proper positioning and force feel like.  

When an athlete struggles on the hill, we don’t guess or invent new cues. Instead, we go straight back to those gym recordings from when they were jumping well. We compare their current hill position to their baseline gym physics and ask, “What changed in your push or posture?” It takes the guesswork out of coaching and gives them an objective anchor.  

PART III: DEVELOPMENT, FACILITY GAPS, AND EXPECTATION MANAGEMENT  

Q: Moving from small development hills to medium or large hills can be a big step for a developing athlete. What indicates that a junior athlete is ready for that transition?  

TORE SNELI: Safety, control, and balance are non-negotiable. An athlete must consistently demonstrate they can manage their skis and land safely on their current hill before stepping up. Moving up in hill size can be intimidating for both the athlete and the coach, so you need to know the athlete’s readiness and limits.  

COLIN DELANEY: Coaches also have to adapt when facilities create development gaps. In Lake Placid, the 48-meter hill is undergoing repairs, leaving us with a gap between our 10/20-meter hills and the larger hills. To help bridge that gap, we have kids ski down the landing hills of the larger jumps just to get comfortable with the higher speeds and visual scale.  

When athletes are ready to step up—such as beginning at lower speeds on the redesigned 90-meter hill—we communicate to the athlete and parents that jumping a bigger hill once doesn’t make it their new baseline. It’s simply a confidence-building taste of speed that should make returning to smaller hills feel easier.  

Q: How can programs manage parental involvement and expectations in youth ski jumping

COLIN DELANEY: For the youngest kids, especially in the U8/U10 age groups, parents help with equipment can be really helpful, especially when some of them struggle with modern bindings. But parents carrying skis for their children or hovering at the top of the tower can create unnecessary pressure and do not always support the group. Our approach is to establish clear boundaries at the start of the season, including drop-off times, warm-up, and pick-up times. If parents want to stick around during practice, we give them meaningfultasks that support the entire program, whether that’s helping manage club equipment or handling venue logistics. Turning their energy into positive contributions to the whole team changes the dynamic entirely.  

PART IV: CULTURE & STAYING CURIOUS 

Q: How do you prevent young athletes from burning out or getting overly focused on results too early? 

TORE SNELI: Open communication and managing expectations are essential. Henry Loher recently came to Norway to train with us before heading to Einsiedeln. On his first day, I could tell he was carrying stress and high expectations.  

I took him aside and told him that the focus was not on immediate results. The goal was to gain experience, learn, and have fun. You could see the relief. By the next day, the pressure was gone and he was crushing his jumps. Reminding athletes why they fell in love with the sport keeps them performing at a high level.  

Q: If you could distill your coaching philosophy down to one takeaway, what would it be? 

TREVOR EDLUND: Stay curious. When athletes transition to the national team, the sudden pressure to perform in a new environment can feel overwhelming. But if you throw away the fear of failure and remain open and curious, everything opens up. None of us in this sport know everything—ski jumping evolves rapidly from week to week. The coaches and athletes who stay curious and open-minded are the ones who keep progressing.    

ABOUT USA SKI JUMPING 

USA Ski Jumping (USASJ) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the growth, development, and long-term success of ski jumping in the United States. Founded in 2007 by alumni and former athletes, USASJ develops grassroots programs, supports coaches and clubs, and operates elite international team programs for American ski jumpers.