“So I was going down this line off the double black totally shredding the gnar when suddenly I found myself behind this F-ing jerry who was pizza-ing down the hill. So I had to bail and ate a mouthful of snow ”

Did you catch that? No? Then you might be the jerry who’s just starting out on the slopes.

Unless you grew up in a state where you had access to snowy mountains, you’ve probably never encountered skiers, snowboarders, and other winter sports enthusiasts in their natural habitat. As a beginner skier, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the terms and vocab that you may hear on the slope—not just for aesthetic purposes, but for your own safety.

To help you get your bearings when it comes to the language of the mountain, we tapped John Collinson, one of the most renowned big-mountain skiers in North America and a Red Bull and The North Face athlete (@johncollinson). Here’s a list of terms that you’ll want to know:

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Skiing Terms

Après-Ski: This is a French term that means, “after skiing.” It refers to socializing and throwing back a few drinks post-skiing.

Bail: A purposeful fall to avoid a jump or rail.

Bomber: A skier who is “bombing” down the mountain at a reckless speed.

Brain Bucket: Another word for helmet.

Butter: When a skier rocks onto the tips or tail of the skis and pivots 180 degrees.

Carving: Making clean turns with the edges of your skis. This usually leaves “S”-shaped marks in the snow.

Chairlift: A series of chairs hung from a moving cable that carries passengers up and down the mountain. Each mountain typically has a handful of chairlifts that take you to different parts.

Chatter: The vibrations of your skis that happen during high speeds. The more chatter, the less contact with the snow your skis have.

Crust: A frozen layer of ice that is covering powder or buried under snow.

Dump: When a mountain gets “dumped” on with a lot of snow.

Faceshot: When you kick up so much snow that it briefly obscures your vision. This normally means you’re skiing in ideal conditions with lots of powder.

French Fry: Pointing your skis straight to gain speed, another popular term among new skiers.

Gaper: A clueless skier identified by wearing the wrong gear. The term gaper comes from the gap between a skier’s helmet and their goggles.

Gnarly: A word used to describe anything extreme—a trick, trail, or the conditions in general.

Jerry: Another name for an inexperienced skier.

Liftie: A ski lift operator.

Park Rat: A skier who spends the entire day in the terrain park, which has jumps and rails to perform tricks on.

Pizza: To turn your skis inward to make a triangle (like a slice of pizza), which is how new skiers are taught to slow down.

Pow: Short for powder, or lots of snow.

Ripper: An accomplished and experienced skier.

Sendy: A trail that is particularly steep or dangerous and will potentially allow for a big jump.

Shred the gnar: To tear it up, or ski a difficult part of the mountain.

Ski Tow: A device for pulling skiers uphill, usually a moor-driven rope that skiers cling to while gliding on their skis.

Steeze: A combination of “style” and “ease,” which is used to describe an effortless and elegant run.

Shredder: Like the ripper, this is an accomplished ski bum.

Wipeout: A gnarly fall.

Trail Terms

All slopes are marked with a different shape and color to rank their difficulty. Here’s what you need to know.

Line: A route down the mountain, like “Let’s take that line under the lift.”

Green circle: Easy. This is the simplest trail on the mountain. They are groomed, wide, and have a grade of only 6 to 25 percent.

Blue square: Moderate. These well-groomed slopes are slightly steeper than greens (with a gradient of 25 to 40 percent), but also the busiest as they’re popular among beginner to moderate skiers.

Black diamond: Hard. Typically found at the top of the mountain, these trails are steep at a grade of at least 40% and are susceptible to rough conditions (think ice spots, rocks, and narrow lines). You’d be smart to avoid these on your first (and second and third) ski trip. Once you gain some skill, though, they’re a fun challenge that’ll test your athleticism, reflexes, and conditioning.

Double black diamond: Expert. Take a wrong turn down one of these and you’ll find yourself butt-sliding the entire way down while you continuously swear that you’ll never ski again.

Triple black diamond: Extreme. Just leave these to the pros.

Terrain Terms

A list of the four most common styles of terrain you’ll come across on the resort (and sometimes out of the resort).

Moguls: Moguls are bumps that are formed from people skiing the same line, leading to a build-up of snow that is not skied over. You’re supposed to ski around them, in the grooves. “For these, you want to have quick hips and knees and think of your legs as shock absorbers as you keep your upper body still,” says Collinson. Many trails are split, with one side being groomed and the other having moguls. This allows beginners to try their hand at skiing bumps with the option to bail if needed.

Backcountry: This is a pretty broad range of terrain. It’s used to describe anything outside of a ski resort boundary. That can be anything from huge peaks to the slopes just behind the resort. Backcountry skiing is pretty fun because you’re on your own, so there’s more decision making on your part and there’s a lot of fresh, untracked snow. We suggest steering clear of backcountry skiing if you’re new, as there’s a higher chance of getting lost, injured, and, in some cases, caught in an avalanche.

Terrain Park: This consists of man-made features like rails and jumps—it’s like a skate park on the mountain. Typically, younger skiers and boarders hang out here. It can be fun for beginners, but you just want to be cautious.

Tree Skiing: This is exactly what it sounds like; you’re skiing between trees and in the forest. It’s fun because the trees make you feel like you’re going faster than you are. You want to have good upper and lower body separation for this—your feet should be moving apart from your upper body so you can better swivel around trees. Just look alive and you should be fine.

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper once likened getting gray hairs at a young age to premature ejaculation: “You know it can happen prematurely, but when it actually does, it’s a total shock.” 

Cooper has proudly rocked his salt-and-pepper locks since he was about 20. But let’s face it, that look’s not for everyone. Since the beginning of time, men and women alike have sought to avoid going gray. And for hundreds of years, people have pointed to stress as the cause of gray hairs. But that’s always been thought as an urban legend, with no proof to back it up—until now. 

A study conducted at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and published in the journal Nature has proven that stress in animals, mice specifically, is linked to graying hair. 

“Everyone has an anecdote to share about how stress affects their body, particularly in their skin and hair—the only tissues we can see from the outside,” Ya-Chieh Hsu, the Alvin and Esta Star Associate Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard, said in a release. “We wanted to understand if this connection is true, and if so, how stress leads to changes in diverse tissues.”

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Stress affects everything from your workouts to your sex life and how you sleep—so the scientists had to figure out exactly how it grays our hair. To do so, they systematically eliminated different body systems that could connect stress to hair color. They eventually landed on the sympathetic nerve system, aka the body’s flight-or-fight response. Sympathetic nerves, the researchers wrote, branch out into each hair follicle. 

Stress causes those nerves to release norephinephrine, a chemical that gets taken up by pigment-regenerating stem cells that color our hair. 

When we’re stressed, our pigment-coloring cells get activated excessively, thus depleting our supply. In English, the more stressed we are, the less cells we have to color our hair. And once they’re gone, they’re gone. 

“Acute stress, particularly the fight-or-flight response, has been traditionally viewed to be beneficial for an animal’s survival. But in this case, acute stress causes permanent depletion of stem cells,” Bing Zhang, the lead author of the study, said in a release.

So if you’re not a fan of looking like a silver fox, chill out. Your hair will thank you.

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Mike Weleski’s body couldn’t keep up with his busy life when he decided to make some big changes in 2019. With his career as a municipal police officer, his family, and a budding woodworking business, his stress levels were at an all-time high—and so was his weight. He tried crash diets and exercise in the past, losing 20 or 30 pounds at a time, but he knew that he needed to come up with a serious regimen to truly transform his lifestyle. 

Finally, Weleski evaluated his habits and made a plan. He was always strong and athletic despite his size and weight, but it was his approach to dieting that held him back for so long. Like many who diet to hit a goal weight, he would celebrate once he achieved it, typically by overindulging and taking breaks from the gym. But at the beginning of 2019, he set a lofty goal: lose 70 pounds by August. It wasn’t a New Year’s resolution, but a decision he made with his long-term health in mind.

Weleski crushed his goals and then some. In less than six months, he lost 75 pounds. What’s more, he lost a total of 100 pounds by mid-December 2019. He credits consistency and changing his views on diet with the remarkable transformation he made.

“From the very start, I knew I had to fundamentally alter how I thought about and approached food,” Weleski wrote in a letter to Performance Inspired Nutrition, the supplement company he leaned on throughout his journey. “I needed to eat to live, not live to eat. I decided to steer clear of what I saw as fad diets and over-restrictive methods that would require me to exclude certain food groups.” Instead, he focused on being in a constant calorie deficit. 

Another major change that helped Weleski along the way was tracking his nutrition, which led to a better understanding of macronutrients. 

“I encourage anyone seeking to make a change in their fitness to put a calorie tracker on their phone and honestly evaluate what you’re eating,” he wrote. “It definitely changed how I looked at food. No longer do I look at foods as either good or bad, but I realize that some foods are less nutritious than others.”

After the first few months, going to the gym before work became a habit for Weleski thanks to his police department’s gym. He admits it was a challenge to hit the gym before every shift at first, but he was determined to make it happen. And it didn’t hurt that his department was also on board with Performance Inspired’s Police FIT Program, which involved voluntary fitness testing for officers. Positive results on the test encouraged Weleski to stay on track.

“I was blessed that my police department had partnered with Performance Inspired when they created our voluntary Police FIT Program several years before,” Weleski wrote. “So, from the beginning, I used top-grade products from PI that supported my fitness goals.” From pre-workouts to protein shakes, creatine, and even vitamins, he relied on the natural supplement brand to fuel his busy routine. 

Now at a new phase in his journey, Weleski sees his progress as shifting gears, not crossing the finish line. That mentality keeps him grounded and prevents him from falling back into the old habit of splurging once his goals are met. He credits hard work, determination, a solid supplement stack, and consistency in the gym and the kitchen as the keys to his success. 

From the start of his final transformation, Weleski documented his progress on Instagram (@bulldog_defined). Regularly updating the account and posting progress photos kept him motivated over the course of his own transformation, and now he hopes it’ll inspire others. 

“Not only am I able to look back at where I’ve come from, but I am able to connect with others,” he wrote. “Most of all I hope to reach, encourage, and inspire people to get up, get moving, and get fit.”

There are tons of diets to choose from these days—keto, paleo, intermittent fasting, sirt food, vegan, and the list goes on and on. The problem with most is that they either don’t work, or they’re hard to maintain in the long run unless you have some sort of professional help. 

Luckily, science has determined not only which diet seems to work the best for weight loss, but also which are the easiest to continue for lifelong results. 

A study conducted at the University of Otago and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that intermittent fasting seemed to result in the most pounds shed and was fairly easy to follow. The Mediterranean diet, which also saw significant health benefits, appears to be the easiest diet to maintain. 

For the study, 250 overweight adults were asked to pick between the Mediterranean diet, paleo, or intermittent fasting as a weight loss strategy—54 percent picked IF, 27 percent Mediterranean, and 18 percent Paleo. For those who picked IF, they employed the 5:2 strategy, wherein you eat a only about 500 calories on two days of the week and your normal amount the other five. 

All attended a 30-minute class on their self-selected diet and were then asked to try to stick to the diet for a year without any professional help. 

The purpose of that was to see how effective the diets were in a “real world” situation—i.e. one where people don’t have access to a scientist, dietitian, or nutritionist. 

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Participants who picked IF lost an average of 9 pounds; Mediterranean dieters lost an average of six; and paleo an average of 4. (IF and Mediterranean diets also resulted in “significant improvements” in blood pressure, the researchers said)

While those numbers may seem low, it could be influenced by the fact that close to half the participants dropped their selected diet strategy before the 12-month study concluded. 

The Mediterranean diet saw the most retention, with 57 percent of those who chose it still following the eating strategy at the end of the study. Intermittent fasting was close behind with a 54 percent retention rate, and paleo only saw 35 percent of participants stick with it. 

So does this mean you should necessarily try out IF or Mediterranean diets? Not necessarily. Dr. Melyssa Roy, a research fellow at the University of Otago’s Department of Medicine and co-lead author of the study, said it only shows that there’s no “right” diet, and that people should follow the one that works for them—one that suits their lifestyle and gets them results. 

“Like the Mediterranean diet, intermittent fasting and paleo diets can also be valid healthy eating approaches—the best diet is the one that includes healthy foods and suits the individual,” Roy said in a release. 

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On The Biggest Loser, Steve Cook got more into functional and body-weight workouts that test active muscular endurance and your cardiovascular system. Cook is the newest trainer on USA Network’s The Biggest Loser reboot, and he’s shared one of his routines with M&F.

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Celebrity trainer Erin Oprea discusses her two tours in the Marines, and how she transitioned from war back into civilian life. She also discussed the pros and cons of group fitness, training while pregnant, and more on the full episode of the Reps podcast.

Watch the full episode on Youtube, or stream it on all major digital platforms on Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2020, at 12 PM.

Connect With Muscle & Fitness

Visit: https://www.muscleandfitness.com/
Find M&F on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2uegflV
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Subscribe to M&F Magazine: https://bit.ly/2Ffeeb

The Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Extended Universe are about to collide on Apple TV+. Several sites are reporting that former M&F cover model Dave Bautista will co-star alongside fellow muscular actor Jason Momoa on the second season of See.

See centers around the fictional Alkenny tribe, led by Momoa’s Boba Voss. Its members are blind, but they find themselves on the run with two infants who were born with their sense of sight. Bautista, aka Drax from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, will reportedly play Momoa’s brother in the series. 

It won’t be the last time the two will appear in the same project, either. Both are slated to star in Dune, a movie about nomadic tribes on an alien planet battling each other for supremacy, which is set to release later this year. That film will also feature Star Wars actor Oscar Isaac and Josh Brolin, aka Thanos from The Avengers franchise. 

Bautista has quite the busy year ahead of him. In April, he’ll be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. On top of that, he’s reprising his Drax role for the third Guardians of the Galaxy film and is set to appear in Army of the Dead and My Spy. In December 2019, he posted a tweet of himself at Warner Bros.—which owns DC Studios. Could the Marvel star be jumping ship? Only time will tell. 

The first season of See is available on Apple TV+

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