GNAR COUNTRY EXPERIMENT

Gnar Country is the story of an unusual study in peak-performance aging—with only one participant. In order to figure out if these ideas work for everyone, the Flow Research Collective ran a larger study in the winter of 2022. We used principles from this book to teach seventeen adults, ages thirty to sixty-eight, how to park ski and snowboard. None of our subjects had significant park riding experience. Many were complete novices.

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Our goal was not to teach our subjects how to throw tricks—though that was one major outcome. It was to teach them how to creatively interpret terrain features as a safe and sure path into flow and, by extension, performance improvement. We broke park riding into eight foundational movements: crouching, jumping, switch riding, slashing, grinding, 180, 360, and a shifty. We spent four days on the mountain, with subjects learning two new movements per day.

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To see if it worked, we videotaped training sessions and assessed the results with the same criteria used to judge professional freestyle competitions. We also conducted lengthy pre-enrollment and post-study assessments and interviews, and had the subjects take two flow and learning assessments a day, for each day of the study.

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The results—to be blunt—were freaky. We taught a bunch of old dogs a bunch of new tricks. All our subjects made real progress within the so-called PAVED criteria: progression, amplitude, variety, execution and difficulty. We also saw a sizable uptick in flow, which amplified performance, and produced a significant positive shift in attitudes toward later-in-life learning. Afterward, all our participants had reevaluated what they wanted to do with the second half of their lives.

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Don’t just take my word for it, check out the video and see for yourself!

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If you’re interested in learning more about the science behind the Gnar Country experiment, and our actual results, check out our white paper here: