Being a Student of Progression | Snowmobiling Legend, Levi LaVallee

Levi LaVallee (0:01)

There I am, I'm able to be part of the Rebel New Year No Limits, which is this hour-long live TV show on this one feet. It was gonna be that feet was gonna be me jumping, world record snowmobile jump in San Diego. And I'm like, this is it right here. This is like what I've, all the racing, I've had X Games medals and stuff like that, but I'm like, this is it. This is all, this whole thing is like, you know, I'm on the big stage. So I go into this and my mindset at the time was like, I'll do whatever it takes.

If I die doing this, I die doing it.

Michael Gervais (0:53)

Okay, welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais by trade and training of a sport and performance psychologist, as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. And if you haven't had the chance to check out Compete to Create yet, I hope you do in the near future. And so the whole idea behind these conversations, behind this podcast, is to learn from people who have committed their life efforts towards mastery. And we want to understand how they organize their life, both their internal life and sometimes their external life, but more interested in the psychology of how they think, how they explain events to themselves, how they work with obstacles and setbacks, and how they use their mind to build mental skills to be able to build and refine their craft.

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Okay, this week's conversation is with snowmobiling legend, Levi LaVallee. He's a 13-time X Games medalist. He's a snowcross champion and a world record holder. So Levi first tasted the podium at a very young age. It was in 2014 when he won the Hill Cross Snowmobile event at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado. And then he made the switch to freestyle competition.

So then in 2008, the Winter X Games, Levi took gold both in speed and style and freestyle events and was later named the best male athlete of the entire competition. Levi is a legend and you'll hear it in the way that he uses his language and his frameworks to make sense of the world and how he uses his mind to be better at his craft than just about everyone. So he made history though when he became the first person to attempt a double backflip on a snowmobile at the 2009 Winter X Games. Think about that. I mean, those sleds are massive. They're really big. And he did a double backflip. And then after like 15 meters up in the sky, he went long. And on the landing, he was thrown from a sled on impact and it's heavy. And the attempt was so close to succeeding that many people considered it a flat out astronomical achievement. So then let's fast forward. The X Games medals weren't enough for him. So in 2011, he like really kind of took that next step. And he took the baton or the torch from Travis Pastrana, who you might recognize the name if you're in action sports, like absolute legend, Robbie Madison, flat out legend.