INTERVIEW

Onitsuka: I think my environment shaped the desire to become a pro. The slopes I visited in Fukuoka Prefecture had rails. That might have been rare back then. Everyone was doing it, so I wanted to give it a try, too. In time, with support from my sponsor, I entered the primary tournament. Then I advanced to the international tournament, called the Pro Series. I was the first Japanese female to make it that far.

Kimura: The slopes I went to in Tottori also had jump ramps and rails. I started to think about becoming a competitive snowboarder around the first year of middle school. In elementary school, I participated in apparatus gymnastics and attended trial lessons for the competitive training course at a company team. I practiced from late afternoon through evening six days a week. It was kind of a drag. [laughs] I enjoyed snowboarding more. Then I saw on TV that snowboarding had been accepted as a competitive event for a global athletic tournament. It fascinated me and I wanted to give that a try.

Onitsuka: I think I drifted toward those events just because of my environment at the time. Even now, most ski areas have slopes and ramps, so those are the two easiest events to have access to. Not many ski areas have halfpipes or courses for alpine or cross.

Kimura: I’ve loved jumping around since my years as a gymnast. The ski area I went to didn’t have a halfpipe, so I’d jump off the ramp. I think my experience with gymnastics gave me the skills you need to adjust in midair, which helps in making decent landings from a jump even if you slip up on takeoff.

Onitsuka: I love how Kira can make a daring landing in competitions even if he can’t do it in open practice just before. Kira could do it even when we were just playing around using the rails to move in unorthodox ways on the final day of the tournament. I'm impressed by his control when his body is airborne.

Kimura: I think I just move my body in the air to match the landing I picture in my head. But I’d really like to jump as high as the snowboarders from other countries. My heights are pretty good for Japan, and I want to jump higher than everybody else in the big air events.

Onitsuka: I do strength training twice a week. Until recently, I thought strength training would make me less mobile and too heavy. But, sometimes, if you weigh too little, you can’t spin adequately after jumping. I’ve gained eight kilos since 2023, and I’m in good shape. My ride feels stable, and my landings are stable. I'm thinking about adding another two kilos.

Time off is important, too. I work on my technique over and over again on a dry slope, which wears me out about as much as strength training. Until the world tournament in 2022, I trained seven days a week. Now I make sure to take one day a week off, no matter how anxious I am to work on my technique.

Kimura: I’m a university student and can’t snowboard on the weekdays, so I focus on training during the off-season. But it feels like building too much muscle makes it harder to make the moves I want to make. I think building too much muscle had something to do with my lower back pain. So, for these reasons, I keep my strength training fairly minimal, once every one or two weeks. I do aerobic work fairly consistently. Since I don’t have much stamina compared to other snowboarders, I run or bike in the mornings.

Onitsuka: I think all the time about how fast I can recover, and visualize this as something like the strength bar in a one-on-one combat video game. I think recovery is important because it determines what kind of training I can do the next day. It's also important to sleep well, to go to bed at the same time every night. I use care goods, and I stretch before going to bed. I’m also pretty fussy about my bed and pillows.

Kimura: I want to snowboard in my best condition, so I follow a relaxation routine before going to sleep. I take a compact roller with me on road trips so I can stretch on my own. Right now, I only have time to stretch for about 30-60 minutes before going to bed. I try to make it a habit so I can get a better grip on my physical condition. Before, I didn’t pay enough attention to stretching and warmups. But since my surgery for a dislocated shoulder, I’ve been paying more attention to my conditioning.

Onitsuka: You have to draw on your entire body when you’re working on technique. So your muscles tend to get tense. If they’re so tense that sleep doesn’t do much and warming up is no longer enough to relax, I prepare for training using a combination therapy device and a high-voltage electrotherapy device, which loosen up the muscles around the shoulder blades and the neck. I use microcurrent therapy to treat bruises. You don't feel anything, so you can do it while doing something else. I’ll use it while using my smartphone or while my trainer is working on another area of my body. Being able to do two things at once helps the recovery go faster. Sometimes I forget I'm even using it until it beeps to tell me it's finished. [laughs]

Sometimes, I use an ultrasound therapy device to warm up my muscles. It's much more effective in stretching my muscles after warming up. It feels like the stretching goes deep into the muscles. I also use it to improve blood circulation in my legs. I use it on my arms, too, because they can start to ache after carrying a snowboard for a long time.