Gnar Country

The New York Times bestselling author and human performance expert tests his knowledge and theories on his own aging body in a quest to become an expert skier at age fifty-three.

Gnar: adjective, short for “gnarly,” def: any environment or situation that is high in perceived risk and high in actual risk.

Country: noun, def: any defined territory, landscape or terrain, fictitious or real.

Cutting-edge discoveries in embodied cognition, flow science, and network neuroscience have revolutionized how we think about peak performance aging. On paper, these discoveries should allow older athletes to progress in supposedly “impossible” activities like park skiing (think: jumps and tricks.) To see if theory worked in practice, Kotler conducted his own ass-on-the-line experiment in applied neuroscience and later-in-life skill acquisition: He tried to teach an old dog some new tricks.

Recently, top pros have been perform