NBC’s Olympics coverage will feature the finals of the women’s aerials skiing tonight, and the men will finish their flying spins tomorrow night. If you haven’t tuned in yet, it’s definitely worth checking out; some of the maneuvers these freestyle skiers pull off are downright jaw dropping.

If you do tune in, though, you’ll probably see more than a few of the skiers land on their rear ends at some point. The jumps are incredible, but they’re also so technical that one seemingly insignificant motion can drop a skier on his tail. Given that the skiers can fly up to 50 feet in the air and come down on a 37-degree grade, it seems like just going out and trying a new trick would be a good way to break your neck. That’s why you’ll need one unexpected piece of equipment if you want to start training for aerials: a towel.

Instead of perfecting their flips and twists over the snow, the skiers try out their new maneuvers on ramps that launch them over huge swimming pools. The U.S. national team has facilities in Park City, UT and Lake Placid, NY that include specially designed pools to help competitors perfect their next big move. The pools have highly aerated patches of bubbles in their centers that decrease the surface tension to make the water a bit softer for the skiers’ landings.

If you’re an aspiring aerial skier, expect to get fairly wet. New skiers have to make a minimum of 200 successful jumps into water before they even get their first crack at the snow, and these jumps have to get the thumbs-up from coaches in order for the skier to move on.

This sort of meticulous preparation doesn’t end once you hit the big-time, either. American Emily Cook, who placed fifth in the qualifying round at these Olympics and will be competing tonight, told Women’s Health that when she debuted a new trick last year she first performed it around a hundred times into a pool before attempting it on snow.

Here’s a look at Olympic hopefuls putting on an aerial show in 2007 at the pool in Park City:

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