The most common thing I hear when I tell someone what I do for a living usually borders between "you're crazy" and "you're @#! insane!".

And though I really don't agree with them, after being involved in freestyle skiing for more than 15 years and hearing it told to me over and over again, there have been some moments of doubt. I can honestly say there have been some moments before turning my skis towards one of these jumps where I have agreed with some of those statements.

For those not familiar with the sport of aerials -- a discipline of freestyle skiing -- it involves skiing into a four-metre tall jump of snow at about 68 kilometres per hour, and performing up to three flips with up to five twists and then trying to land it on a 35 degree slope.

Now, I will admit that that sounds a little crazy but I feel a need to defend my sanity a bit.

A great deal of our time is spent preparing our training site as well as our bodies to ensure everything is as safe as possible and we don't get injured. Aerials is a physical sport, but not in the same sense as other sports.

In a many sports, your performance is closely related to your strength and physical conditioning. In aerials, we train our bodies just as hard, but the focus is to help us stay in one piece after dropping from 50 feet in the air and to allow us to stay healthy after repeated impacts.

Preparation for the site involves chopping the landing hill with shovels to break up the snow and make it as soft as possible for landing. A great deal of time is also spent making the jumps exactly the right size and shape, 4.10 metres tall and about 69 degrees at the top.

Shaping the jumps is a skill all in itself that can take years to just get good at, let alone perfect. All these steps are taken to ensure that the site is in the best possible condition, and safest condition, before we begin hurling ourselves into the air.

One of the greatest factors in aerials that can have a massive impact on our jumps, and thus our safety, is the speed at which we hit the jumps. We use radar guns or speed traps to check our speed before going off the jump to make sure we are within a kilometre per hour of where we want to be.

During competitions we even have one of our coaches at the top of the in - run with us who's only concern is getting our speeds bang on for our jumps. He will watch the wind for changes that might affect us, as well as watching other athletes to see if the speeds have been changing for them.

Once all these steps are taken, then all that remains is to launch off the jumps, perform three flips with four spins and hit my feet.

If you judge the craziness of a sport based on the amount of time that has to be invested to ensure it's safe, then maybe aerials is a bit out there. Crazy or not, it's been a part of my life for so long, the insane seems to have become sane.