BASI Trainee Ski Instructor training: Day 1
This article was previously published on megeveski.com when I took some time out to ski. An index of these pages can be found here.
Today was day 1 of our trainee instructor program. We worked on the “Fundamental Elements” of skiing; or at least what BASI believe to be the fundamental elements.
We started the morning with a warm up and then began working on control of speed and line. Our first exercise was to split into pairs and ski together, one behind the other, with synchronised short turns. Since Stewy had managed to get lost and we had an uneven number I ended up skiing with Julian, and doing the initial demo (no pressure!). After we’d done the one behind the other exercise we then rotated around each other whilst keeping our turns synchronised; this meant that the front person drifted right and slowed down whilst the back person drifted left and sped up until they were ahead of the original front person and then they began to drift back together and continued - it would look good if done properly; we had various levels of ‘properly’ amongst the group.
Next we switched to practicing short skidded turns, focusing on identifying the rotation of skis and where that rotation is generated. Then we isolated the below knee rotation so that we could differentiate between the below the knee rotation and the hip rotation. We then went from skidded short turns to very short turns and finally braquage. After that we did some traverses with skidded turns to isolate the rotation below the hip (i.e. stop us using our hips to initiate the turns.).
Once we’d done that we worked on carved turns and edge control. Applying edges using ankle/foot movements, knee and finally hip angulation.
We also covered the basic skills required for leading groups of people around the mountain, as well as general safety stuff and what to do if a group member has an accident. This was all done with role-play and so was made quite fun.
We headed home at 3.30 as usual and then had a lecture from 6 through until 8 which covered the other fundamental elements, posture, adjustments for snow and terrain, flow and body management. Again these had practical elements for the pieces that were appropriate, such as balancing and coordination, etc.
All in all a great day, interesting and useful stuff.
