BASI Trainee Ski Instructor training: Day 2

Today we covered the “Central Theme” this is the basic BASI technical framework that is designed to guide skiers in the use of the Fundamental Elements that we learnt about yesterday to move people from total beginners to being able to ski parallel.

First we covered how to get total beginners familiar with their equipment. We then went on to teaching people how to slide on skis and how to maintain their balance whilst sliding. Once that was done we moved onto the snow plough; which is surprisingly difficult to do “properly” for demonstration purposes. After playing around with varying the size of the plough and doing some simple sliding plough and stopping exercises we moved onto steering the plough on flat terrain using small amounts of foot steering. Once that was done we moved to slightly steeper terrain to practice plough turns that included a pressure change element (more weight/pressure on outside ski) rather than just a steering element. After that we started to move the plough turn towards a parallel turn by reducing the size of the plough and increasing the pressure on the outside ski so that the inside ski became lighter and it was possible to have the inside ski “match” the outside ski by rotating the foot (and thus the ski about the foot). After this we practiced making the move to parallel earlier in the plough turn and eventually moved from a plough-parallel hybrid to a full parallel turn. This differed in that it required simultaneous edge change, rather than the sequential change that you get in the plough-parallel hybrid and also in that it required the hips to cross over the skis during the turn.

It was an interesting, and sometimes frustrating, day. Performing these beginner activities properly so that others can learn correctly from them is quite difficult. The work we’d done on rotation and skidding and steering yesterday was useful as all of these elements were used through the day. It was quite amusing to be being told “don’t use your edges” in a parallel turn as we were supposed to be doing purely skidded turns and for some of us this was a little strange.

The lecture tonight was mostly on the teaching side of things. It was interesting and amusing. Tomorrow we will be working in pairs to deliver 20 minute lessons to the rest of the group; so no early night tonight, we have to plan our lessons after dinner.