BASI Ski Instructor training: Day 2

As with yesterday, today was similar to day 2 of our Trainee Instructor program only more detailed. We started with a warm up run under the triple chair at the top of the gondola; the snow was great and we figured that it may well be the only ‘proper’ skiing of the day, so we all had fun.

Then we started with The Central Theme, only this time we had to think more about making the teaching interesting than on the movements themselves. We were asked to think up suitable analogies for the movements required to perform plough turns; extending and rotating the (soon to be) downhill leg and then settling down onto it by flexing the leg. We each had to come up with several analogies that made the exercises more interesting.

We practiced for some time on the nursery slope at the top of the mountain and once we’d done plough turns we did some work on plough-parallel; again with suitable teaching analogies.

The amusing thing is that using and thinking of the analogies for the exercises did make the practice of the movements more interesting. We’d probably all been dreading doing The Central Theme again as we’d probably all prefer to be doing ‘proper’ skiing but the time went quickly and we hardly realised that we were being assessed on our performance of the demonstrations as much as on our ability to make the teaching fun.

We did some video of a sliding plough, to see if we were in a balanced and symmetrical position (I was a little biased towards my right) and of the plough parallel (I need to make sure that I extend and rotate the new downhill foot at the same time rather than sequentially).

Preparing to move on to the basic parallel turn we practiced side slipping again as this is a good time to introduce it to clients as they will need to start understanding more about edges when they start to parallel turn and side slipping is all about control of edging. We did various side slipping exercises; one legged, jumping, flexing, eyes closed, etc. and then moved on to a traversing. Once we’d practiced a simple traverse we repeated yesterday’s rotational exercise of a shallow traverse followed by a diagonal sideslip. Once that was working well we added some increased pressure to the downhill ski after several seconds of sideslipping; the result was that the ski began to turn and slow. By then adding a small amount of edge the ski could be made to start to turn slightly and the whole thing; traverse, diagonal sideslip, pressure and edge, became a very simple turn up the hill. This is probably the easiest way to get a client to control their speed by turning with parallel skis and is useful to get them to feel comfortable with slight pressure and edge application. After this we did some exercises in pairs where one person would shout out what to do and the other person would do it; this forced us to blend rotation, pressure and edging in ‘unusual’ ways…

We then skied over to the two drags and did some personalised training whilst lapping on the shorter drag lift. I started with fast carved turns on the top section of the slope and short turns on the lower section. After one run I was told to focus on getting more edge during the carve by laying the skis over more and using this to tighten the turn. After a run like that I was told to lay the skis over even more and this resulted in me stacking it as I lent too far inside the turn and my feet skipped out from under me. After that I switched to demonstrating basic parallels on the upper section and doing very carvey short turns on the lower section. Once the basic parallels were OK (remember, exaggerate the flex and don’t carve or use your poles!) I started working on my lack of hip angulation (I tend to drop my hip into the turn and break at the waist rather than actually angulate at the hip properly); several runs of shallow J turns where I really focussed just on angulating the hip meant that I started to feel it when it was right and during the last run I added in the normal carved turn leg extension so that I could start to feel what it should feel like with proper hip angulation. All of this was done by looping around on the drag lift whilst Julian stood at a fixed point on the piste. We were all given different things to work on and it seemed to work well for everyone.

Two bump runs to end the day. Neither felt particularly good for me. We did an exercise where we had to follow or lead our partner down the bumps; we both had to take the same line and pole plant in the same place. I’d done this earlier in the week with Stewy and it had worked well. This time, with Phil, I had a harder time, Phil did a couple of really nice, flowing, short turns that changed his rhythm and really threw me; though apparently I did the same to him on the later section when I was in the lead. I guess the bumps were just a bit more difficult than last time.

During the day we also did some analysis of other skiers; Julian would pick someone at random and we’d have to work out what they were doing wrong, or right, and what needed to be fixed, etc. It was interesting and some of us seem to be starting to get an eye for problems.

We had a discussion and video analysis session this evening where we talked about how to handle accidents on the mountain and worked more on analysing client’s skiing. Another good, but tiring day. One of the key things to remember when demonstrating The Central Theme is that it’s so much easier to exaggerate the flexion and extension if your boots are loose!