BASI Ski Instructor training: Day 3

Today we moved on to activities beyond The Central Theme; BASI has five strands of progression for people once they’re doing parallel turns correctly, these are: Piste, Steeps, Bumps, Variable (all kinds of off-piste conditions) and Freestyle. The plan for today was to cover Steeps and Bumps. After a warm up under the triple chair we started some exercises that were designed to get us skiing better for when we moved on to the steeper or bumpier terrain.

We started with the ¹“Veedle” turn (your spelling may vary…) which, in essence, is a very short, skidded, pivot turn where the skis rotate about the feet; like a 10 degree braquage. The idea is that you need to be standing over the skis correctly to be able to do it at all! and that it’s very useful in the bumps… We tried, and mostly failed, to emulate Julian’s demonstration and speed…

After that we moved on to improving our “checking” (like a short, sharp, hockey stop). This technique is useful in the bumps and on steeper terrain. We started by simply sideslipping and stopping by just rolling the ankles and knees in to the hill; no hip movements allowed. We then moved on to a traverse with diagonal sideslip followed by a rapid application of edge and pressure. Once we could do that we started to introduce a pole plant, just as the edge set is applied and you stop. Finally we moved on to using the rebound that you get from such a rapid stop to launch you into the next ’turn’. We began with a traverse, check-pole plant, jump back to traverse and then moved it on to a traverse, check-pole plant, jump into new turn. In between all of this checking we did some exercises to show what counter-rotation (i.e. twisting your upper body in the opposite direction to your lower body during a turn) felt like so that we knew when it was happening and could try and avoid it…

Our final exercise was synchronised check-turns (short swings) followed by a series of turns where we blended a pure checked turn into a smooth carved turn. We had various levels of success with the synchro stuff, as usual…

We headed over towards lunch and practiced short jumping check turns on some steeper terrain. They worked well.

After lunch we headed over to Condor II to work on our bumps skills. First we were taught how to “dummy” a turn in the bumps; basically using two very quick pivot turns (Veedle’s) to slightly adjust your route through the bumps, or throw someone off who’s following… We then started lapping on the bump run and the T-bar and Julian gave us individual feedback on our performance. The bumps were a good size and a good shape and the snow was soft, so it was a fun, if tiring, afternoon. First I needed to fix that fact that although I was flexing well to absorb and extend over the bumps I was also breaking at the waist when I was absorbing. I needed to keep my upper body upright the whole time. That was actually reasonably easy to fix and helped me to look further down the slope. After that I was told to take a faster and more aggressive line through the bumps; since I know that the most important thing that they’re looking for is control of speed and line through the bumps I considered this a good thing. I’d been keeping my speed down so that I didn’t get too sloppy and upping my speed made for a more ‘interesting’ run but I still managed to stay pretty much in control most of the time. A few more runs and my legs were done and we were out of time.

We were given a free ski home so Chris and Neil and I took a trip to the top of Condor III and then skied the off-piste down to the top of the T-bar and then cut across towards Viento Cero and took the path down towards the gondola base area. The lower slopes are getting pretty bad; it’s getting to the point where it’s almost worth getting a lift down…

Our evening discussion session was on how we need to change various Fundamental Elements to deal with The Five Strands. Things like using more rotation and skidding and checking for steeps, etc. We also spoke about communication between teacher and pupil and how important some relatively subtle issues can be in a teaching situation.

Another good day with lots of technique work. Lots of exercises that built up to affecting fairly substantial changes in our skiing in ‘real’ situations. It was a pity that we didn’t get a chance to use the skills acquired this morning on more steep terrain but the bumps were good. We’ll be working on more bumps and more steeps tomorrow so that should be fun.