BASI Ski Instructor training: Day 5

Today was the last day of the first block of 5 days of the Instructor training course. All of the groups skied together for some part of the day as this allowed the three trainers to ‘compare notes’ and ensures that we’re all assessed in the same way; when multiple trainers are working together it’s important that someone wouldn’t pass in one group and yet fail in another due to slight differences in the way the individual trainers handle the assessment.

We started with some warm up runs under the triple chair and then did some work on our short turns which ended with some synchro skiing down to the base of the triple chair; quite a successful V formation with Julian at the point, setting the rhythm. We then did some group leading work; people were selected to lead the group safely to various points on our route and to load us on to a chair lift as if we’d never been on one before.

We then moved over to the two drag lifts and lapped on the shorter one doing round robin, individual performance work on piste performance whilst all of the trainers watched from the middle of the run. As usual I was working on staying centred throughout the turn and getting my hip angulation right - when I’m centred it just works, when I allow my hip to drop back and in slightly the angulation doesn’t happen. I also worked on extending the new outside leg early and projecting down the slope and forward into the new turn. This all worked pretty well and I was feeling much more balanced until the last exercise that Julian gave me, short turns with no poles and my arms crossed. This showed up the fact that I still drop back slightly in difficult situations and means that I need to keep working on fixing this fault…

After lunch we went over to Condor II to work on our bump skiing. Again we lapped on the bump run under Condor II and the trainers watched and gave individual feedback. I continued to work on keeping my upper body more upright (work the legs and don’t break at the waist) and on taking a straighter and more aggressive line.

In the evening we had a short discussion on the day’s work and then talked over our individual action plans for the ‘weekend’ (i.e. the two days off that we have between today and the start of the next 5 day session). Mine was to continue working on all of the stuff that I had been working on from today and to take one day off to rest. Julian then gave us individual feedback on how we’re progressing and several of us were told that our skiing was now at the required level and that as long as we keep skiing like this and do well in the teaching sessions then we shouldn’t have any problems in passing; good news!