BASI Trainee Ski Instructor training: Day 4

Today we focused on short to medium radius turns on piste, with a few bumps on the way home. We started with a couple of warm up runs under the quad chair. Sorry for the lack of pictures recently, I’ve switched jackets and my orange one doesn’t have enough pocket space for me to carry the camera. It was sunny, blue skies and slightly chilly but there was no wind so all in all it was a lovely day. The snow first thing was softer than we were expecting but not too soft, just nice and grippy and the snow at altitude stayed pretty good all day.

We spent most of the morning doing exercises to correct problems with our short radius turns. This involved Julian drawing a line down the piste with his poles and us skiing short turns down the line and doing various things each time we crossed the line. The first exercise required us to pole plant on the line, the next had just jumping over the line as the turn crossed it. Then we had to have the skis flat against the snow (ie the middle of the the edge transition phase) as we crossed the line. Next we had to focus on having pressure on the little toe of the inside ski as we crossed the line, then pressure on the big toe of the outside ski… These drills really showed up problems with body position and pressure control and the resulting speed and line control issues. Once we’d all done that little lot we were given slightly more specific exercises; mine was to think of the line as being “sticky” so that it pulled my feet back at the point where I was changing edges, that is, it moved my weight forward…

The afternoon was spent skiing on the blue piste next to the drag lift. We did laps and Julian stood in one place giving us individual feedback and personalised drills. My afternoon was spent doing javelin turns, sometimes with poles, sometimes without, sometimes carved, sometimes skidded. It was hard work but it seemed to achieve the desired aim, which was to move my weight over my outside ski more.

The day was good and when we free skied down at the end of the day I felt quite a difference in the control I had over the ski at the end of the turn; less skidding… On the way home we did some bumps, which were quite fun as the snow had softened quite nicely by then. Then we had a lecture on customer care and the snowsport industry and were told that we needed to rate our performance in short turns on piste and the plough parallel before tomorrow.

Tomorrow we’re going to do some carving, more bumps and some steeps and off-piste. Then we get our rating numbers… After that the real work begins…