Previously published This article was previously published on megeveski.com when I took some time out to ski. An index of these pages can be found here. Today was the first day of our BASI Instructor training program. This consists of two sets of 5 days continuous assessment. The first five days focus on the technical skiing aspects and the second five days shift the focus slightly to include the teaching aspects.

I’m still skiing in Argentina, the training is going well and within 3 weeks I’ll know if I make the grade and qualify as a BASI Ski Instructor… Because of all the skiing and partying and work out here I haven’t been keeping up with many technical issues but this morning I checked bloglines and picked a couple of random feeds to catch up on. One of them was the Artima C++ Source feed which has recently published 5 articles by Scott Meyers.

Previously published This article was previously published on megeveski.com when I took some time out to ski. An index of these pages can be found here. I got my “numbers” this evening. The way the BASI ratings work is that each skill (piste short turns, piste carving, central theme, etc) gets a rating based on how well you can perform it. The ratings are from 1 to 6 and split into 3 groups of 2; 1-2 are awareness, 3-4 are practice, 5-6 are acquired skills.

Previously published This article was previously published on megeveski.com when I took some time out to ski. An index of these pages can be found here. Today was a glorious day, sunshine, perfect snow and no wind. We started the day with some runs under the three man chair above the gondola. We worked on elements of the Central Theme, first our basic parallel, and then our plough parallel. After a few runs of this we cut across to skier’s left towards the drag lifts.

Previously published This article was previously published on megeveski.com when I took some time out to ski. An index of these pages can be found here. 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.

Previously published This article was previously published on megeveski.com when I took some time out to ski. An index of these pages can be found here. Today we ran the lessons that we prepared last night. These went well and we got lots of good feedback. Overall the lessons were fun to deliver and none of us really had any serious problems. Chris and I had a slight issue with talking too much and delivering too much information in one go; apparently this is common when you’re trying to deliver a lesson in a pair as you both want to say stuff and sometimes you say too much…

Previously published This article was previously published on megeveski.com when I took some time out to ski. An index of these pages can be found here. 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.

Previously published This article was previously published on megeveski.com when I took some time out to ski. An index of these pages can be found here. Today was day 1 of our trainee instructor program. We worked on the “Fundamental Elements” of skiing; or at least what BASI believe to be the fundamental elements. We started the morning with a warm up and then began working on control of speed and line.

Previously published This article was previously published on megeveski.com when I took some time out to ski. An index of these pages can be found here. Our group’s BASI trainer has arrived, Julian Griffiths who is head of European Snowsport, ES, of Verbier. This evening we had a chat about what the training will entail and we start work on the Trainee Instructor training programme tomorrow. We had been expecting Julian to arrive tomorrow and were planning to have it as a rest day and to go out for a steak at the “greasy spoon” tonight, but we’re all very enthusiastic to be starting work tomorrow, stayed in and are all off to bed early!

It’s been a difficult few months for me recently. One of the things that has helped a lot was something that, thankfully, I discovered relatively quickly and have since refined somewhat. The refined version sounds very simple; “appreciate every moment” but it actually takes some practice to get into the habit. Once you do get into the habit you will find that it leads to a positive feedback loop of happy thoughts; which often leave you with a smile on your face which seems to encourage more happiness around you…