The transition from traditional ( 20th century ) to modern ski techniques

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rob@rar.org.uk, Agreed, personal recommendations are the way to go, however without this information all you can do is try to maximise your chances of getting what you want, and having agreed things upfront if you don't get it then you should get some compensation. Granted if you are booked in for a whole week of lessons there is little lee way to compensate you for the week, however if half way through you see little sign of being taught what you expect then speak to the instructor/ ski school and clarify things.
As I said earlier, communication is everything. Remember, you are the customer, and are paying for a service. You are well within your rights to expect to get what you asked for and if you don't feel that you are getting it, I find that speaking to the people involved politely & calmly usually gets results. Waiting to the end of the week and then having a rant isn't going to get you your weeks skiing back, and will only wind up the instructor & ski school.
I wish everybody that is looking to take lessons the best of luck and hope you all get the instruction you are expecting. If we are going on personal recommendations then if anyone is in Sauze d'Oulx and wants to learn the "modern style" and carving then get yourselves down to the 'Sauze Project' offices (they are underneath the Hotel Assietta and are the guys wearing the black & yellow ski suits) and book with a guy called Luca. He's first class!! Very Happy

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Big G, agree with that, particularly if you don't have a named instructor you want to ski with.

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easiski, steve and i are very good friends. i was his staff trainer at a small resort above boulder where he was employed for a brief period of time. i guess what "got to me" was use of the words "know" and "many".

at the resort where i work we have a variety of controls/programs/audits in place to make sure that instructors are teaching "the right stuff". every instructor is audited three times per annum by a member of the training staff. in addition, supervisors are out on the mountain observing lessons on a daily basis.

so........from my perspective the problem is not as pervasive as it is being portrayed.

i also have come to the conclusion that ideas and or methodologies often get a little, shall we say confused, in the minds of students. what an instructor has in fact said/demonstrated/explained gets tossed into the mix of decades old advice from ski magazines, friends, anecdotes and lord knows what that turns into in terms of understanding among students.

a simple example. i worked with an upper intermediate skier two days ago. all day i tried to get the guy centered/balanced in terms of fore aft balance. one issue was that he was hammering the tongues of his boots, levering the forebody of his skiis. certainly a vestigial movement from the era of "bend ze knees". he needed to create less flexion in his hips, knees, ankles.

his understanding from decades of skiing resulted in a stance issue.

i tried to get the guy to make a few changes to his stance.

at the days end he said to me, "my shins really hurt from you telling me to lean forward". i had never used the word LEAN and i had studiously avoided telling him to get FORWARD. i was flabergasted. i had no idea what i said to cause this miscommunication.

could this have resulted in him telling his next teacher that my instruction was to lean and/or "get forward"? can't speak for the rest of the skiing world, however, these terms from the past are often looked upon as being dated. at WP we try to provide "body specific" exercises and concepts to structurally "stack" a students skeletal structure over modern skiis.

i took the blame with the student and said to the student that something i said or did created a little confusion.

gotta go teach. maybe i'll go confuse another poor soul today.

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Rusty Guy, It seems to me that in the States you do regulate (if that's the right word) your instructors more. The ESF for instance here, have a super revalidation training programme that all ESF instructors have to go on - I was watching them early this season here. they were from all over France (all in red, natch) and were really being put through their paces and being shown the latest methodology. Unfortunately a number of them go home and continue with the old stuff.

Yes the stacking as you put it of the skeleton is sooooo important. I express it a different way, but after all that's what we've got one for - to hold us up! Otherwise we'd all be like Odo in DS9 and sleep in buckets!!! (Sad Trekkie me!) I agree also that the word lean is a difficult one, and here on the continent people have been told for years to "lean forrrword", which generally results in a sort of bowing motion! I personally just to try to find the expression that works for each student, as I'm sure you do. Equally, I'm sure we're all misunderstood perhaps more often than we'd like to think!

Dont know about the States, but pole planting here is not very important until a decent basic carving turn is accomplished and we're looking at moguls, short radius, off piste etc. It seems to me it creates lote more problems than it solves! Confused

Had you thought of "snuggling" your shins into the tongues of the boots?

After all it is free

Rusty Guy, I'm sorry that I touched off that response. I undoubtedly miscommunicated, and I'm sorry.

What I should say is that there are high-level instructors who have chosen not to adopt newer technique and/or approaches to teaching and I have been a witness to some of that. Some of those people both Rusty and I know. However, as Rusty notes, there are many excellent instructors, as well, and a number of US resorts (including Winter Park where Rusty is teaching) are focusing on this to a very great degree to ensure consistently excellent results.

However, I would suggest that the best possible path to an excellent instructional experience is a recommendation from someone who has experienced that excellence first-hand.

For the record, all reports of Rusty's teaching reflect just that! Cool

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I'd take a referral everytime and would be wary of schools and their 'results'...!! You only have to look at the way the ESF ski - and they ski like a deam IMV, that doesn't make them all great teachers.

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JT,

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Nice thread this. I for one always had it in mind that I should ski with shoulders facing down the mountain. This was just one of several faults pointed out to me by Rusty Guy when myself and the missus had a day's lesson with him back on 22nd (or was it 23rd?) January. If anyone is looking for an instructor in Winter Park, I cannot recommend Rusty highly enough. I had a private lesson in Val Thorens (ESF) last year. I told the instructor I wanted to learn excercises/pointers to get me carving. I was then told several time throughout the lesson that I was wasting my time as I would only ever learn to carve if I "spent a season with a coach" or some such rubbish. I said pretty much the same thing to Rusty (that I wanted to work towards carving) and in an hour was making (pretty much) carved turns. Obviously with no great style though! One thing that really did it for me was initiating my turns with the inside ski, rather than the outside as I was originally taught. I started tipping the inside ski (using my feet rather than legs), the outside follows with no prompting and away you go. Once I stopped "countering" (pointing shouders down the mountain) I improved even more. I have skied 10 weeks now, all in the last 3 years and am very surprised that I was not taught this from day one. Thank you Rusty and sorry we didn't get to ski together again during that week (we were supposed to meet you and that Marker guy on the Friday morning - we were at the Zephyr lift on time but we may have missed you in the large queue; would have held you back anyway!).

You know it makes sense.

conor, sorry i missed you guys on the last day. we went out for training at 0800 and i nearly froze. i needed to run inside prior to working for a little warming.

thanks for the kind words. as i read what you said a couple of thoughts came to mind. in the greater scheme of things you and zoe came to WP as very good skiers. my point is simply that you have gotten good instruction in the past otherwise you would not have become as good as you are. another point to consider is that often things "click" for a student only at the appropriate time.

"counter" is something that a great many ski instructors feel is vestigial. to a degree, it's merely "wordsmithing", however, the current term we use is upper/lower body seperation. as we discussed or experimented there are simply times such as in bumps when a little torque is created by allowing the legs/skis to turn more than the shoulders as a turn evolves.

"counter" is short for counter rotation and that was certainly something that hindered carving for you. once you got a tad more square your legs were more active and this facilitated the movements the led to great carved turns. i think the worst case scenario for overly countered skiers is their outside/downhill leg becomes locked. as i described to you appropriate seperation is kind of like salt in a soup. a little often does far better than too much. in reality what is just right for my tastes may not appeal to others.

you two were great students and wonderful guests. i hope you will plan on returning soon.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

"Stopping countering" is not the most accurate way of putting it, and Rusty Guy, I am glad you clarified matters in your post.
There is a popular misconception that "a countered position" (inside shoulder slightly ahead of the outside shoulder) is no longer used by the world's top skiers. That is perhaps the case in slalom, where the shoulders remain more square. But as the photos in these links show, "countering" of the shoulders is still being used in higher-speed turns - just perhaps to a lesser extent than in previous decades.
http://www.bnr.nl/blobs/anp/18379.jpg
http://www.planet.nl/upload_mm/4/9/2/img-211205-148.onlineBild.jpg
http://www.zol.ch/smisoft20/ops/opsbilder/S.Nyberg.jpg
http://www.etnasci.it/images/SkiWorldCup_Foto/BeAVERcREEK/BodeMiller_SG.jpg

A snowHead

Martin Bell, I agree absolutely, because if people become too square to the skis then they lose edge grip andgenerate a skid in their turn. I wonder, however, how much of the "Extreme" Austrian position that we all remember was really because they didn't actually expect the student to do it, and therefore exaggerated the movement (as we all still tend to do in demos)? One interesting thing I always remember from training with Heini Messner is that he insists that the traverse position is the basis for everything we do in skiing. Lately, I've been horrified at how many students I've had who don't have a clue how to traverse or use their edges - just haven't been taught! Shock

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Rusty Guy, Martin Bell, easiski, maybe I shouldn't really use fancy words in the company of experts! Suffice to say Rusty, whatever I was doing wrong, you fixed it (or certainly put me on the right path to fixing it) and I think I'm a better skier for it.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

i really like two basic ideas that i have gleaned from a couple of other sources.

the first is the idea that our shoulders should face or be perpendicular to a line that extends to the apex of our next turn at turn completion. it works in bumps, short radius turns and larger turns.

the next is more complex and may not lend itself well to the internet. the norwegians have a word that roughly translates into english as "sames". stand in a traverse with perhaps "x" number of inches of tip lead. lay a pole across the tips. from the baseline a variety of parallel lines across shins, knees, hips, waist, shoulders. my favorite is the hands. one of my faults is dropping my inside hand on the right side. i can figure out a way to do it in bumps, powder, groomed. if i think of sames it creates a strong inside half, helps in bumps, helps in crud, etc.

my favorite "sames" and the one that helps me most is the idea of always having my hands the same distance from the snow. conor and i did a little work with a drill called pole boxes. it's really just a pole drag with the poles tips augered in the snow near the binding toe-piece. at any point in the turn, provided both poles are the same length rolling eyes

one's hands are the same distance from the snow. this creates a great many parallel angles both in terms of the original "sames" that i described and ancillary ones in terms of hands/shoulders/hips being parallel to the snow, etc.

just yesterday i discovered something that really helped my own skiing. i took a group into bumps and played with double pole plants as a drill. i can't describe what it did for my own skiing. i can get a little "braced" in bumps with a high outside shoulder/hips. can't do that and double pole plant! there isn't room for the old inside/new outside pole swing.

Martin Bell, i don't know if you have met todd metz from WP. recently in a clinic someone began to mention the word "counter". they were cut short when todd said a counter is a place cut fish.

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Rusty Guy, easiski

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Wear The Fox Hat, when challenged, he did actually qualify his position to exclude turns made while in the tuck - but he wouldn't accept the point on other long turns.

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Having read this thread (without completely understanding the technicalities!) I am wondering how to ensure that I am being taught the modern technique. Having only skied twice before Im pretty sure that I have been taught the old method (in Kitzbuhel & Ischgl) Heading to Pas in 2 weeks & going into ski school - what should I look out for. Also why are some ski schools teaching old fashioned techniques?

nooner, you were probably taught the old method in Ischgl. I ski there every year and notice that many are traditional ski schools still rely on the old school technique when instructing clients. And I still see quite a few germans humping 200cm Fischer skis.
I've only recently returned from Pas and I was far from impressed with their teaching methods (or lack of). While I was there I saw a total of 5 ski instructors take a nose dive on a blue run when attempting to demonstrate a skidding halt, traverses and parallel turns to the bewildered clients. Come to think of it rolling eyes

it could have been the same instructor I suppose...?

After all it is free

GrahamN, I think you should ask (if that trainer comes back), what his/her qualifications are and when heshe was last revalidated! That would be interesting to know - all sounds a bit silly for Aldershot to me - how can you do even 2 medium radius turns there (unless it's grown since my day?). The ramp is too narrow (except to gain speed on, and then 2 turns later you'd be at the bottom Puzzled

Stephen Neal, sounds ghastly.

Wear The Fox Hat, Oh no - we're in agreement again Shocked

Rusty Guy, I get what you mean in your first example - it took me a while and a bit of paper - it's about what I suggest, for the "sames" I agree, absolutely - we were always taught that! Very Happy

easiski, you can just about get 2 GSish turns in by a) starting at the top corner of slope 1 furthest from the drag, take the curve across the slope brushing the drag track, cut across to slope 2 just at the bottom of the ramp, brush slope 2's drag track and finish at the bottom of slope 1 drag. Wink

. Remember though to take a peek over the edge and make sure there're no tentative learners (or anyone else for that matter) coming down slope 2 before you set out!

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So last week, in St Anton, when the instructor had us skiing down the run bouncing up and down holding our poles out in front of us, is that an outdated mode of teaching?

It did seem to encourage skidding rather than carving, but he was trying to teach us technique for off-piste turns, and was adamant that upweighted short radius turns were the only way to ski off piste, which didn't quite sit right with me, was he correct?

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Kramer, There are lots of instructors who do believe this for off piste, and it works fine - I don't often do it myself (takes too much energy), but in deep for short turns I would not go against it. On the piste is another matter though .... Shock

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Kramer, the efficacy of any drill is crucial. don't be afraid to ask why, why, why?

poles out front, up-unweighting........is he/she merely filling time or is there a reason for the exercise. i can assure you up-unweighting is not REQUIRED in any circumstances.

Rusty Guy, Yes - unweighting is not REQUIRED, but in deep snow it isn't counter productive as it is on the piste. Mind you, I do like to TURN off piste, and most of the freeriders here only do gentle Ss!!! Laughing

(cue Ponder for a defense of fat skis??) Laughing

You know it makes sense.

easiski, I've been amazed to discover just how fun it can be to ski off-piste without unweighting--even making nice, short turns.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Kramer,

You get out too much.... You've always just got back from somewhere..!! NehNeh

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Rusty Guy and all, just to chip in with my agreement for what Conor said about turning in with the inside knee and how it has helped his skiing. It took me a while to realise what Rusty was getting at, bit slow that way is me, but now I've had a week away in Switzerland to practice on my own it has really helped. All in the party commented on how much better/easier my skiing seemed to be. Before this I was a real brute force and ignorance skier, and still revert to form when the going gets tough, but I'm still working on it.

The other thing I struggle on is pole planting, in that I rarely do it. During the lesson, Rusty, you mentioned that the instructor we'd had the day before, Chris I think his name was, thought he'd given the worst lesson of his life. Part of this lesson was working on plants and him trying to get over the '10-2' theory. Can you let him know that it wasn't all in vain. It finally clicked whilst away last week and I think I understand it now.

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Pole plants still puzzle me so I've stopped worrying about them on the groomers - for the time being anyway. I use them on bumps (for timing if nothing else) but these are pole "kisses" as described by Rusty. Also use them on steeps to keep me out of the back seat and reach down for turns.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Sorry, pole touches not plants.

As for starting turns with the inside knee, I mentioned this to an instructor who was helping out with some guiding we were doing last week. He reckoned that it was a technique that is taught to downhill/GS racers and not a normal technique. He had a solo lesson with one of our group the saturday morning we arrived and seemed a decent instructor and not of the old school. Comments Rusty, easiski, all?

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mac, I'd say it is a normal technique used by many people when 2-footed carving.

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mac, chris and i have had a lot of discussions about bumps in general. to begin with, i find it refreshing that he would say a lesson did not go well and take the blame. he is a full cert, a member of our training staff and a very good skier/teacher.

chris went out in an instructor clinic recently bemoaning something he saw in a recent psia publication. it was the standard "pole plant/pivot on top of the bump". i', sure he discussed the issue he and i have with this vis a vis what this does in terms of tactics as well as the impact a "plant" can have on our upper body.

i'll relay your comments to him today.

the pole plant on top of the bump is certainly on my top ten list of myths that need resolved with skiers. the sad thing is that it is certainly an easy way to teach a student to make one or two turns at 5kph in little bumps. it won't bode anyone well in other situations.

as far as your recent lesson goes, remember i gave you a variety of options to release from the old turn and start a new turn all involving the old outside/new inside leg;
1. roll foot towards the little toe
2. pry big toe off the snow
3. tip the knee
4. abduct the thigh
5. imagine the old outside/new inside boot is filled with water and tip a little water downhill

all the above are initial movements that CONTINUE throughout a ski turn. it's a simple question of intensity, duration, rate, and timing based upon our intent.

i can't imagine an instructor not teaching tipping movements or pondering the normalcy of these movements. we have four edges and we have to transition from one pair to the other during the course of going from left to right or vice versa. boiled down to the simplest form "tip em or turn em"

now i'm curious. how did this instructor instruct you to initiate or continue a ski turn?

as you well remember one of the first things i explore with a student in bumps or any terrain is to ask......how do you turn? typically the first answer is some convoluted statement about weight transfer. i then stand somewhere on the piste. move my fat back bottom from ski to ski lifting one leg then the other and demonstrate that this does not result in me going anywhere.

i'm sure that this will confuse many, however, weight is a unit of measurement. it is often confused with what we feel building on our outside foot during the course of any turn. that is centripital force....every little snowflake pushing on our ski subsequent to our mass pushing on the snow surface.

turning and/or our going somewhere is the result of edge angles and or where we point our skis.

conor, keep thinking about "sames" and the mantra of "tall,touch,tip". as long as you keep your outside hand where it should be you won't get overly "countered". toss in a few "pole boxes" or do a double pole plant in bumps.

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After all it is free

After reading all this it makes me wonder just how I get down the slope Laughing

I think I'm another one for the EOSB carving ski school. Very Happy

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Ok then, if I look back at my tracks, and they are just two parallel single lines, with no skidding evident whatsoever, by default am I initiating my turns properly?

Help!!

The transition from traditional ( 20th century ) to modern ski techniques

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