 Poster: A snowHead
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| AlIre2024 wrote: |
I’ve about 6 weeks of skiing under my belt.
I would classify myself as an intermediate.
Very confident on wide blues, can occasionally get onto edges, but not routinely nor on steeper reds/blacks.
I’m planning on skiing for 5 consecutive weeks this season.
If i sprinkle some lessons in, how much of an improvement can I expect to make?
How much different is being able to ski every day for 5 weeks than a season where you can only ski when not working?
Thanks in advance! |
As others have said, this is really hard to say but I think you should aim to make a BIG improvement. Whether you do that depends on
a) athletic talent and physical awareness (can you picture in your minds eye what your body is doing, if you can then you need less feedback from others)
b) your willingness and ability to focus on PURPOSEFUL practice. It is easy in life to just do something without making a concerted effort to work on improving. This is why many of us will not have got much better at driving despite years of practice. See also Origen's point about swimming.
I had done 5 weeks skiing when I started my ski season but every time I went out that season I was working on something. Despite no lessons by half way through the season I was skiing better than several colleagues who had grown up going on family ski holidays and worked more than one season. I'm not a talented athelete. I'm quite good at the mind eye thing and I found it enjoyable to practice purposefully when skiing.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| Origen wrote: |
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how many lessons have you had since you were 12 ?
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Very few! That was my point, really. LOADS of people go regularly on beach/pool holidays and potter round in the water, enjoy it enormously, and remain poor swimmers. I lived for four years in Barbados and a couple in Fiji, and my swimming didn't improve because that wasn't my focus. When I learnt to sail, in contrast, as an adult, I had plenty of instruction, went through the RYA training scheme and read a lot. After one informal evening session - just a group of us "racing" very informally round a triangular course in Topper dinghies - one of the others, in the bar afterwards, asked me why I had been able to lap him. It was the tide - I was watching it all the time and pointing my boat accordingly. He'd given it very little thought. But he was very keen to learn and was on a steep learning curve. Next time we sailed together - many years later - he was a Yachtmaster Instructor, doing professional boat deliveries, and I was on his boat as a trainee, to brush up my very rusty navigation skills (all before the days of GPS and chart plotters......). My skills hadn't improved in 20 years.
Most people who've had as many ski lessons as I have are much better skiers. Some people are just more athletically capable than others! We've all been in group lessons where there is one outstanding pupil who just "gets it" every time and another who's hopeless and uncoordinated. I was generally in the mediocre middle. I skied with one visitor to our apartment who had never seen snow before that week but was a professional cricket wicket keeper. He dropped out of his beginner lessons very early in the week, asked what we were doing, asked questions, and in a couple of days was able to ski down an easy blue slope entirely on one ski. His natural balance and agility meant it was no problem to him - I'd been practising it for ages!  |
I had my last swimming lesson when I was 9 and I swim a lot better now! I have gone through phases of swimming regularly for exercise and when you are swimming lengths there is not much else to do but tweak your technique is there? About 15 years I curiously googled swimming technique and found some useful photos and technical descriptions which I experimented with. The thing about swimming is that a clock gives you perfect feedback on whether any changes you make are helping. I read that unless you are swimming under 32 mins for 1500m you should not be thinking about fitness and purely focusing on technique*. I was swimming about 32mins at that point. I just set a new PB of 27.5 mins. That is not at all impressive for proper swimmers but like I say - no lessons since 9 and no competing since inter primary school gala at that age! I'm not a proper swimmer. It just makes the point about purposeful practice working.
*BTW on front crawl technique I think I've learned that it is almost all about LENGTHENING your stroke and staying FLATTER in the water.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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If you are serious about using lessons to improve significantly you should consider genuine ski coaching and avoid the usual holiday group ski lessons. By coaching I'd mean something designed to run over a number of weeks like an instructor course.
If your budget stretches to daily private lessons with the same instructor then you'd also make a lot of progress but this would no doubt be very expensive. An extended booking with a ski boot camp might also do the job if you can work with the same team of instructors over multiple weeks.
My concern with booking into a series of unconnected group lessons would be you'd find yourself repeating the same content without any real structured progression. Although if you want something more relaxed and like the sound of 5 weeks of holiday without being pushed too hard then there's nothing wrong with that.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| Henwc wrote: |
If you are serious about using lessons to improve significantly you should consider genuine ski coaching and avoid the usual holiday group ski lessons. By coaching I'd mean something designed to run over a number of weeks like an instructor course.
If your budget stretches to daily private lessons with the same instructor then you'd also make a lot of progress but this would no doubt be very expensive. An extended booking with a ski boot camp might also do the job if you can work with the same team of instructors over multiple weeks.
My concern with booking into a series of unconnected group lessons would be you'd find yourself repeating the same content without any real structured progression. Although if you want something more relaxed and like the sound of 5 weeks of holiday without being pushed too hard then there's nothing wrong with that. |
This.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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My concern with booking into a series of unconnected group lessons would be you'd find yourself repeating the same content without any real structured progression.
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I'd hope that a decent school/instructors would be able to manage that appropriately?
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| under a new name wrote: |
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My concern with booking into a series of unconnected group lessons would be you'd find yourself repeating the same content without any real structured progression.
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I'd hope that a decent school/instructors would be able to manage that appropriately? |
Some could and some not so much.
So, in a bunch of unconnected group lessons with random instructors, it’s likely some of them were wasted repeatitions.
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Where are you going? If you can get yourself on a course rather than ski school you will make better progress. The better courses take you through a structured programme with a clear goal. They often use video analysis which is uncomfortable but unsurpassed in effectiveness.
regular ski school is...well...let's just say somewhat unreliable and cheap for a reason.
If it was me I would try to get on a course week 1, and then book a couple of 1:1 lessons week 3 and maybe 4. You will meet people during your trip and want to ski with them. By week 5 you fell feel a little bit "local".
Pace yourself. You can't improve on crutches!
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@abc, if you are in one school, one would hope they'd be a bit co-ordinated?
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