The use of trainees in ski schools

A snowHead

Setting aside the argument about how much more important an instructor's teaching skills are than the ability to actually ski well and demonstrate technique to a pupil, I would argue that a considerable difference between the average British and French trainee instructor is sometimes overlooked.

Th great majority of ESF trainees could pass their speed test as teenagers. Most have been on the snow since they were barely able to walk. In fact there are a host of French 15 year olds, girls and boys, who are sub-100 FIS points in their first year of racing FIS. Under BASI rules (see link below) they would be exempt from the Eurotest.

When you consider the incentives BASI are offering to encourage people into the system, it's is clear that there's an inevitable gulf between the basic skiiing standards of British trainees, many of whom are struggling to develop the ability to pass the Eurotest during their traineeship, and the French, the bulk of whom in the first week as would-be ESF instructors are already sub-100 FIS points, some on half that.

I have seen BASI 3's and 2's that are nowhere near this standard, and spend a big chunk of their trainee period doing gates struggling to reach this level.

Second point. French trainees often hail from French race clubs. Teaching methods as applied to Brits may leave something to be desired in the opinion of some, but at least a lot of these 20 year old French trainees have listened to instruction on how to ski from a broad cross section of professionals, week-in, week-out, for three quarters of their short lives. They've lived on the mountain since they were born, and they have an instinctive knowledge and awareness of their environment, which is something that is not easily taught. A bit like the difference between the naturally bilingual (from birth) linguist, and the student who has learnt a language at school and university. You can always tell the difference between the two.

Conclusion? Generalising hugely, I would much rather be taught by a French trainee as compared to a British one, but a British BASI 1 compared to the French equivalent!

A snowHead

I'd prefer to be taught by a good experienced skier with a good style than simply by someone who can go through gates quickly, however that's just me, I can go fast but I'm usually just happy to potter gently arround the slopes, I still think that the biggest problem today is the speed at which people are taught, when I learn't to ski a lot of time was spent learning additional things, like where it's safe to stop or the fact that you should never cross an avalanche prone off piste area if there are people already crossing that area below you, or even just how to safely wait to pass someone on a narrow piste, mostly today the idea seems to be to get people skiing carving turns as quickly as possible and nothing else is important, this attitude must at least be partially responsible for some of the crazy behaviour that we see more and more of on the pistes.

The sad thing is that I'm not sure where it will all end, I suspect we will all end up needing certificates to say where we can ski and be forced to wear helmets and other safety gear in order to be allowed on the mountain

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D G Orf, that's my point - someone struggling to get near 100 FIS points in their late teens/early twenties up doesn't have a particularly good style, in the view of a lot of experts. However those who can go through gates quickly are those who can do just about everything else on the snow, with their eyes closed. The difference in skiing standard/ability is obvious.

The additional factors you mention are all part of the mountain awareness thing I was getting at, which is instinctive to those who have lived in and skied the mountains most of their lives.

The French don't teach you to carve quickly, just properly, cleanly. Thee fact that they themselves can carve those turns several times as fast as us is irrelevant. Speed is definitely not something they are trying to pass on, just proper technique, which they are able to demonstrate.

Where the French fall short is on teaching technique and attitude towards the average British punter. At the moment. Though when commercial pressures force them to get their act together, with more intensive language training, they will be providing stiff competition for British ski schools. They really can, on the whole, ski much better, in all conditions.

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What is the significance of doing gates quickly? How does that make them a better ski instructor than some one who does gates slower but with more style ?

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boredsurfin, it is technique, fitness and skill combined that enables them to ski the gates more quickly in the first place! As well as anywhere else on the hill...

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And remember teaching is a separate element of the equation, obviously important, but which I excluded from the early part of this argument to make a point about the difference in basic trainee skiing standards between would-be instructors from non-Alpine countries such as GB, and the likes of the French...

I tried to make it clear I wasn't arguing for one at the expense of the other.

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Personally I find communication is the key. I have much preferred recent instruction from English BASI 3's and learnt much more than I did from better skiing foreign nationals.

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PG, not sure I agree with you on that, yes racers must be fit but having watched the Slalom and Downhill races at Wengen I'd have to say that not all the fast skiers exhibited what one might term as Skill and Technique, many of them were indeed very good at going through the gates but some of the fastest skiers went through in a fashion that no good skier would call stylish, in fact blind luck definately played its part, whilst I believe that the ability to ski at all speeds under all conditions is vital for a good ski instructor I still do not believe that the French have it right with their speed tests, I would consider that the most important skill an instructor could have is the ability to pass on his or her knowledge to the students they are teaching, sadly that is not always the case and being able to do the speed test can in no way ensure that you can teach others, although it does show is that you can get down a difficult course quite quickly all it really proves is that you are a competant fast skier

The frech have to pass more exams then just the test technique (slalom) and the eurotest (geant).
If you don't pass your didactics, you're not gonna get your medal. The knowledge of languages however is another thing. Just strees the fact that you want an Instructor with knowledge of your language when reserving your lessons. Their system often lets young english-speaking instructors on the bench when the older ( from whom some don't bother to learn an other language ) are working.

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Isn't there an argument that someone who can actually remember learning themselves, as opposed to having

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D G Orf, with respect to the WC races, they are skiing at the absolute limit of their skill and ability. Errors will happen at the 'edge'. Each and every one of them can look "stylish" ambling along at lesser speeds (which would test lesser skiers to the limit, of course!)

Once again, this isn't an 'instruction' versus 'skill' polemic. I'm trying to separate the two. With respect to communication and teaching ability, I completely agree with you.

It simply is no coincidence that the top racers - especially those that ski across the disciplines - are the most technically competent, rounded skiers. Otherwise they simply wouldn't make it to the bottom of the course at the speeds they need to achieve to carry on winning.

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D G Orf, perhaps it'sa worth considering the speed these guys were travelling when exhibiting "blind luck" - at that speed I reckon more or less everyone on snowheads would have been eating snow or safety netting, it's only the fact that these guys can react with such speed that they managed to stay upright. I am coming round to the point that PG is arguing: U agree that being able to impart information is a very valuable skill, but having the knowledge of the skills to impart in the forst place is just as critical

You know it makes sense.

... Still that instruction might have to be adapted to those from another culture. Alpine kids have been told to pick themselves up and get on with it by their fellow local instructors all their lives, instead of being molly-coddled like certain rapidly indignant tourists who think they're not getting their money's worth if their little darlings are spoken to a touch sharply! That's where the French need to rethink the methods a little, to adapt to the ski tourist from afar, paying a lot of money to get to the slopes for a week or two, and expecting to be told what a quick learner he/she is to an extent! More/better psychology needed.

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

D G Orf, this photo taken of a group of 15/16 year olds in the Les Arcs club, in the middle of an afternoon of tree skiing, poor visibility, crud, and on GS skis (fats, what are those?). You would have to see the speed they were skiing at to believe it. This slope is about 40°. Who are they? The youngsters who are not good enough to make our FIS racing group. When the latter goes past, I don't have time to press the shutter...

Just to make the point that a large percentage of their training, over the years, has been doing this sort of thing. Not just gates. (And I wonder how many BASI 2's and 3's could keep up with the kids in the photo..)

A snowHead

The ability of a ski instructor to ski gates is irrelevant to 90% of ski teaching, which is to enable beginners to advance to parallel, and for parallel skiers to advance to ski bumps, powder etc.

It's extremely rare for ski instructors to be called upon to teach recreational skiers to ski slalom, GS etc.

Racing is a different discipline to everyday fun recreational skiing.

A snowHead

David Goldsmith, all of which completely ignores the point I was making.

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PG, Great thread!

I agree. For me, an element of being taught is the aspiration to ski like my teacher. Always has been since my first lessons with "Howard" at the Scottish-Norwegian School on Cairngorm, circa 1972.

I have seen several lower level instructors of many nationalities, with the exception of the French whose skiing does not inspire me. I have seen few, if any, French instructors (below a certain age perhaps...) whose skiing capability I do not aspire to emulate.

And I agree the ESF is changing. A friend is directeur of a reasonably large ESF school in a resort much visited by the Brits. Against horrendous local prejudice and political crap he is actively employing french teachers who are good at teaching & at least bilingual and as many foreigners as he can squeeze through the system.

To the extent that he can, his criteria are the ability to teach and the ability to speak languages other than French. As you might imagine, within the confines of the ESF he has a hard time.

However, he is at the same time a real believer that the ESF is the way forward and is deeply committed to changing it from within.

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[re. PG's post] Well I'm not quite clear as to what point you're making. FIS points are (based on my own experience of ski teaching) completely irrelevant.

As I say, 90% of an instructor's life is teaching skills to control skis, negotiate terrain and different snow conditions. Gates don't come into it (thankfully!).

If people want to learn to race, they will seek specialised training. How many British skiers want to do that?

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PG, yocal locals are better at general sking, racing and instructing, in general. Yeah, we know. Put another record on for gawd sake!

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PG...really not sure what you're driving at...yes a good chunk of French instructors are going to hail from alps and have racing backgrounds. It goes without saying that this will be a head start in reaching the required technical level but why this is important in the broad context of ski teaching I don't know. Basi 1s teaching come from a variety of backgrounds some being sub 40 point racers, some being moguls competitors and others just having grafted through the system. I don't think the average client would know the difference between their various styles. As to grade 2s, i've just got through mine and can say that the standard is pretty strong now and gives training in all the off piste, racing etc areas with quite a high fail rate. I saw a couple of decent ex racers fail as they were no good in bumps. A basi 2 stagaire will provide a decent service for most skiers, no question about it and will be infinitely better than some of the muck I see some (but not all) esf guys dishing out on a regular basis. There are of course some great skiers and teachers in esf but some old duffers too.

The Eurotest, from what i've seen most British are putting in a lot of time and effort in for the Eurotest. When you say the majority of French would pass as a teen and most Brits struggle I think you are exaggerating and also being unfair. I would estimate that per entry Brits are doing as well if not better than the French. I've done one test and though I didn't pass got on fairly well, plenty of French didn't look that special and remember many of them probably don't come from alpine backgrounds either. It was a basi 'opener' who set the fastest and pass / 'base' time the day I did it. A fair few basi candidates have been exempt from the Eurotest as well having been in racing clubs and national teams etc. Also worth mentioning that the basi 1 technical course is probably the toughest one, plenty of lads with their speed tests are failing on techical points in their bumps or piste performance.

Overall, in my view, and in general terms I agree that a fully qualified basi teacher will provide a better service than his French counterpart but think a grade 2 / stagiare trainee will do a good job for the average client and be equally as good as a French trainee.

I'm leaving for the alps today - over excited having seen the fresh snow on ch4's ski prog. this morning...

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I don't think you can separate the performance and the teaching when you are talking about people *employed* (i.e. paid) to teach! In many walks of life the people who are the best exponents of an activity (racing drivers, musicians, etc.) are not the best teachers because although their technique is very good, their analytical skills are not sufficiently good to actually break down what they are doing into its component parts and then to impart that analysis to a pupil. Moreover, as Jake said, just because a racer is good at bombing down a hill does not necessarily mean they are equally good in chest-deep powder, bumps or whatever. Surely the pre-requisite for someone employed by a ski school is that they have to be all-rounders, able to handle anything the client wants to do.

Re your point about the young French instructors who skied before they could walk. I agree that they may arguably be "better" skiers (if you define "better" as "more natural"), but if it's as natural as breathing to them I suspect they would have problems analysing what they are doing and explaining it to someone else. It's like trying to explain to someone how to walk or how to breathe.

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eng_ch, fair points. My opinion though is slightly tempered by a couple of points.

I'm not a good teacher although I hubristically used to think I should be. A fair amount of my skiing is self taught through emulation of good (I do mean good, not just people I think better than me - so... BASI trainers, serious racers, etc.) and I learned the basics when I was young. I can't actually remember learning to ski, although I can recall the first time I consciously carved a turn (about 1979, on the Cairngorm home run, I was about 13 I think).

So I have no recollections of the process to pass on. I'm not convinced that that really matters. Paraphrasing, your point about "analysing what I'm doing to pass it on", isn't what works in my experience.

Any breakthroughs I or friends have had on snow have relied on two critical elements. 1. a coach who understands properly what should be going on and 2. a coach who has a wide arsenal of tools, tricks, tactics and exercises that can be applied to correct problems.

I think someone who has skied at a very high level (beyond average instructor grade) , with high level skiers (not necessarily competitively, though think it helps) will be a better instructor than one who has not. Especially for more advanced or difficult pupils. Particularly, I think experienced racers have spent a lot of time being coached in technical principles and that ought to give them a teaching edge.

It's completely, IMHO, the inverse of "if you can't do, teach".

Regarding breathing or walking, I would suggest that beyond the age of about 7, most people have "learned" that most of the things you want to do while skiing are unnatural ??

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I used to think that using a speed test as a way of choosing those capable of being instructors was there as a barrier to keep "non locals" out of the system. After all, if you have been skiing gates since you could walk and did it every day at school, it gives you an advantage of the townies who might be good at other disciplines etc. However, the last couple of years has totally changed my view. This change has been for 2 reasons. Firstly, I have skiied a lot with a mountain guide / intsructor who spends his summers teaching ski instructors and secondly, because I have got into skiing gates (at the tender age of 46!) and it has been an eye opener.

Simply, you cannot ski gates quickly with incredibly in depth knowledge of the technical side of skiing. This knowledge is applicable to all areas of skiing. I have seen instructors from other countries (where I assume there isn't a speed test) that might look good when teaching, but have fundemental flaws that don't become apparent until you ski something "unusual". Classic example for me is difficult off piste situations and particularly on really steep stuff (45 degrees +).

Since I started skiing gates and, more importantly, discussing technique to get better times, I have gained a far better understanding of some of the dynamics which I would argue would not otherwise be apparent. There is no finer way of studying technique than at speed and there is nothing that exposes weaknesses more than having to go through gates.

If anybody thinks that people should be able to teach without technical excellence, I think they are wrong. And as such, there is nothing that shows it better than proving that excellence than skiing through gates. There is no judgement to make, there is no hiding place and there is no way to fool the system. You cannot get through the speed test without that blend of great technique and technical knowledge.

As somebody who used to take the "mick" out of the French speed test, I am now a big fan of it and IMO, the instructors who complain the most are those who aren't good enough.

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Having reread a couple of the posts above makes me realise there are a few other salient ponts.

There is no way anybody is saying that all fast racers make good instructors. However, youn need to be a good racer to have enough technical knowledge to be able to instruct. Once you have that, you then need to learn to teach. Then, just as in any walk of life, there are those who are good at their job and those who aren't. The speed tests only qualify you to train as an instructor, not to be one.

In my experience, there is a direct correlation between technical ability and the quality of the instruction. I cannot remember meeting a top instructor who doesn't also stand out in their technique. And I have met very few instructors who rate highly who haven't passed some sort of decent speed test or who aren't capable of it. And there is one of the cruxes of this. If you are good enough, you will get through the gates in the required time. I have yet to meet somebody who claims to be good enough to teach who says they could not get through the test.

If I book ski instructor expect to be taught by a qualified instructor, not a trainee. I now wonder how many lessons I have paid for and not been taught by a fully fledged instructor Puzzled

You know it makes sense.

I think we're losing sight of the purpose of instructing to the vast majority of recreational skiers: they need clear demonstrations of the snowplough, side-slip, traverse, preparation for parallel turns, bump turns, powder turns, crud and crust turns, turns on the steep, how to handle ice, ways to maintain stability at speed - all the practical things for piste and off-piste skiing.

And maybe some fun skiing on the uphill or inside ski, with some trick turns for greater balance and versatility.

For an instructor (at least at the lower grades) to spend time learning race technique is to sacrifice time on more relevant productive work. For me, the fun of skiing is to ski terrain in varying ways - varying the line, the turn radius, the strategy - which is the antithesis of skiing gates.

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

A snowHead

So if i want to learn to drive i should find a driving instructor who used to be a racing driver

A snowHead

David Goldsmith, analogies rarely work, but try this one. You have a choice between a beginner's French lesson from an excellent communicator and teacher who has a good GCSE pass in the subject, and an equally excellent communicator and teacher who has a good degree, lived in the country for years, is completely fluent and has virtually no accent. Which do you choose? (Assume they charge the same).

I have at no time in this thread said that teaching and communication skills aren't vital. On the contrary, I've stressed the occasional shortcomings in this department, with respect to the French. On the other hand, is there something about being a expert skier that precludes you from teaching at all levels if you have a gift for communication and instructing? Of course there isn't! If so, Martin Bell had better shut up shop and go home now!

This thread has gone off track anyway. One of the arguments about small ski schools being blocked from taking on trainees is based on the assumption that the ESF is thus able to monopolise the trainee system and charge less for a lesson that the British equivalent, staffed with fully qualified instructors. That may be so, but I was just pointing out that French trainees are - on the whole - considerably better skiers, in my opinion, than the likes of the British equivalent - we're not comparing like with like.

PS DG, you've got to get the idea out of your head that ski club racers only do gates. For the nth time, the bulk of their time pre-FIS is spent doing everything but. Which is one reason why they are able to ski virtually anything, anywhere. Simple observation demonstrates that the better racers (results, times) are the better skiers (technique, flair, ease of adaptation to conditions and terrain) when they are not racing. They fall over less, they look better, and they are the ones at the front of the group behind the instructor pelting through the trees, off piste, wherever, while the others struggle in comparison.

Jake

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PG has stated his case in general terms, and in general terms I agree. I have a little conundrum though. I believe that the Eurotest requirement for women is lower than that for men. A case of speed isn't everything? There is a case to be made (and I would make it) that a woman with an equivalent technique to a man will in general be slower only because of differences in physique etc, and therefore could be just as good a teacher; but, by the same token, there must be men a second or so off the Eurotest pace who are similar in technical proficiency but with 'inferior' physiques to those who have passed.

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laundryman, yes, the 'arbitrarily'-drawn line that will inevitably - and possibly unfairly - lead to some failing by a split second. But then I've heard it said that the Eurotest is not really that tough anyway, so perhaps it's the other way around - some get through that shouldn't! wink

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PG, could be, that's why I think it should be a guideline that we can look to, rather than something enshrined in law; but that would be to cover old ground and I've already withdrawn from one 'fight' today, on the grounds that I should be working! snowHead

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eng_ch, Nope, that's not what I was saying. I specifically said a good communicator and TEACHER, to avoid any comments along the lines of your reply.

I picked that analogy because I'm a qualified professional translator and linguist myself, and I know which one of the two alternatives I would rather have teach one of my friends! Instructors have to undergo refresher courses, that goes without saying. The Eurotest is just one element needed to qualify as an instructor. There are absolutely no "implicit conclusions" along the lines you put forward - which would indeed be "specious logic", except that no one has suggested anything even remotely close!

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The use of trainees in ski schools

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