Falling, failing and fear

A snowHead

This has been bubbling away on a low simmer for quite a while and every time I read a technique thread the scum on the broth in my head is skimmed off to clarify the mix a little more. Ultimately it was the ‘Equipment’ thread regarding keeping edges sharp during a week’s skiing that has brought it to ‘consommé’

Every time I read the words “push, power, force, drive, moving the snow” I want to scream “do any of you actually understand what’s going on under your feet? Can you feel those toe edges start to cut into the surface, how the snow begins to compact and form a flat running surface under the ski, when a slight and gentle change of mass tightens the curvature in the ski nose creating that track, forcing the remainder, trapped in that track to slavishly tram behind.

When the tails of your skis wash away from you, when your tips slide down the hill, when all you do is crab in a juddering scratch away to the fall-line, can you understand why you caused it to happen? It’s not the snow nor the skis it’s you.

I’m always astonished when very good skiers and instructors talk about ‘mastering the conditions’ as though there is some way to enforce your dominance over nature. Do you think that nature gives a crap about you? The conditions on the mountain are the arbiter of whether you can ski down the hill. Soft, hard, icy, slushy, smooth, chopped, bumps, shallow, steep . . . these and their myriad subtleties are what define your skill, nothing else and that skill it dependent on two things only

1: Your learned skills or lack of.

2: Your response to what happens when you apply ‘1’.

And that’s where you all go quiet. You’re all happy to say “do this, do that, you need to do the other”, but none of you say ‘STOP, LOOK, LISTEN, FEEL’!

As you slide over the snow there’s an amazing physical reaction happening both at the sub-atomic level as water molecules pass from crystal to liquid and split to gasses in creating the micro-bubbles to lubricate your sliding glee and also within the human sensory range where the stresses and movement within your skis and boots can be felt and responded to . . . can you sense any of those? Do you hear the change of tone that occurs when a ski roles from flat to edge, the difference in the frequency thrum through your boots when the nose of your ski engages and begins to carve?

Skiing is a four sense and 4 dimensional activity . . . well five if you include the Sunday morning stink of a cable car after the Saturday arrival night parties . . . But how many of you use all those in developing your skiing? All I ever hear about is the body mechanical movement . . . as though that is all that’s required to ski. Flex, extend, bounce, retract, twist, don’t twist, isolate and angulate! Yes these are a required in the activity but they’re a fraction of what’s required to ski well and improve beyond shoving snow around with your skis or board.

Unless you develop an understanding at both a physical and mental level of what happens when you apply a force you will forever be stuck in a plateau of intermediacy. Without knowing what’s happening to the equipment on and under your feet you will never ski with any real fluidity or confidence. You may well be able to ski very quickly with apparent grace . . . but you’ll choose those moments when you know the snow conditions will allow you to do that. It’s vanity skiing and I cannot type this and not admit to repeatedly doing just that myself.

About three years ago I bought an implement of torture called a Teleboard . . . basically a very robust, very fat two metre ski with a nine metre sidecut, oh, and telemark bindings, both on the same ski. When I first dragged this out some were speechless, many laughed outright and most winced at the bruises this thing gifted me. But it did one thing (eventually), it forced to look at my sliding and realize that my problem wasn’t technique, I knew what I was supposed to do and could apply that . . . but it still didn’t work . . . why?

Because I was too busy thinking all I had to do was follow the instructions and lessons I’d had in the past and just apply them. It wasn’t till I realized that the feedback I was getting had to be listened to, both at a muscle response level but also with comprehension. It’s often said that skiing is in your head and that’s right .

Then the epiphany . . . well more of a slow coalescence of 40 years in physical activities . . . we don’t really teach people to react, we teach them to do, to go for it and when it doesn’t work, to step back repeat the progression and keep doing it till it does work. How many times have you instructors spent time with an individual deconstructing a fail to help them understand why they were on their backside with a coat full of snow? . . .And how many times have they kept falling?

From experience both prurient and personal, many instructors are very assiduous in trying to bring a student to see their failure as just a physical error and to keep repeating the same movement till it ‘clicks’ . . . and eventually the student muscles through and makes a reasonable stab at looking like they’ve got it . . . then on to the next step.

What’s missing in all that?

Is it that the student, like me, is attempting to mimic or parrot a physical action without any understanding of what happens when they do it and then can’t respond either adequately or correctly to that? Developing that feedback loop seems to be left to the natural progression of trial and error in the student’s head, leading to the wildly differing skills progressions we see within our own peer groups.

Here’s where I’m going; Bend Ze Knees has a thread about why teach ‘rise and fall’ http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?t=94902 )and of course the topic wandered all over the place and ultimately achieved, as so often they do, very little. Also there was a thread about keeping edges sharp on holiday (http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?t=95275 ) So here’s why I think rise and fall has a role but perhaps not in the way you think.

All things that travel over and in contact with an irregular surface need suspension to have any hope of staying in control along a path. Suspension consists of springs and dampers, the better the quality of each the more controlled the journey. The analogy is, the more a tyre stays in consistent, stable contact with the road the less chance it has of falling off it.

What’s that got to do with skiing? Well simply, you are the suspension. Your ability to keep your ski in consistent, stable contact with the running track of the ski determines above all else your ability to learn to ski.

The mechanics in this are relatively simple; The need to separate at the waist, upper and lower body movements and to keep all the joints particularly from the hips down in ‘relaxed tension’. A rather oxymoronic phrase meaning only that the joints must be partially flexed yet responsive to input from all directions. These are your springs.

Weak and tired, strong and virile and all states in between . . . that’s really down to you. Good fit springs will not tire and fail as quickly as sad unfit ones will and simply define far you can ski and not how fast. That’s down to your dampers.

And this I think is where the real secret of skiing lays. In a car, your dampers control the rate of change in a spring’s movement and stops it from oscillating or being forced to move too much by the inertia of what’s attached to it. This is what really keeps the wheels in constant contact with the road surface and not bounce away letting the car wander around the path or fall sideways off it. The quality of the damper is what determines how well it does that job and the really good ones are continually adjusting themselves as you drive.

That’s you, the controller, your brain is what determines that your skis stay in contact with the snow, keeping you on your chosen path and not falling off it. The snow conditions are just that, conditions to slide on and it’s just the state of your springs and the quality of your ‘damping’ that lets you apply the technique to make turns or stop.

There’s only one problem with our wonderful damper controller . . . it crashes . . . usually followed quite quickly by the rest of us. The moment our skis or board leave the snow involuntarily we are out of control.

Sliding on snow even at quite a high standard is a ‘fight or flight’ situation, in this case you are moving toward the danger rather than the opposite. But here you are hurtling toward imminent death and you seize solid in fear. That’s ok stood on the Serengeti, the lion will just eat you and move on. Here and now you become not just dangerous to yourself but to everyone else and that’s your first day in a knees locked out snowplow! That doesn’t change as you progress along the skills path. As you pass each milestone the fear diminishes just a little to the familiar.

We all know that in a fight or flee situation the ideal is to be balanced and poised to respond in either direction, it needs you to be calm and relaxed even through the adrenalin rush. Is that natural? No, it’s a learned response, but in skiing it appears to be relegated to the student’s own time and willingness to change by virtual osmosis.

So; Can a learned response be taught . . . and should it be?

It was the thread on keeping edges sharp during the week that really caught my eye . . . what the hell are you skiing on that is blunting a hardened and tempered/annealed steel edge. I know a Sahara blow can dump plenty of sand on La Rosier but enough to blunt an edge in a week? Possibly. But on good snow or even hard pistes, it’s going to take more than a week to blunt an edge enough to make it difficult to shave your backside with. My Icelandics haven’t seen so much more than a Zardos puck in 4 seasons and they don’t need edging. It’s not my skis or my edges that make me fall off, it’s me, I’ve screwed up because I didn’t perform adequately for my skis to remain in contact with the snow. I’m absolutely certain that in any situation in recreational skiing we are all too quick to blame blunt edges for the fact our skis skidded sideways and dumped us on our backsides. Racing on injected slopes is another matter for edge maintenance but the rest of this still applies.

They did so because you and I were not relaxed enough, with essentially coil bound springs for muscles stopping our dampers from working to maintain edge contact with the snow. At that point we are just ballistic and mostly needing better skill and strength to recover from the situation.

All of this control is centered in our heads, we have to be compliant and responsive to whatever the snow surface does to our skis even when we are in the middle of a maneuver. It has to become instinctive and second nature and is hugely important in our ability to learn and apply. At the moment this is left to be a secondary and experience based skill. I do say skill even though it is essentially a hidden one it is a nurtured trait that can be fostered.

Here’s what I propose:

That learning to ski does not begin with the snowplow and weighted plow turn, but begins with learning to absorb and respond to changes in the snow surface the topography from varying shaped rollers to little steps and dips in the snow. To rise and fall, keeping the muscles in motion so that they cannot lock into a fixed position and lose control. A baby slope with complete inconsistency of surface so that the student can learn how to relax and respond to the terrain. It would give them a safe environment to establish the principle of “relax” I hear so often shouted across a piste. You cannot tell someone who is rigid with fear to ‘relax’ and have ANY hope of compliance.

I believe that learning what I’m calling ‘damping control’ is a separate and essential skill in skiing progression and should be taught at the very beginning of any snowsport and can be returned to as each student progresses.

At the beginning of this thread I spoke about the all the different ‘feelings and sensations’ involved in skiing. You cannot experience many of them when you are tense and fearful, when you are worried about falling or not making a turn. These occur when you are soft, compliant with the snow surface, absorbent of the terrain and condition changes. This is to make sliding on piste as smooth and enjoyable as sliding in powder and that is the ultimate pleasure.

It’s not about removing the fear when trying to learn to ski, it’s removing the cause of that fear. It’s in your head.

Your thoughts?

A snowHead

Rant over yet?

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

There are instructors who cover this point...............eventually.

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under a new name, no rant, a postulation Little Angel

see, nice!

Mosha Marc, That I think may be the problem . . . "eventually"

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When does an essay become a book?

Masque, if you are considering becoming an instructor then you really need to simplify EVERYTHING.

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Frosty the Snowman, I just want he shiny badge Twisted Evil

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Are you saying that tuning in to your internal feedback is a good thing? If so, I agree 100%.

Where we might differ is the point at which this becomes an important development tool. When a skier has not fully acquired a necessary movement they will not have the capacity to use their internal feedback to make small, subtle but important changes to their rate, range and distribution of movements. They won't be able to feel anything except being unable to control what they are trying to do, and possibly be gripped by fear. So if you try to teach 'feeling' at the beginning of the process you are skipping two or three well recognised stages of skills acquisition (this is all BASI 101, and I'm sure other instructor training systems as well). When that movement is closer to being autonomous you can then start to play around with it, making increasingly fine changes in response to what you can feel. At that point you can talk begin to talk about mastery.

I'll give you an example. I was teaching a strong group (half of them already L1 instructors and a couple who will be strong L2 candidates) on the glacier in Tignes in October. We were skiing in thick cloud so visibility was just about absent. We were on a well prepared piste, but it was a steepish red (the wall of 3500 if you know it) and at the back of our mind is the knowledge that the piste ends in a bit of a path that it would be easy to overshoot and take flight down a drop. I was cracking on with a bit of speed because they were strong skiers, but it was obvious that the lack of visibility was causing them all to struggle with speed control (either too slow or too fast). So we had a brief discussion and I suggested one, and only one, focus for them: keep working on the strong flexion and extension movements we had been developing for a couple of days, but you must feel a build up of pressure at the end of one turn before you can start the next turn. It seemed to transform their skiing on that pitch, in that visibility. They moved from hesitant with poor speed control to much more fluid turns. As a comparison, I was teaching some clients yesterday who were very much at the other end of the experience spectrum, with typically just three or four weeks mountain experience. I did try to encourage them to feel what was going on as much as possible, especially to find some extra grip at the beginning of the turn. But that really wasn't able to help them change their movements very much, not least because with their level of experience their control of their skis meant that it was difficult to find a lot of grip, and the speeds we were skiing at meant that the forces we experience were not very great. For those skiers it was much more important to describe and sometimes isolate the movements I wanted them to make, especially using video feedback so they had an accurate mental image of what they were doing.

If s skier is struggling to make the moves you can suggest that they try to feel the ebb and flow of the forces that are generated as they make their turns, and hope that results in more effective outcomes. But I think that would be a rare skier who learned in a purely kinaesthetic manner. Using that one teaching strategy only is likely to turn off many, many skiers, especially early on in their skiing career. For me it wasn't until I got to L1 or L2 sort of standard that "feel" became an important part of my skiing.

After all it is free

rob@rar, I think you're taking it and rightly to the next level. Right at the very beginning is not to teach 'feeling' but movement recognition. Where they can absorb and respond to terrain changes before they even begin to make turns. I've watched tots in their snow playgrounds (no not creepy) and seen how their size makes the snow much rougher in scale for them and how quickly they learn to flow with the changes while ducking through tunnels and obstacles in a straight line first before going on the turns. It's the idea of play in safety to begin the process of easy and compliant movement over the skis rather than try to tackle that when the student is already out of their comfort zone and incapable of relaxing. We're not good at multi-tasking in stressful circumstance.

I propose that beginners begin in a suitable playground to gain movement over a surface skills before turn skills.

The same can be done as progression to continually build that as you have described with your students though I would have thought at their level they should already have a much more developed ability to do this. I'm saying it should have more emphasis at the start of the skiing process. Even to have it's own structured skills set development steps.

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My attempted precis is: you are less likely to fall over if your skis are in constant contact with the snow. This means that it is worth learning how, gently and without fear, to absorb the inevitable inconsistencies under your skis. Masque, sorry, but you really could use a good editor.

I can immediately think of two examples in my own tuition (and I'm not an L anything, so we're not talking high level here) where this principle has indeed been addressed: a) starting to learn how to ski moguls by first traversing over a few easy bumps, to get the sensation of absorption; and b) skiing a gentle pitch with eyes closed. Oh and it's worth stating that the first time I ever got feedback from my feet was also the first time that I skied in well-fitted boots. In other words, I agree with Masque (assuming my precis is correct) and don't think one has to be an advanced skier to learn how to 'feel', indeed I think that 'feeling' should be taught as early as possible. (Ooh, matron!)

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rob@rar, but I do agree with this too, my emboldening:

You know it makes sense.

Masque, the problem is, given a very scared beginner, visibly shaking with fear, would you

a. teach them to slide a few yards on a nice easy surface and build up the glide distance

or

b. teach them to slide a few yards on a very variable surface and build up the glide distance over 'varied' terrain.

But I do get what your talking about. On my L2 we skied snowplough turns with our eyes closed, to 'feel' the snow.

Cheers,

Greg

PS let me know when you book your L1 so I can watch and listen whilst you run your beginners class Twisted Evil

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

kitenski,

A snowHead

rob@rar, I think it means take turning out of the equation by learning to absorb and extend over a bumpy straight run first of all.

I think I agree with some of the core sentiment here (& one that makes me a bit cynical of a lot of teaching methodology) in that I believe you can learn a lot from play and "just doing" provided you can feel what is going on and interpret it. It's this that makes it relatively easy for a decent snowboarder to pick up and ski modern skis. I'm pretty sure that the "trademarked" approaches like Wozzer Smith's incessant braquage are really ways of getting customers to develop this "feel". Rob's lightyears ahead of me on this - movement patterns can be copied and developed mechanically but it's always clear to me when I look at someone skiing whether they are "mechanically coached" or "feeling". Even the young backseat bombers you see on the margins of control are at least skiing by feel and balance which always makes me think that they are probably easier to teach than "frozen statue" skiers i.e. give them the right positions to be in and they'll improve rapidly.

A snowHead

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

Pedantica, Of course I need an editor rolling eyes

rob@rar, Should skiers begin on an easy slope? YES, very easy. What I'm proposing is that many absolute beginners are too frequently put in a learning environment that's counter productive to learning, and they progress from that point on by parrot fashion and always in stress, holding back their progress.

My idea is that movement over your skis is introduced in a very shallow barely more than walking pace situation. The beginner is traveling at a familiar and non threatening speed and can relax and have fun with diversionary movements. Stance and posture are easily visible and adjustable as the student no longer has need to sit back.

This is just the preliminary couple of hours. The idea is to give the student not just confidence to move around on their skis but to start the process of self evaluation and feedback, to know what it does 'feel like' to have a stable head and body while the legs absorb the terrain. It gives them a reference point when they are asked to do this at higher speeds and slopes. It's not a panacea that needs to be hammered home for the week but structured into the lesson plan.

As Pedantica, points our out 'comes' to most of us eventually under our own steam, I'm proposing that it's a primary skill to be fostered from the very first baby slides.

Skilled skiers can benefit from the same exercises, I often head for the chopped up crud at the side of the piste to challenge my self to keep smooth and stable . . . that's why I'm often seen eating snow.

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rob@rar, kitenski, Terrified beginner, glide on a flat surface developing posture and stance, then and uneven surface. Yes, in a straight line. It's the fixation on turning that is holding people back from developing an ability to move their body comfortably over their skis. You set someone off across the fall line at a shallow angle and they're at walking pace . . . but what's the only thing on their mind? They have to stop and or turn at the end of that. They don't really listen to you, there are a thousand things running around their head at that moment. The least of which is trying to remember what you asked them to do.

rob@rar, at this level, 'forces' are the last thing they need. It's stability, posture and stance. Allowing all to absorb irregularities while keeping a stable head platform. I believe that essentially we need to be able to ski in a simple, slow but correct manner before we even begin to turn.

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All I can say is "thank God I was taught by ESF".

After all it is free

The ski school at Meiringen (Bidmi) has some great things in the kids / real beginners area for working the suspension. I'll see if Mrs M has some photos, but I'll try to explain. There were 3 different types of obstacle, each was like a ramp of rollers so that the kids ski over them. One was like a mogul; another like a see-saw and finally a little jump. The kids loved going over them, the tentative adults obviously didn't. I wasn't brave enough to try them in front of my kids Embarassed

I thought they were great tools to help the kids experience some of what Masque is banging on about wink

Off to look for photos now...

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rob@rar, so why don't we see it out on the hills? I lose count of the wooden toilet training peeps juddering around in snowplows.

musher, I'm saying adults should start in the same place

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musher, any decent Snowgarden will have stuff like that. There's a really fun looking one in Arc 1800 I ski past every day I'm there. Itching to have a go myself, but I think they mighty spot me. You can get a similar sort of thing for adults on the smaller features in the snow park. Rollers, ski cross, little jumps, wide boxes, etc.

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Masque, your missing a fundamental point, beginners nowadays in the BASI system are taught exactly the way your suggesting! I and rob@rar, have given examples of what can be done, the BASI manual is full of skills like catching gloves, jumping etc that are used.

You know it makes sense.

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

Masque all those things you mentioned remind me of watching young children learn to ski. They don`t listen to a word you say they just do it till it works, just as they learned to walk.

A snowHead

A snowHead

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rob@rar, great minds, I did the same Smile

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rob@rar, I have to admit that it is predominantly ESF and The Italian schools I'm mentally referencing. I've never seen NewGen in action with beginners nor yourself. And I'm wondering if this is part of the reason so many people give up learning. It's not fun to have a holiday when you're feeling stressed and uncomfortable the whole lesson and not making progress.
I too see lots of straight running, but with very little body activity. Lots of ski weighting and gentle turn initiation but very little else. The boarders are as bad or even worse.

After all it is free

This thread is simply ridiculous. Please correct me if I am mistaken but as far as I am aware Masque is not an instructor but an aspiring basi L1 who ironically appears to have no interest in taking lessons himself.

Personally, if I wanted to form an opinion over the quality of snowboard instruction(for example) it might be advisable for me to:

teaching experience

or alternatively

Then people might actually listen to what I have to say about snowboard instruction because I would have a valid basis to form my opinion from.

It appears that Masque has absolutely no idea what is being taught.

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So taking it on a step. Persuading a hard carving skier to keep 'soft' jointed to keep his skis in the carve track rather than "push" the snow? As I experience it, once you stiffen the outer leg and ski it's much more difficult to change the radius of the carve by adjusting your position over the ski and far more likely to bounce out of the track. I've seen the term used here aqlong with the thread on schussing with peeps blaming skis again for not being able to track a flat schuss. Yeah gentle edging is a simple cure or does that just mask an inherent skier issue?

Help!!

Falling, failing and fear

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