Image of Photo and Caption

Cool picture of me appeared in The Mountain Mail yesterday. The powder has been awesome at Monarch. Eric Ramsey has been taking pictures and I'm very happy to go along. This one ended up on 9 News and in the local paper. I think he likes how I can ski right at him without hitting him and the plastic things on my fingers that define my gloves. Actually this wasn't better powder than yesterday. This picture was taken about four days ago. The powder has been getting better and better everyday!

It's hard to teach lessons on the beginner hill when there is so much great powder on the mountain. But it's all good. Those of us who have been around awhile know where the great powder stashes are even after the 9 am crowd mashes up the hill.

The tree skiiing is gettin' really good these days at Monarch. I'll tell you about the Mirage trees and the Zipper cliffs, but if you really want to know where the great stashes are you'll just have to try and keep up. Then there's the Cat Skiing and Mirkwood. Mirkwood is really great if you can get a ride up. I'm getting lazy these days where I don't like to hike so much when the powder is so awesome inbounds.

Look me up. I'll show you where to go.

I'm In An Article!

Last week I was asked to teach a lesson for marketing purposes. Our marketing director had arranged the lesson for a writer that writes for the Rocky Mountain News. Here is a link to the article as it appeard in an online journal called Real Vail. Click here.

I really enjoyed meeting Luis and Patrina. I know I had fun.

New Terminology

I had a returning student (Steven Owen) a few days ago that asked me to help him find an "imperceptible trigger." I thought that was so cool. I hope to use these words in future lessons. I think what he was seeing was the smoothness of good skiers and wants to emulate how good they look going from one turn to the next, the "imperceptible trigger." 

When he told me that he was looking for the imperceptible trigger it made me think of using the feet and legs to start a turn. Steve was using old school hopping, rotary push-off kinds of moves with the initial turning force coming from his upper body. Can you see it?

I told him that I was once in a clinic with Bob Barnes (Encylopidia of Skiing Barnes) where he told me that the worst movement you can do with your feet in skiing is better than the best movement you can do in skiing with your upper body. I suggested that even though movements in your feet are small (imperceptible) they have a huge affect on the rest of the movements that happen throughout the turn. Boot technology helps to make it so. They are designed to respond to movements we do with our feet and legs.

During the lesson we worked on ankle flexion/extension, rolling the feet to the edges and the flat place between the turns, and steering the feet/legs/thighs in the direction of the turns. These were the "imperceptible triggers" that we worked on. 

I thanked him for the cool words and hope to ski with him again someday.

Big Clinic Today

I led a clinic today with about a dozen other instructors. The focus was on the PSIA milestone called basic parallel turn. Just in case you don't know the milestones, they are wedge, wedge cristi, basic parallel turn, and dynamic paralell turn. It was very obvious to me that we can focus on a specific manuver and do movement analysis for that particular manuver to determine specific needs of individual skiers. This would be true for any of the four basic milestone manuvers. Reinforced to me was the fact that how someone is able to perform any of these manuvers will show movement patterns that help or hinder their overall skiing. These four manuvers display the appropriate combination of skills necessary to perform the maunver which display and show a mastery of the necessary skills for great skiing at any level.

At first is was a little intimidating to have a dozen other instructors, and my supervisor, as well as a couple of other upper level instructors watching my performance. I think I was able to keep the clinic on task and I hope everyone got at least one thing that could understand to improve their skiiing over all. 

I think the single most important movement, as a group, was to improve/enhance ankle flexion, both flexed and extended (some were levered on the front of their boots, others didn't flex at all). The other most important element was to get them to slow down. The Basic Parallel turn needs to be demonstrated to students like you want them to do it. Once we slowed everyone down we were more able to see the movement patterns and turning mechanisms they were using and thus give them constructive feedback on how to improve their overall skiing.

Lots of Lessons

Mostly I've been getting private lessons this year. I'm almost up to 25 hours worth of request privates. After 25 hours I'll get a significant pay increase. Most of my request privates are coming from relationships that I've developed in past years. People from Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and lots of locals are requesting me. They're actually remembering me and asking for me. I'm like the second most requested instructor at Monarch. The person with the most requests is trolling the lobby and pretensiously helping people decide what kind of lesson to take. He also works in the Children's Center which helps a lot in getting requests. So I feel like I'm not doing too bad considering I don't teach CC nor do I troll the lobbys.

The people who are taking request lessons from me are people that I'vd developed a relationship with, in lessons, in the past. I think they feel like they know me and want me back. I work hard at developing relationships with people. The best lessons are when I really understand their motivations and then work hard to help them reach their goals.

Tiger Sharks

Sorry I've been so busy teaching and skiing that it is hard to find time to sit and blog. Monarch has been great this year. The snow is awesome, from powder to beautiful packed powder bumps. It's all good.

 

I got some new skis that I really couldn't afford. But hey, the ski shop, Mountain Sports Haus, let me have a payment plan. At first I didn't like these Volkl Tiger Shark Power Swtich skis. But after skiing on them for a little while, I am so turned on by them. They do what ever I want them to do when ever I want them to do it. If I want to hold an edge, they are like so totally holding, if I want to skid around they're okay with that too. The reviews say that are not so great in the powder, but I've been having a great time with 'em there. That's probably because there are skis out there now (like the Volkl Mantras that I want bad) that are specifically for powder. I'm still gonna try to get a pair of Mantras to use on the Snow Cat, but these Tiger Sharks are like so awesome. As an all mountain ski for an instructor, I don't think you can do any better.

Mike Doyle Interview with Ray Allard, President and Chairman of the Board of the PSIA

Ran across this article about PSIA today. It describes PSIA really well. Here is just one of the questions from the interview:

"Do instructors have to spend a certain amount of time in each classification level before advancing?"

"Yes, there are certain requirements involving time between levels and number of hours taught, although very few move through the ranks as quickly as they theoretically could. Most will achieve Level I after a season or two, and those who are committed can usually reach Level II a couple years or more after that. Level III is more difficult, especially for a part-timer, and only a small percentage (15%+/-) ever achieve it."

Whew, only 15%! No wonder it's been hard. Plus I've heard unoffically that the Rocky Mountain Region has one of the highest standards of the nine regions in the U.S.

Good Info About Skiing

Because of the above article I discovered a bunch of great info about skiing, especially for beginners, at the About.com (http://skiing.about.com).  website. Mike Doyle seems to be the main writer. I added a link to it in my sidebar.

Matt Returns From Last Year

Matt and his family took a Family Private from me last year. They're from Texas and the elevation really took its toll on Matt and he had to bow out of the lesson early. Matt's wife Jennifer, two sons, Parker and Madison, and daughter Abby all went on to become pretty good skiers able to navigate all the green runs at Monarch. This year I saw the boys going up a chair lift that doesn't service any green runs, just blues and blacks, so I know they've ventured on to more difficult terrain. Now Matt wants to catch up to his family so he can enjoy the slopes with them, so he requested a lesson from me yesterday to try again. He told me that he tried to ski with his family last year after they finished the lesson and he felt better but had a really hard time at it.

We started the lesson on Snowflake as though it were a never-ever lesson. I usually do this if I'm not sure of the student's skill development, complete with the boot exercises and one ski traverses, platter turns, etc. If I find that they already have the aquired skills, I quickly go through to the next more challenging exercises. Matt did pretty well and so we were practicing gliding wedges in pretty short order. 

I soon discovered that Matt was trying to use a great deal of upper body movement to try to make his skis go where he wanted them to go. He was using his poles to push himself along rather than let is skis slide with gravity. If he started to get off balance he'd use his poles to try and keep himself up instead of stepping or moving his feet to regain his balance. He was actually reluctant to let his skis start sliding downhill, even on very gentle open terrain. I believe he had developed some muscle memory from last year trying to ski on his own with his family that had become more proficient than he. It sounds like they probably took him on terrain for which he was not ready. As a result, Matt was trying to use his poles and his torso to control his direction.

The best thing I could do for him was to take his poles away. This forced him to rely soley (pun intended) on his feet to move around. Almost immediately he started to become more successful moving around, doing platter turns even on a slight grade, sliding into the lift line, etc. Matt finally was learning to use his feet to navigate on his skis. However, whenever he started to gain even a little bit of speed or get the feeling that he was loosing control his whole body would twist away from gravity and his skis would loose the wedge. I had to keep coaching him to stand up and try to stay in the wedge. Terrain selection was particularly important so that I could get him to feel comfortable sliding and feeling in control. All of my suggestions were directed toward his feet and ankles, pressing down on one big toe, pressing the shin into the front of the boot all the while standing upright between the skis.

Overall Matt did really well. By the end of the lesson we had taken a bunch of rides up the lift, were making traverses, garlands, and turns across the gravity zone.  I really think that if he had taken another lesson last year before trying to ski on his own with his family he would be much further along in his development this year. I really hope he takes another lesson so we can really help his understanding and muscle memory.

I see this kind of thing often when someone tries to figure out how to ski on their own before they take a lesson thinking they will do better in the lesson if they get some practice first. What happens is they actually hinder themselves. I would say generally it's much better if they come to the lesson if they have never even put a ski on first.

Came Down With a Cold But Couldn't Stop

Man, for about the past week I've been fighting a wicked cold and fevor. I think I just wore myself out during the first week or so of skiing and lowered my resistance. Today I'm feeling much better. It's really hard to teach skiing when your head is all clogged up and your nose is running. The snow has been so great at Monarch that I just couldn't stop. If I wasn't teaching I was out skiing. I guess I should have known better to not over do it, but the powder was soooooo good!!!!! 

Anyway I think I'll be over it soon. I feel myself getting better. I think this is another reason to be fit when the season starts. Most people think they want to be fit so they will avoid injuries. But I think getting sick is another symptom of not being fit. I should have just taken it a little slower and not run myself down that way. 

Laura's Breakthrough

I've had Laura for a student for years. She's been in the Mountaineers program and I've had private lessons with her a number of times. One of the things that I was always trying to do was get her to flex her ankles. When I first met her a few years ago she had rear entry boots that were way too stiff for a person her size. She was probably like eleven years old. This is a typical problem I have found with smaller people, their boots are often too stiff to allow them to effectively flex in them. As a result I think they learn to ride the backs of their skis and thus not ski as well as they could if they could flex their ankles and stand on their feet. Eventually I got her dad to get her some front buckle boots, but I think Laura had the bad habit of leaning on the backs of her boots and riding the backs of her skis. Well today Laura came to the lesson with band new boots and skis that she is very proud of and that actually suit her very well. Plus she has grown quite a bit. She's now 14 and probably weighs somewhere close to a hundred pounds.

Since this was our first lesson of the season and her new focus is to become a ski instructor someday, I sort of tested her on some of the basic skills in our first runs. I wanted to see if she remembered the difference between skidded turns and carved turns. We played around with different turn shapes. We talked a little about directional movements. We watched other skiers and practiced a little bit of movement analysis. Her understanding of skiing has grown quite a bit over the past years. 

She still seemed to be a little in the back seat to me though. We talked about how the ankle flexes. We stood in one spot and looked at how our shins pushed up against the front of the boots when we close our ankles and how the backs of our calves pushes up agains the back of the boots when we stand up real straight and tall while opening our ankles. Then we skied some more. Then when I thought she understood what I meant by closing her ankles, I asked her to try to closing her inside ankle, or the uphill ankle, in the finish of her turns. Wow it was like magic. What I saw was a young lady making really strong turns, flexing in the bottom of the turns, and opening her ankle to allow the new turns to start. She was standing in much better balance on her skis moving confidently into each new turn (rather than being in the back seat). 

I think she knew how thrilled I was. I think this was a major change in her skiing that is going to set her up to become a truly hot expert skier. Of course there was lots more that we talked about, like how all the stuff we talked about was relative. Sometimes we flex our ankles with more intensity sometimes it's just nice and easy. Next time we meet we're probably going to focus on edging skills. Now that her flexing and extending has become so much better, enabling her to balance better on her edges.