Finding "the Flow" of Skiing

[BlizzardBabe]

Posted by @vickie: "I now envision it as being closer to a natural stance ... certainly not 18 inches apart, unless I start mooing."

I'm still laughing. The entire series of posts is great, but I'm still laughing . . .

 

[newboots]

I can't wait for the next lesson! And I can't wait to try the focus exercise the very next time I ski.

 

[Ski Sine Fine]

I love days like the one you described above! As for Taos, it is not all super steep glades. There are also some great green runs. @Ski Sine Fine can tell you about that. She started on the greens.

I was “flowing” by the end at Taos, a direct benefit of the Ski Week. There are greens all over the mountain. The instructor took us everywhere — Whitefeather, Honeysuckle, Bonanza, Jess’s Run, Lower Totemoff, Rubezahl, Whitefeather Bowl, Winkelreid, Easy Trip — these are all greens. Then we moved to the easy blues — Upper & Middle Whitefeather, Powderhorn Gully, Bambi, Powderhorn, Shalako, Upper Powderhorn, Upper Patton, Mucho Gusto, and Lower Stauffenberg (a little icy). Though all greens and easy blues, they are varied enough in both terrain and steepness that they don’t ski like clones of each other. There are a fair bit of mild traverses, but I never had to pole (phantom helped too). I’m looking forward to going back next year.

 

[westcoast21]

On that particular run, I had two things to work on -- skis closer together and focus on a distant target. Before I started, I locked my eyes onto the target. There was no more thinking about that. As I skied, I did assess and remind myself about keeping my skis closer together. So there was really only one topic in my head. The label I have for what I was doing on that run is "hyperfocus", but in a general sense, not the clinical use of the word.

When we skied the short blue section, I was juggling multiple topics in my head. It was kind of like herding cats. And had about the same success rate.

So the short answer is ... No, I can't be thinking about all those details when I'm skiing. I'd go nuts. The details are for couch-skiing.



I don't disagree with your theory, but I'm not sure it can account for what happened in the lesson. Everything I was doing was new, so I wasn't drawing on muscle memory or previous experience, per se. [*] But ... that intense focus did shut out everything else. So your vague theory and my vague thoughts are kind of running along the same path!

* I did a hypnotherapy session on skiing last year. One portion of it was visualization of skiing -- and flowing. Studies have shown that mental practice can be just as effective as physical practice of an activity.

At the end of the lesson with Bruce, we talked about practice. He emphasizes "ingraining" movements -- very much what you're referring to in letting the body do what it has practiced and letting the mind be quiet.

"It was kind of like herding cats. And had about the same success rate." Love it, so relatable!

 

[liquidfeet]

I'm glad you seem to be making more progress, I agree having the right instructor helps so much. Here is a question for you, because your posts are so detailed in regards to the things you need to be doing- are you thinking of all of these things technique-wise while you are skiing? If so, did you notice that during the run where you 'felt the flow' you didn't have this constant dialogue? I have a vague theory that getting to be a good skier with flow relates to having the ability to internalize all that dialogue about technique and essentially shut off the brain and just allow the body to perform the movements you've practiced previously. Would you say that this is what happened on those runs where you felt so good?

The thing your post makes me think of this this model of the stages of learning to do something new:

1. unconscious incompetence --- don't know what I don't know
2. conscious incompetence --- now I know
3. conscious competence --- working on getting this new thing to work
4. unconscious competence --- it's happening consistently without me having to work at it

I think that last one, unconscious competence, is what you are wanting when you talk about flow. You are wondering if you can make #4 happen by "shutting off the brain and allowing the body to perform the movements you've practiced previously."

But "shutting off the brain" on purpose, prematurely, before the new movements are deeply embedded, before that four-part process has run its course, can allow the body to return to its old habits. I know this because I've been very disappointed in my own skiing when I intentionally turn off the brain to see if the new movement is there. When I've done this consciously, as a test, to see if a new movement is happening, nope it isn't. The old habit rises in the void. I have to go back to thinking about the new thing.

@vickie started skiing at 50; I started at 53. I'm still very intensely working on building skills, so what vickie is talking about is something I am still experiencing in my own skiing. My latest thing I'm working on is skiing a direct line down eastern bumps, at speed, both zipper and round turns. Let me tell you, this has been a long time coming. I have felt "flow" with some very intense focus going on in my last few ski days. But I won't be able to indulge in day after day of doing #3 because my ski season has just gotten cut short because of coronavirus. Darn.

How does one know when #4 has happened? In my own skill building, on occasion I realize I've reached "unconscious competence" because without thinking about I one day realize that the thing I was working on previously is now happening without conscious focus. What a joy it is when I realize this. It has only happened after a lot of deliberate practice with that focus, and after adding to it even more new desired movements. Adding new things to the original thing (don't know how to say that better) allows my conscious focus to organically move to the new things at some point. All the while, the embedding process on that first thing is working. And one day the deed is done, and I am unconsciously competent at it.

This process takes a lot of time, more than I would wish since at age 69 my potential skill-building future on snow is shorter than I'd like.

The point I'm making is that at least for me, intentionally shutting off the brain has not worked. It has to happen on its own, at at its own pace.

Flow? I'm speaking from personal experience here. Flow certainly can happen even when I'm working consciously and intensely on something. But only if that something is working.

It sounds like Vickie had flow happen when she focused her eyes on a target downhill and kept her stance more narrow.

@vickie started skiing at 50; I started at 53. I'm still very intensely working on building skills, so what vickie is talking about is something I have experienced in my own skiing.

 

[liquidfeet]

....
We then did a couple of drills, combining keeping my skis closer together and focusing way down the hill. At one point, Bruce stationed himself down the hill and told us to focus on him as we skied down. He would lower his pole to the snow and we were to count the taps. I focused my eyes like lasers on his ski pole.

The next section of the trail, we focused on a distant tree. This run was almost magical. By the time we were halfway down the trail, Bruce said "Wow! Doing this (focus farther down the hill and keep skis closer together), your parallel turns are perfect." What did I feel? Solid, consistent turns, left and right. No slipping. No slop. No wobble. The skis flowing together, at speed (for me). I had already gotten my money's worth from this lesson.....

Something magic happens when one locks the eyes on a target ahead. I know this because I used to be a down-looker. Back then I was a ski instructor at Cannon, and the trainers knew me as the one with the most insistent, pronounced, chin-down vision, eyes focused on the snow just in front of skis. Everyone told me to stop. I tried all kinds of things to help me move my chin upward and keep my eyes ahead on some target downhill of me. Nothing worked.

I put duct tape on the bottom half of my goggles. I put duct tape on the top half of my goggles. I uncovered the back of my neck, allowing the cold in, so that I'd have to raise my chin to stop exposing my neck to the cold. I wore a visor down low over my goggles. One trainer brought a whiplash collar for me to wear. All of these are things that evidently had worked for others with my problem. Not for me! My body found a way to keep my eyes on the snow just in front of me no matter what. As I worked on this, I discovered that I walk around like this when not on skis. I asked my college roommate if I walked like that at age 18 and wow, yes I did. Talk about a deeply embedded habit. This was a hard one to replace.

So for years I've worked on raising my chin, pulling my head back instead of allowing it to project forward, and focusing my eyes ahead. Running trails with rocks in them in the summer has been a big part of this project. Doing these new movements while walking around, everywhere, is still something I can do only with intense focus. However, when running rocky trails I've got this thing working, and when skiing, and especially when skiing bumps, I've got it working. I teach skiers to lock their eyes ahead now too. I like the pole tap thing; I'll add that to my bag of tools.

What I have realized, and what my students report, is that looking at a target ahead activates the previously sleeping part of the brain that feels what the feet and legs are doing. All of a sudden, with this activated part of the brain, one can monitor stance width, underfoot fore-aft pressure, shin-tongue contact, what the ski tips are doing on the snow, what the ski tails are doing on the snow, where the feet are relative to the hips, and so one, whatever one wants to work on.

For Vickie, it sounds like her brain started monitoring her stance width when she looked ahead, so that she could narrow it. And that made all the difference in her skiing, leading to "perfect parallel turns."

vickie, do you think this could be what's going on?

 

[liquidfeet]

...and thanks, @vickie, for writing up your experiences with lessons in such detail.

 

[Bluestsky]

Great write-up we can all benefit from, @vickie. And thanks for detailed info on Loveland ski lessons. Have been eyeing them...cheaper, but was uncertain about the quality on a smaller mountain.

 

[vickie]

Lesson 3

The lessons have resumed!

My plan for private lessons last season got aborted by the closure of ski resorts. This season I picked up where I left off by practicing the changes Bruce introduced in the group lesson last year. And I had my first private lesson with Bruce last week. I plan to continue with Bruce for some time, so one of my goals was to establish good communication with him and teach him what to expect from me. I started by talking about upper-lower separation which we worked on some in the group lesson, that some people tell us to keep our jacket zipper facing downhill, that I will do that and then start internalizing “what am I feeling?” and translate the movement into something that is personal for me. In the case of upper-lower separation, what I feel is the position of my collarbones. Bruce was more than receptive to the way I personalize instructions. He said what I’m doing is building awareness and creating my own cues ... cues that I can access while skiing in order to assess and adjust. That led to “what are you going to focus on for this warm-up run”. I named some things. And he said “maybe instead just be aware of what you feel first, then use your cues to fix whatever isn’t working”. That’s right … he listened to me and then used my process against me! Dammit! And that was the first lift ride up.

During the next run, I made two bad turns, each time not releasing the uphill ski at the end of the turn. I stopped, waited for Bruce to stop, and told him. He acknowledged it and we skied on. The whole lesson was that way. Bruce let me talk, listen, or process as much as I needed. I felt we established a really good foundation for our lessons. Bruce, on the other hand, may be looking into changing his identity!

In the end, this lesson was about upper-lower separation and improving my turns.

Drills we did:

Ski with both arms extended out to the sides, poles dangling down, and keeping the “T” of arms and torso pointed down the hill. I started doing this in a slow, exaggerated way, in part to better feel what I was doing, but also to start stretching those parts that don’t normally get used so much.​

​

On a cat track, ski up the bank, flatten skis, and point them down the bank. The exercise is about flattening and then turning the flat skis, not about going high up onto the bank.​

​

Stand on the hill, skis across the fall line, facing the side of the trail. Move torso to face downhill-ish. Stretch it farther and identify where/what I feel. What I felt was tension in the outside of my downhill thigh … maybe the IT band?​

​

Traverse across the hill on edges, then flatten the skis and slide, then back to edges, then back to flat skis. I started the traverse with my torso facing the other side of the trail, then turned it to face downhill. This is not ideal … I was rotating my torso, not rotating my legs. I am using the word “rotating” pretty liberally there. I think I was actually twisting my torso, not really rotating at the hip socket.​

​

Variation on Hockey Stop – Ski down the hill, rotate flat skis to the side, and slide on flat skis. Stay facing downhill. If you are rotating the skis, you can stay on line. If you don’t – that would be me – you start a turn, then flatten the skis. An exercise for this is to find a long shadow from a tree. Slide down the hill in line with the shadow, rotate the skis, and sideslip. The goal is to ski and slide down that shadow. I would end up about two tree shadows over from where I started.​

​

[Making these notes, it felt as if we did a lot of different sliding/separation drills. And I seemed unable to slide much at all that day. (Which may be why we did so many different drills … trying to find even ONE that I would do well!) Even side slipping was ugly. No idea why. I finally had to just make a mental note to practice sliding on flat skis, forward or sideways, every time I’m out. Once I am doing that better, I will start building on it.]​

​

Ski slowly, use edges to make a turn, then flatten the skis at the end of the turn and slide, use edges to turn in the other direction, flatten the skis at the end of the turn and slide, etc. This was to change my habit of trying to just flip from one edge of the skis to the other.​

​

[I tried synchronizing this with some arm movements. Start with both arms extended to the sides in that "T" shape. As I turned to the left, pull in my left arm and keep my right arm extended. This helped me focus on keeping my right collarbone facing down the hill. As the left turn ended and I was supposed to flatten the skis and slide straight, I would start to extend my left arm and fold in my right one. At first, this was really helpful. The rhythm (or lack thereof) of my arms made me very aware of holding onto a turn too long or rushing into the next turn. Maybe 30 yards later, it all became a blur as if I had a data overload. It was an interesting experiment.]​

​

Make “J” turns and, at the end, flatten the skis and let them slide, even to the point of sliding backwards some. Backwards in this case has the skis sliding on a diagonal, not straight downhill.​

​

In addition, I should start to be aware of my hand positions relative to the slope of the hill. Having the downhill hand lower than the uphill hand helps with pressure on the downhill ski.

At the end, we skied some to put it all together and see how it was affecting my turns. The position:

• Arms/poles forward, hands at the level of the belly button
• Arms held out from the sides of the body
  [I tend to keep my arms closer to my body. This restricts the spine.]
• Slightly round the back
  [Without doing this, it can begin to feel like an effort to hold the poles in the correct position. Rounding the back allows the poles to hang in a more relaxed way. What I have found in practice is instead of rounding my back, if I just tighten my core, I get the same rounding effect but also get the extra stability that comes with tightening my core.]

Outcome: From my perspective, my turns seemed more consistent, more solid, and my skis didn’t seem to have a mind of their own with the uphill ski wandering off at the end of a turn. Bruce was much more positive – he said that at the beginning of the lesson, I had some extra movement in my turns. I would start to turn one ski and then have to move the other one to catch up to it. (I was not aware I was doing this.) After working on upper-lower separation, my skis were moving in unison through the turns.

Practice has been interesting. In addition to working on building muscle memory, I have managed each day to wander into form-breaking trouble … moguls or something too steep or too chopped up for me to maintain form. Those will be some personal milestones to reach for over the course of the season. Thursday was especially interesting. First, a snowboarder crashed 20-30 yards away from me, dislocating his shoulder. Then, on another run, a boy about 4 or 5 years old straightlined at high speed and clipped the back of my skis as I made a turn. He stopped by deliberately falling over as he entered trees. Later I found myself in some soft moguls. Trying to negotiate my way thru them, my skis got away from me. I managed to stay upright, which may not have been the best thing, and bounced across a couple of moguls. When I stopped, it was because my skis were herringboned around a mogul with a ski implanted IN each side. Maybe I should have a lesson (or 6) in moguls.

Given all the little events on Thursday, I kept asking myself throughout the day, "so, how are you doing?" It was usually "hmmm, ok, I guess". After double-harpooning that mogul, all I could say was "sucking like Stormy Daniels".

 

[newboots]

Phew! I'm a little worn out from reading carefully and envisioning all your drills and moves. Keep an eye on Bruce and don't let him get away!

Although I was in a clinic with my ski club (4 students), we worked on many of the same techniques for making our turns better. Not at all in the sort of depth you got in your individual lesson, but covering some of the same material (upper body separation, using side-slipping as a way to learn how to flatten and "move the body into the turn" (I never fully understood that), and focus on the weight and position of the turning skis. I hadn't been able to side slip in previous lessons, but Herb hollered, "skis closer together! Closer! Closer!" When I was afraid I'd cross my tips (or my sidewalls!), side-slipping worked. (This is a beginner's cue; probably you know this already, but it was a revelation to me.)

For someone teaching a group of people who happened to show up, Herb was great. He broke the skills down and worked on them one at a time, then showed how to combine them (two at a time). Much better than the overload I get from less talented instructors!

 

[EAVL]

Vicki-I am one of the divas who has posted about losing my gusto for skiing. I realized I have been at it for ten years (I think?) based on my age. Started at 38 and am 48 now. The first several years I had a kid on a snowboard team and our weekend, holiday, Spring Break lives were on ski hills based on her training and comp schedules. I put in a lot of hours during those seasons and got better quickly. I am told I have good skills/form but after a fall with injury catching an edge unexpectedly and then getting hit a couple of times I am a nervous wreck every time I go! Now we don’t go as often and COVID times have really slowed it down with resorts closing early last year, slow snow start here in CO and this reservation system (I won’t go on about that). I have noticed when there are not many people around I can do everything right - lean forward and confidently charge down even steep blues and be ok with skiing kinda fast. The minute it gets a little bit crowded I need a tranquilizer! My form goes to hell as I am afraid to go even a little fast so I can be ready for whatever shenanigans other skiers/riders might pull near me like sudden crashes, near collisions, straight lining , etc. I find myself holding my breath it seems, praying I will be safe, and then thanking God I made it down in one piece. Then my husband and younger daughter are excited to do it all again and I just wanna have a drink by the fire pit! You mentioned hypnotherapy. Did that help? I bought snow shoes last season and am about ready to just do that while my family goes skiing.

 

[liquidfeet]

...after a fall with injury catching an edge unexpectedly and then getting hit a couple of times I am a nervous wreck every time I go!
....The minute it gets a little bit crowded I need a tranquilizer! My form goes to hell as I am afraid to go even a little fast so I can be ready for whatever shenanigans other skiers/riders might pull near me like sudden crashes, near collisions, straight lining , etc. I find myself holding my breath it seems, praying I will be safe, and then thanking God I made it down in one piece....

It's not you, it's them. Going slow, stopping to let the crazies pass, or avoiding crowded runs is good practice given the danger of inconsiderate skiers breaking the skier's code for their own selfish pleasure.

Start skiing bumps. There won't be people running into you from behind in the bumps. Everyone slows down. Plus, not that many people ski bumps so bump runs are not as crowded.

Take lessons specifically for bumps. Your groomer skiing will benefit too.

 

[newboots]

It's completely normal! You are scared because (1) it's dangerous and (2) your central nervous system knows it. Of course you're scared!

PM me if you want to hear more. (I'm a retired psychologist.) And get Mermer Blakeslee's book, A Conversation with Fear. You are not the only one; we all struggle with this. It's not natural for our nervous systems to want to fly down a steep, slippery, snow-covered hill with boards clamped to our feet. You remember the joy of it. You're able to have fun when the heathens aren't behind you. This will get better! And listen to @liquidfeet! She truly knows her stuff.

https://www.amazon.com/Conversation...ith+fear+mermer&qid=1611460322&s=books&sr=1-1

 

[skibum4ever]

@vickie I am amazed by how well you analyze your lessons and your runs. It sounds you're both making progress and having fun. Maybe we can get together when I am in CO in late March.

 

[Iwannaski]

...but after a fall with injury catching an edge unexpectedly and then getting hit a couple of times I am a nervous wreck every time I go!
...
The minute it gets a little bit crowded I need a tranquilizer! My form goes to hell as I am afraid to go even a little fast so I can be ready for whatever shenanigans other skiers/riders might pull near me like sudden crashes, near collisions, straight lining , etc. I find myself holding my breath it seems, praying I will be safe, and then thanking God I made it down in one piece. ...

@EAVL ....
Am I reading correctly that part of your injury/accident was getting hit? I can imagine that crowds are scary. I am returning to skiing after almost 2 decades away, and on the greens, I’m spending time during every turn watching to ensure that no out of control kid is going to crash into me. Ironically, yesterday, one came whizzing by so close and out of control that I felt the air hit my face...which had goggles, a gaiter and a helmet all around it. Then, my brain runs away worrying about my son who is skiing the same mountain with the same nuts on it.

It’s been making it hard for me to get comfortable. But then I’m stuck on the green because I’m not balanced in my turns, but I’m not balanced because instead of looking down the mountain, I’m looking up the mountain for out of control kids.

My plan is to take a day during the week and hit a local place and spend some weekday time skiing. The way our school schedule is rn, I can actually take my son, who is probably in need of a similar lesson. I envision lots of retirees and moms and then a quiet mountain on which he and I can learn, practice and then head home. A much chiller vibe, or at least more in control and less hubris. Could you take some time during the week and go anywhere to just get that GOOD feeling back? Could you try to recapture your pre-accident joy by making conditions friendly for you and reducing your anxiety?

I know lots of smarter voices have also chimed in here, but FWIW, I see an acupuncturist for my middle aged lady body ailments. She also does work on emotions. All those complementary and non-traditional avenues: hypnotherapy, acupuncture, meditation...they can all help you.

 

[newboots]

Midweek skiing is just the best. I am so grateful that I learned to ski on a rather quiet mountain, and soon after reduced my work to part-time to be able to ski on weekdays. Now that I'm retired, I mostly don't even consider going skiing on a weekend. Such a luxury! If you go early and often, you see the same gang of oldsters, most of whom have been skiing for decades, boot up, ski for two hours, and go home.

And it is so much safer. I feel so lucky, as a relatively new skier, not to have to cope with mad crowds too often.

 

[vickie]

I appreciate so much you all engaging in this discussion. Now that I’m back on skis and had another lesson (more changes to work on), I have a little more insight.

I’ve turned this season into a multi-week private clinic. It’s kind of a “Lemons” season. This is my Lemonade.

Here is a question for you, because your posts are so detailed in regards to the things you need to be doing- are you thinking of all of these things technique-wise while you are skiing?

My mantra this season is “Drills Build Skills”. When I am on skis, I practice drills. Then I take that and try to integrate it into my skiing.

During drills, yes, I try to think about the details. While skiing, no … I can’t get into the minutia of a turn when I’m in the middle of it. When I’m skiing, my brain bounces around among the 2 or 3 things I’m working on to see how they’re going and I get feedback from various things. The feedback is sometimes a “Holy Crap!” moment – when I am in a turn and can feel the arch of my foot locked on that turn, when my upper-lower separation is good and I see that my ski is way outside of my pole, or one day before the first lesson when I felt, for the first time, how my legs were traveling much farther and faster than my torso. I love those moments! While skiing, my brain is super-engaged, some of it is checking in on my form and some is receiving feedback.

The thing your post makes me think of this this model of the stages of learning to do something new:
1. unconscious incompetence --- don't know what I don't know
2. conscious incompetence --- now I know
3. conscious competence --- working on getting this new thing to work
4. unconscious competence --- it's happening consistently without me having to work at it

How does one know when #4 has happened? In my own skill building, on occasion I realize I've reached "unconscious competence" because without thinking about I one day realize that the thing I was working on previously is now happening without conscious focus. What a joy it is when I realize this. It has only happened after a lot of deliberate practice with that focus, and after adding to it even more new desired movements. Adding new things to the original thing (don't know how to say that better) allows my conscious focus to organically move to the new things at some point. All the while, the embedding process on that first thing is working. And one day the deed is done, and I am unconsciously competent at it.

@vickie started skiing at 50; I started at 53. I'm still very intensely working on building skills, so what vickie is talking about is something I have experienced in my own skiing.

I started out this season with 3 ski days before I had a lesson. During those days, I consciously worked on the changes from last season just to try to activate the recent habits and not the older ones. At the beginning of the first lesson, I mentioned to Bruce the things he had me work on last year. During that lesson, he never once mentioned narrowing my stance. I wondered what that meant. But I had new things to focus on. I was already overloaded in terms of what I had to consciously monitor or change. I was no longer thinking about the width of my stance or where my eyes were. Last run on Thursday, I was exhausted. I stopped one last time to give my legs a break and happened to look back at the tracks of my turn. They were so pretty and even … and about 8-10 inches apart. I was so happy! It seems that I now own “narrower stance”.

Going back to @Kimmyt's question, my goal is to own the techniques, so my brain can relax and I can just revel in doing what my body already knows how to do.

I don’t yet own looking out into the distance, but I’m not uncomfortable looking farther out. In order to keep facing forward for better upper-lower separation, I have to have a distant target, so even the newest changes I’m working on should help me continue to build that as a habit. Ultimately, I’m not trying to stare off into the distance all the time. I want to train my eyes to be moving and not shop for turns. Looking down too close causes me to have no consistency in my path. I always want to initiate turns on the best flake of snow and will wander halfway across a trail looking for it.

What I have realized, and what my students report, is that looking at a target ahead activates the previously sleeping part of the brain that feels what the feet and legs are doing. All of a sudden, with this activated part of the brain, one can monitor stance width, underfoot fore-aft pressure, shin-tongue contact, what the ski tips are doing on the snow, what the ski tails are doing on the snow, where the feet are relative to the hips, and so one, whatever one wants to work on.

vickie, do you think this could be what's going on?

This is an interesting idea. And sounds wonderful. For me, I don’t know yet. This sounds like an other-than-conscious monitoring. I think I’m still monitoring on a very conscious level. But I really hope to experience this.

...and thanks, @vickie, for writing up your experiences with lessons in such detail.

Bruce suggested that I make notes after lessons. I laughed. If only he knew!

I did tell Bruce that I’m documenting my lessons and sharing it here. If he ever finds it and reads it, well, that would be interesting.

 

[vickie]

Great write-up we can all benefit from, @vickie. And thanks for detailed info on Loveland ski lessons. Have been eyeing them...cheaper, but was uncertain about the quality on a smaller mountain.

I’ve been trying to find an instructor for a long time. I won’t bore you with my journey nor my feelings about ski schools , but I hear you about the quality issue.

This season, the lesson options are limited at Loveland. If you have your own group, you can have a group lesson. You can walk-in for a private lesson and get a 2-hour lesson if they have someone available. If you prebook private lessons, it has to be a 3-hour lesson. And they have a very limited staff of instructors this season. This may be to our advantage … I assume they would have kept the better instructors.

If you want to try a private lesson at Loveland and are looking for something in particular, I can always ask Bruce for a recommendation. I expect to be working with him for the remainder of this season. He has been very good for me, but that doesn’t mean he’s everybody’s cup of tea. If someone wanted a female instructor or a snowboarder-turned-skier or whatever, he would not hesitate to recommend someone else. The beauty is, as the trainer for the instructors, he knows the skill sets and probably temperaments of the other instructors.

 

[vickie]

Although I was in a clinic with my ski club (4 students), we worked on many of the same techniques for making our turns better. Not at all in the sort of depth you got in your individual lesson, but covering some of the same material (upper body separation, using side-slipping as a way to learn how to flatten and "move the body into the turn" (I never fully understood that), and focus on the weight and position of the turning skis. I hadn't been able to side slip in previous lessons, but Herb hollered, "skis closer together! Closer! Closer!" When I was afraid I'd cross my tips (or my sidewalls!), side-slipping worked. (This is a beginner's cue; probably you know this already, but it was a revelation to me.)

For someone teaching a group of people who happened to show up, Herb was great. He broke the skills down and worked on them one at a time, then showed how to combine them (two at a time). Much better than the overload I get from less talented instructors!

See bolded above.

Don't bet on it. My beginner lessons helped an advanced skier improve his own skills. I shared drills and tips I learned. He tried them and applied them.

Keep sharing! We can all learn from each other. That's what this thread is all about. Matter of fact, tomorrow, I'll pay special attention to whether Herb would be hollering at me too!

 

[MissySki]

See bolded above.

Don't bet on it. My beginner lessons helped an advanced skier improve his own skills. I shared drills and tips I learned. He tried them and applied them.

Keep sharing! We can all learn from each other. That's what this thread is all about. Matter of fact, tomorrow, I'll pay special attention to whether Herb would be hollering at me too!

This is so true! I’ve been skiing in a group every weekend where we mostly stick to black and double black bumps, and eventually trees if they ever get enough snow. So a pretty advanced group. However, on groomers we practice a lot of side slipping, pivot slips, cowboy turns, wedging in and out to parallel turns going across a trail etc. All types of things to practice flattening the skis to initiate a turn and more countered body positions and more rotation of the femur in the hip socket etc. All much needed skills in bumps! These are things you truly can use at any level and will come back to you again and again in different situations. You also find new appreciation for these drills at different times in your skiing progression based on where you are and what you’re working on. I’ve done these drills many times at different stages in my learning, but I’ve found that I’ve been able to feel and take different things out of them at different times and some lightbulb will go off that didn’t 5 years ago when I was working on something totally different in my skiing with the same drills. Some of these drills are also really important for survival skiing techniques in all sorts of situations.