New questions:
How often are lessons useful for an intermediate who aspires to become an advanced skier sooner rather than later?
Every day. Of course money is usually the limiting factor to that. That is why we made the DVDs we made... I pretty much lessoned every morning. Did a quick warm up, picked up instructor for a couple of hours. Sent him back to ski school and worked on my 'home work'. Not cheap but effective. (I needed the feedback until I developed my own replacement system).
We made the DVDs with the idea that instructors could set "homework" from the DVDs between lessons because most people can only really afford an occasional lesson at the price many resorts charge. (Especially with resorts insisting on selling privates only by the 1/2day or day not hour). While Rick knew that his race program was affordable, he was pretty horrified when he realised what people needed to pay to learn to ski as adults in most locations.
We do have people that have had a zillion lessons in the past and are just using the DVDs alone though... They kept sending us messages saying "OK why didn't they explain THIS" I think often the instructor did try to but the message got scrambled along the way... One of my friends and his wife have both said separately -"Oh THAT is what they meant when they said xxxx" I still think having lessons and mixing with DVD drills is better myself... but hey I can understand they are a bit disillusioned with lessons - they had given up lessons before they got the DVDs...
During a vacation ski week?
When live within an hour of a ski area?[/QUOTE]
Well ideally as above - every day if money is no object. Of course that is not the reality... vacation ski week - perhaps second day
If you have a good warm up routine to get things going then do that day one.
lesson day 2
Practise what you learnt while you ski the other days... Perhaps(maybe) a follow up final day if you can manage that...
Live near ski area - get in some program... do it!
OR(if you really really don't want that) - Do your season warm up routine first day or two... then a lesson... then "homework" then lesson etc etc... Use week vacation above to be a travel holiday rather than your learning time (i.e. learn from the new resort not new technical skills in that week) (DVD drills work well like this - we have a lot of feedback on this from "steep and deep" type skiers who have found "steeper n deeper" from some work at the local ski bump before hand)
What is the advantage/disadvantage of a full day lesson vs. a half-day lesson for an intermediate?
Hmmm depends on price...
I wrote this up years ago for the aussie forum I think but here goes.
If you really are hard up for the money then you will often get a discount price for a private lesson at 'unpopular' times. In Australia that will be afternoon and 8:30am. It can be effective to grab that 8:30 1 hour time slot if money is tight but group lessons not working.
Generally 2 hours is minimum time - instructor might be late from previous lesson etc and you need time to go find terrain, work on stuff, try to consolidate that...
1/2 day is pretty good length for an experienced skier. However often too long for a beginner/intermediate who will tire more easily for a variety of reasons(more tense, working harder as less efficient movements... etc) Plus you can really really wear out mentally if focusing hard. A good instructor can fix this by strutting down time mentally during that lesson. So yeah pretty good... spend rest of day on homework.
Full day - unless difference in price between 1/2 and full day is not much then this is not that great unless you are a more advanced skier.
Benefits - can split a day between say a couple of kids or a husband and wife etc - meet for lunch and tag team instructor. Fantastic for powder days or advanced skiers who need time to get to terrain.
For me - I always booked 2-3 hour lessons yeah day and upped to full day if it looked like a fresh snow day(not really powder in Australia mostly) Fresh snow days the guys and I liked to hunt the snow and farm... not a day for homework. If I couldn't swing the whole day lesson I'd wave good bye at the place I was skiing and they would quick return to their next lesson while I stayed and made the most of the stashes we had decided I should get to next.
"Homework" - can be anything... It can be "Go use that corn we found up above the trees at xxxx" "10 runs of drill A, 5 of B" "Run the gates" "Work on spinning 360's" "Lap Lift Y a few more times and focus on what you are doing with your hips" "Ski the trees up at Z" "Try making turns like .... and then ... keeping rhythm like.... " "Work on falling leaf" "Jump that jump a few more times" "See how many turns you can get in the area between Tower C and F" "Try to make your long turns half the width of Z run"(i.e. looooong)...
Often it was to use certain types of terrain to focus on certain things - but to ski where I wanted just remembering to think about certain things at various points.