Author Topic: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!  (Read 2680 times)

jbotti

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« on: December 16, 2012, 02:24:04 pm »
At season's end, it would be of interest to see the improvement records of the Welsh Village junior racers.

I've mused about how PMTS movements are introduced to a brand new skier and how they develop without the stability of a basic wedge turn. Presumably, the movements are those shown in his Expert Skier I book. It seems the movement progressions would take a lot of time and require very gentle terrain. Friends who teach at my home mountain have expressed concern about turning new skiers into guided missiles (skiing parallel), and, that's one, safety-based argument for a wedge system. (not trying to start any holy wars here ;D).


I think it will take more than one season to fully integrate PMTS ino the tecahing and for the skiers to more fully integrate this into their skiing. You could actually see some regression first. This is not unusual when skiers try something comepletely different.

As for the second comment, I did a lot of the instructor training at the most recent Tech Camp. It all comes down to the intsructor using the terrain that is available properly. If you are teaching with garlands often there is one direction that a turn will slow the skier down and another that will bring the skier directly into the fall line (and gain them much speed). Our training was ocurring at A basin with only one lift open and two runs both of them blue or dark blue. While some sections would have been too challenging for a beginner, it was amazing how much terrain we found to work on beginner drills. A well trained PMTS instructor with green slopes at his or her disposal can easily teach a beginner skier an entire day without ever teaching the wedge or the student needing the wedge to stop or slow his or her speed.

What most instructors don't realize is that the first day on skis in a PMTS lesson does not involve a lot of skiing. It is very different approach than teaching the wedge and putting them on the bunny slope and telling them to power their big toe edge and hope that they figure out how that makes them turn.