Lynn and I had an extremely enlightening day skiing with Diana Rogers on Saturday.
But what I wanted to share and open for discussion here was from a discussion on the first chair ride.
I have often been confused by PMTS. My analogy, that I shared with Diana, was that it sometimes feels like following a sequence of directions from MapQuest without really ever knowing the destination.
Her response, which just knocked my socks off, was "the destination is determined by each individual." That was real eye-opening to me, and I realized that I had been thinking of it much like a school curriculum, if you passed the classes then you got "the degree."
And I think we all do it to some degree. In response to movement analysis, it's not unusual to hear reviewers say something similar to "tip more, flex more!". But how much is enough, and why do we want to tip more.
It seems so obvious now, but maybe worth saying that our "walk in the world of skiing" is based on us --- what we want to accomplish, where we are in terms of age and in physical abilities, and what we are willing to invest in terms of time, money and effort. And unlike some other activities, there isn't even any standard such as "par" to measure where we stand when compared to some "average".
So when someone is seeking improvement in their skiing, maybe the first question is "what is YOUR destination" rather than assuming that "their goals" are the same as mine? I've done this without really realizing it in biking. Sometimes the "destination" has been making it up a hill that defeated me earlier in the year, or riding a metric, or then riding a Century. I think, for me, that next year I will give more thought to "what do I want to accomplish in these three months of skiing" and some thought also to how I might measure it.