MA clinic advice

I'm putting together an off-snow clinic for first year instructors, which I'll be using to teach them some of the basics of MA. I won't be getting too involved, as these are shiny new instructors, some of whom will be high school kids. It's going to be a lecture/video presentation, and I'm looking for pointers on how to keep in interesting and get in the most important elements.

During the clinic, I'll be looking to teach the instructors how to recognize correct stance and fore/aft balance, upper/lower body separation, and proper angulation. The method I'm thinking about using is starting by showing a video of a proficient skier (me), and using stop motion with superimposed graphics to highlight the different elements I want to draw attention to. I'll be talking over the video as it goes along. My next two videos will be a skier in the bumps, and then a skier skiing GS gates. I'd use these to demonstrate how the fundamentals remain throughout, even when the type of skiing changes.

The next few videos would be of some skiers (me and other instructors) who are clearly demonstrating a single deficiency in their skiing, and how to recognize that single deficiency.

My final set of videos would be tape of actual students or members of the skiing public, and I'll ask the new instructors to deconstruct the videos for me.

Any feedback, ideas, revisions?

I've found using computer software like V1 has been much more effective than "regular" video when doing MA clinics with rookies. The stop motion with super imposed graphics is very helpful and is a key first step. The ability to vary the speed from frame by frame through slow motion to regular speed is what most helps the pros "develop their eyes" and take the learning from the clinic to the slopes. When I was first learning to teach and did one of these types of clinics, it was difficult for me to see what the clinic leader was talking about because (without a high end video deck) isolating and repeating specific sections of a clip is just too difficult. Remember that beginner pros perform best when looking only at specific things (e.g. ski/snow interaction, knee bend, shoulder rotation) vs multiple things (e.g. relationship between knee and ankle flex).

I recommend focusing your clinic on one example each of the four skills, using the visual cues as a checklist for comparing effective vs ineffective movements. Using different terrain will spice up the presentation, but also do beginner teaching because this is what they will be doing most.

Good idea....why ignore your own advice and throw in GS racing and L3 instructors?  Show wedges and low end stuff, focus on the skills.  Anything else and you'll lose em.

This is a very effective indoor session for new and experienced instructors. 

Starting with the good examples of other instructors is a good idea:  you're reinforcing positive images of the final goal.

One thing I would change would be to skip the video of instructors showing artificial mistakes.  (Now if you have any of those embarassing clips where the instructors are genuinely having problems, that's always interesting.)

I find pointing out problems in GP skiers is much more effective, so go straight to footage of your actual students to solidify how to recognize the skill deficiencies.  Lead them through the first group to build their knowledge base, and then let them identify what to work on in the next set.

You also want to get to the point where an evaluation is made after seeing a video clip only once, with no slo-mo or freeze-frames.  Quick recognition is a big challenge for new instructors, but this is what they will be faced with on the hill, so start developing this teaching skill early on.

freeski919,

Great advice from TR, Sd72 and MM.  The best advice I can give is to keep it simple.  If too much information is given, they may come away with less.  Asking them questions is the key to their learning.

Like Sd72 mentioned, they will mostly be teaching low end skiing and kids rather than instructors or WC GS racers,  that should be the focus of the MA clinic in my opinion.

RW

Freeski, good of you to try and put together something for your indoor sessions. My thought is if theses are shiny brand new instructors, mainly high school kids as you put it, MA is going to be a bit out of reach for them. Most can barely ski never mind understand what they are doing and looking for. If this program is one part of a multi part indoor session maybe it will be worth it as an introduction to only the most basic of body awareness. I think a better thing to work with newbies on is there presence in front of a group. being out in front, leading a group to do something. How well they compose themselves, keep a group active, moving and having fun. Most of these kids will have a real hard time just getting up and introducing themselves. Keep it as simple as possible if you don't want to scare them off. An even simpler thing than watching a video is watching others in your session. Be it walking, jumpimg , jogging,standing on one leg, have people look for the ways others are moving, flexing, absorbing doing basic things we all can do in a room. Question them on what body parts are doing the work and how those parts are working together.

Very true Rusty, I just think MA at this level should be done in a very basic gross movement analysis. If by looking at videos and looking for all the little things the big picutre can get lost and people get confused and frustrated. As others have said very simple things should be looked at and discussed.

Again yes and no. There's no disagreement that rookies need to focus on big and simple things to start with. But something I've had success with is training pros' eyes. When rookies start doing MA, they generally can only see one thing at a time and they are able to recognize only a very few things. Examiners see everything they need to see in 2 turns. Variable speed playback can accelerate a pros development towards the examiner level. By focusing on one small thing at various speeds from frame by frame through slow motion to full motion, a pro can more quickly learn to see things "live" on the slopes. Using this method can more quickly develop the list of things that pros can spot and their ability to be simultaneously aware of multiple body parts.

For example, it's difficult for most rookies to accurately describe snow spray from skis looking at a full speed video clip (e.g. at what point in the turn does snow start spraying from the skis, where does the snow start coming off the ski relative to the tip or the toe piece) because they are looking at the skier not the snow, Using traditional VCR based slow motion methods you can easily get pros to observe and agree to accurate observations, but it's hard to get them to do this when the speed switches back to full speed. Gradually replaying the turn at increasing slow motion speeds is hard to do with normal VCRs (VCR's with jog/shuttle dials can do it), but easy to do on a PC with software like V1. Being able to stop and back it down a little bit when the speed gets too fast, gives enough time and repititions for the eyes to learn to see both the skier and the snow.

This is kind of like learning to hit baseballs in a batting cage. Traditional VCR based MA is like stepping from the softball (30mph pitch) cage directly into the fastball (80 mph pitch cage). Computer based MA is like going down the line of cages from 30 to 40 to 50 mph, etc and staying in each cage until you're comfortable with that speed before moving on.

A rookie MA session can focus on "gross" items like basic balance, edging, rotary and pressure control movements and also introduce linking these movement to points in the turn in order to diagnose root causes of strengths and weaknesses. My suggestion for "eye training" can help with the latter goal.

Right on the button.  It's not an easy skill, and it doesn't get easier by avoiding or over-simplifying it.

A ton of good advice here, and all of it is much appreciated. I need to mention that I want to try and give these kids a baseline from which they can work. I'd like to show them the 'right' way, so they can see variations from it. That's why I want to use seasoned instructors. The reason I wanted to throw in short (and by short, i mean maybe 15 seconds each) clips of a GS and bump skier is to give a quick illustration that fundamentals are fundamentals, and can be picked out regardless of terrain or style of skiing.

Doing MA of wedge skiers is something they're going to be doing all the time. My concern is that they know why they are teaching a wedger to do this, that or the other thing. I feel that if they know what the end result is, it helps them get to where they want to go. I just know that when I'm overseeing the beginner hill, and I see a instructor doing something completely off the wall, I ask why they did it, and the answer just tells me that they really don't have a concept of what the correct form is in the first place.

Freeski919

I've led a couple of MA clinics using the techniques you are going to use.  The best thing is a projection TV and a big screen.  You can get the images about life size that way.  I used the PSIA - Rocky Mountain Skiing Standards 2004 DVD for the demos.  They have some great wedge and wedge christi demos you can step through.

I broke the group up into sections and had each section concentrate on one of the basic BERP skills.  Then I'd run the video at full speed.  Stop it and ask what they saw.  Then we'd back it up and do it stepping through the video so they could see exactly where the movements were occurring.  For every video I'd rotate what the groups were looking at.

Then we'd did the same thing for videos of "normal" skiers.  In this case I made sure that they focused on what each person was doing that was good and then what they could do to build on the good skills.  (I like to reinforce the positive.)  I even had a clip of me in there.  It was fun tearing it up.  It was even more fun when someone finally realized it was me they were ripping to pieces.  (Ya gotta have fun.)