Errors

I was chatting with a famous golf pro (one of Golf Digest's Top 100 Instructors) about errors in golf. He said, most people make errors on purpose. He meant that people think the error is what they're supposed to be doing. In other words, it's a simple misunderstanding. 

On the other hand, Weems says that people make errors because they serve a purpose. In other words, the error is an adaptation that enables them to ski. 

What do you think? Do errors arise from more than one cause? Does knowing the cause make any difference in how we treat the error?

 You know what I would say!

I agree that if you are in the wrong position, whether intentionally, unintentionally, or because of your equipment, you then need to intentionally make other "mistakes" in order to compensate.  Most movements made by skiers are intentional, buy many could be classified as "mistakes, " because as Weems says, they serve a purpose. 

To be a good golfer or skier takes a lot fewer movements than most practitioners intentionally put into them, and that's why they are not as good at it as they could be, myself included.

I don't know if I agree with the golf pro that it's a "simple misunderstanding" but I don't' think it's an adaptation either. I think it's a compensation. I can describe it better in golf than on skis. I can (sometimes) hit a golf ball straight with a very strong grip or a very weak grip. The differences in static grip are easily identifiable as I setup to the ball. My swing will be significantly different depending on which grip I use. That's where the "compensations" come in. There is probably an easier, more repeatable, swing for most golfers with a grip more toward the middle that allows for a more "natural" swing with fewer compensations (Weems' adaptations). The instructor is always pulled between the short term and long term goal. Change a habit over time or provide a band-aid that will help the student enjoy what they are doing more without a long unlearning curve.

I know what you said to me, but I'm not sure I should post that in public!!!

I believe that they can arise from more than one cause.  Take a skier with an A-frame.  The cause may be that they are skiing the same way on shaped skis that they learned years ago on the old straight skinny skies, or they could have an alignment issue and that's the only way they can get their ski on edge.  The latter  won't go away until their boots have been custom fitted and canted or sole planed.  Asking the student questions about their past skiing experience or finding out if there are any physical limitations when certain errors show up is helpful in deciding how you can correct those errors or mistakes.

Okay, my error in golf has always been too big of a backswing, which I cultivated thinking that was how I could create more head speed and get more distance. I took a lesson and the pro raised my awareness of what I was doing and convinced me that distance was in the swing forward, not the swing back, and explained that the byproduct of too big a backswing was getting off balance, extending at the shoulder and losing my plane, and making errant shots. Sometimes everything lined up and I got a huge shot, but 80% of the time I was off plane and hitting wild. The lesson made me mindful of it, that is, I intellectually understood and appreciated that I was making this error. But there's a huge gap between knowing the fix and making it. My mind was changed, but my body was still groovin' to too long of a backswing. It felt good. It was like my body was fine with 20% success. I still struggle with it--the saving grace is that when I shorten the backswing, I get a good shot almost every time. In time, I hope, the positively reinforced repetitions will become the new "feel-good" that my body strives for and I'll have the ability to make shots with less backswing--which will open up a whole world of shots in my game. 

I would say that I got the error because I thought it was the right thing to do; I kept the error because it worked to some extent; I'll get rid of the error by replacing it with something that works better. 

 I can see errors being form both sources. If a skier receives poor instruction, doesn’t understand instruction, or has a flawed vision on efficient skiing errors may be from that lack of understanding. On the other hand, if the skier has physical issues, excessive fear, or a poor basic stance, errors may be used to compensate for these and other issues. 

It reaffirms for me the importance of getting the right start in the sport. Not having to unlearn the bad habits that result from self-teaching or bad teaching. Unfortunately, our instructional model has the least experienced teaching the most impressionable. Worst of all, we accept this as inevitable.  

The errors I've seen arise from both causes. but typically the error does serve a purpose. It is an error in the sense that it may not serve the purpose well and because it often inhibits further progress. Knowing the cause is important for an instructor because in asking a student to replace one movement or behavior with another you are apt to be seeking to tear apart the student's basic tools for survival. The proposed change therefore is far from incidental but involves a basic replacement which may threaten core skills. Whether it was an inexperienced instructor inadvertently teaching body-steering to a student in an early lesson in a poorly thought out drill or an adaptation discovered and seized upon by a beginning skier pushed onto terrain beyond his skill level by well meaning friends it has become an adaptation to serve something needed in skiing.

For what its worth, when i was teaching I found teaching beginners to be the most rewarding thing I might be asked to do. Far from being cut and dried and routine it could be challenging. I especially liked the fact that it forced me to think of my teaching in the context of the entire progression from first time on skis to advanced skiing. It really causes you to re-examine your understanding of core principles when you must look at movements and response to basic needs in your students in light of advanced skiing, knowing that what you are teaching has an end goal that is in effect a test of the validity of each little thing. You are teaching people at a very basic level in this sense but seeing them in your mind's eye as it were as if they were advanced skiers.

Of course you rarely get to take them that far and a great many experiences will intervene in their experience to interfere with their progression. Most of the advanced level teaching I was called on to perform was essentially remedial in nature. The teaching system envisions a smooth progression built upon skill development and correct movement patterns but the reality for most students is a journey of seemingly endless detours and dead-ends. It is unfortunate that some of this is the result of poor instruction but I think the detours do tend to build a kind of depth and versatility perhaps not envisioned in the teaching system. At any rate compared to the difficult challenge of correcting basic habits of movement and strategies for survival, teaching beginners is a rare luxury and an opportunity to fashion entirely new garments out of whole cloth, so to speak.

Whether the majority of a skier's errors (that's getting dangerously close to discussing good and bad in skiing, nolo) are deliberate performance due to misconception or are adaptations to let them ski depends mainly on whether the skier has had a good in-shop and on-snow alignment tweak or is naturally blessed with good alignment. 

There are two distinct populations of skiers:  those who own their gear and have gotten it fully dialed in and all other skiers.  The dominant nature of their errors is different.

Heh... I've been thinking the same thing since the thread started... In order to prevent and fix errors you'd have to concretely define them.

I'll define an error as an inefficient way to accomplish a task, only if it's not a choice but an only option.  In skiing we're free to ski as inefficiently as we choose, if we find what we're doing fun.  Right and wrong discussions become soaked in dogma and ignorance when choices rather than skill deficits get coined as errors.  

Only options usually result from tackling challenges beyond current skill capacities to do it efficiently, then latching onto an inefficient approach out of a survival response, and then embedding that approach into muscle memory.  Building new skills allow those old habits to be replaced with more efficient performance methods.   

Knowing or finding the path towards the correction of the cause is the foundation of building towards the elimination of the causes of perceived errors. First the basic skills used improperly must be identified and the source of this misapplication should be explored. It could be alignment, poor equipment, misapplied intent or just a lack of athleticism.

Find the roots and you can begin to head down the path to improvement by  building upon good fundamentals.

You can use less experienced instructors to work with beginners if you first teach the teachers how to teach good fundamentals you don't have to correct later. Leaving them to do their best without a good base of understanding is just another case of the blind leading the blind. It happens and often. This should be a priority .

Arrogance by some who describe the joy and fun by people get even though they do it by whatever means they can. Errors as you see it and them as hackers, in a sport that you make a living off.

This thread smells of the Romans watching the Christians fighting off the Lions.

Why is it you think all skiers who don't take lessons or have been self taught can only be hackers building on the errors of their misfourtune?

I feel very sorry for you.

I think it's more a case of  ....you do this and it gets you to the bottom  and you clearly are having fun doing so. Try this, it should please you with the results it can offer. Now you have something new to think about.

Some people like judgmental instruction . I do . If I suck I want to know what it is I'm performing poorly or inefficiently and how can I improve. Others want to be massaged into improvements and some may not really care. It's up to the consumer. I think they should be having fun and where they take it from there is their business.

I agree, though I suspect you're like me and seeking clear and specific feedback on exactly what you are doing vs what is being asked of you - rather than seeking judgmental interpretations of right vs wrong.  Are you looking for 'Rightness' - or functionally accurate movement patterns?

I generally find people who like information in judgmental form (rightness/wrongness) to be the same people who watch judgmental news & commentary programs, enjoy judgmental articles and web sites and are sometimes very judgmental of others.    I suspect we grow up in judgmental environments and some of us never develop other ways of viewing or interacting with the world.

The concept of an 'Error' only exists because we frame outcomes by our own measurement systems and expectations.   If a definitive outcome doesn't meet our expectations under our own given system of measure then we generally label it as an error.  

If the 'measuring system' we use is limited as compared to the total range available for potential measurements then we're probably slapping our 'Error' and 'Right/Wrong' labels in places we'd not otherwise put them.   One person's 'error' may well be another person's Best Practice.

Rather than focusing on definitions for where to slap those labels it makes more sense to me to focus on expanding the range of our knowledge in every possible measurement system.

.ma


Edited by michaelA - 10/15/09 at 12:55am

It depends who is skier/golfer you are talking about, and it depends what kind of error or "error" you are talking about.
Let me explain this now. If it's about top level athletes (skiers, golfer, tennis or basketball players, it really doesn't matter which sport it is), then yes, these "errors" are made intentionally. Each athlete has his own technique which helps him be faster, better, more accurate... This technique might be way off the "proper" by the book technique. In competition sport, it doesn't matter how you look (unless we talk about ski jumping, skating and other sports, when you have judges giving grades for your "look"), but how fast/good/accurate you are. For me, one technique gives me a bit more power, a bit more speed, while for you, completely different one gives you same results. So with top athletes, "errors" are intentional and they are done to be faster.
Different thing are hobby skiers/golfers/runners... Noone of them is chasing extra hundredths of a second, so they don't need to optimize their technique with "intentional errors", just to be faster (except for few, who might have to do this due some disabilities which would otherwise prevent them from doing particular sport). For such people, I doubt they would be doing errors intentionally. Such people, at least in my opinion, do errors, because they don't know better (sorry my English is far from perfect, so this might sound bad, even if I didn't mean it bad way). And I'm pretty sure, they would love to change this, to have "proper" technique without such errors, if only they could.

So is it right to label these people as "Hackers"? And make examples of these people and laugh at them from the lift because you as superiors and teachers only see the errors in their technique instead of the smile on their face?

I don't think so.

I'm confused. Is the word "error" now in the doghouse? I also didn't see the word "hacker" in this thread. But still, if the nomenclature fits on a foot, why not call it a shoe?
Concretely? Why not say "accurately"? 

In the past we used to have clinics titled Error Detection & Correction. Now we call it Movement Analysis. That's just a euphemism to placate the PC-police. If indeed people think that "one person's error is another person's creative expression" then we might as well close the thread. 

However, when good skiers ski, their nationality, gender, size, and backgrounds all blend into one picture of good skiing. Why is that?

I think it's due to balance - the way we all interact with gravity. There are certainly individualistic ways to get down the hill but "overall" and "on the average" we naturally gravitate toward an efficient -balanced approach. Within the range of GOOD are some with knees together other with a wider stance, some who stand more upright and others who bend closer to the snow, some use more knees or more hips or more ankles or bend at the waist. The common element of good athletic performance is BALANCE.

I don't remember I wrote anything about laughing at them. All I wrote is, that with top level skiers, errors are not really errors but their way to be faster, even if by the book, these are errors, or better to say, not proper technique. With non-racing skiers, these are errors, and normally they are not done intentionally. I don't see any reason why they should be laughed at because of this.
I'm might ski good (with 20 years of racing behind, I probably am "a bit" better then average skiers), but I'm not good in something else. Should people laugh at me because of this? I guess not. Should I laugh at someone, because he doesn't know how to ski perfectly? Hell no! I never implied we should laugh at anyone who has anything but perfect skiing technique, so I don't know where you got this idea.

Nolo,

"Accurately" still requires that you have a "concrete" reference.

Of course, if you're happy spraying your drives all over the course, then golf is all about the smile.

Okay, so golf has a scorecard. What does skiing have?

I like these two yardsticks:



What separates the good from the not-quite-good-enough is economy of movement. The best golfers have reached "the simplicity on the other side of complexity." I think the same value would apply to any athlete in any sport.

The scorecard does not provide a reference for the quality of movement. 

I was taught by my husband and his friend John 24 years ago.  I did fine, kept up with the boyz and had a great time doing so.  It wasn't until I started to get involved with ESA and got some solid instruction that I started to ski efficiently and get more out of my day.
I can confidently say that I am a better skier today because I fixed errors that I had been making because they served a purpose at some point in my skiing experience, I'llbeit not efficiently.
I can also say, with confidence, that my husband is a faster skier than I am, but I can outski him.

No one is picking on him, but at the end of the day, I'm not worn out quite like he is, and I can't imagine that he's enjoying that.
I feel sorry for him 

If you accept my hypothesis that economy of movement = quality, then the least number of strokes is a concrete and specific measure of the quality of the movements.

I'm generalizing here because what came to mind was a quote used by Bob Barnes a few years ago that really got in my craw. The first time I heard the word "Hacker" used to describe skiers who thought they were having a good time feeling good about their skiing but were observed hacking  down the slope by some elite instructors. I didn't like the way this thread was aiming.

I'm a 7 handicap in golf and it comes with all the errors I have in my game. Mostly conscience errors because of a 40% range of motion in my right shoulder from a skiing accident while patrolling. And to be honest, errors that arise from time to time that cause a swing breakdown or not to be excluded, mental errors with club selection and missreads both in distance and on the green. even without errors in my game, i'm resigned to the fact i'll never be a consistant scratch golfer and can live with that fact.

My skiing game also has flaws and errors in it I suppose. You professional instructors and know it alls can watch my skiing from the lift and probably find my errors easily. But like my golf game, I'm perfectly happy with my effort and my abilities as a skier. The smile on my face is usually pretty large as most of the Bears I've skied with here will tell you. So, nolo, the shoe really doesn't fit. Though somewhat flawed, my skiing is pretty damned good and allows me to hang with the big dogs still especially in bumps and powder. I can carve my noodles on the groomed and the slop.

So, my complaints in this thread aren't about me but I stand up for all the others who might feel belittled and inferior to those who critisize and use them as examples in the errors of their ways. And I applaud Rick for his post as I think it relates to most of the visitors who frequent these forums.

You're right . My use of this term is incorrect. Judgmental is placing your values on another viewed by your personal beliefs . I did mean that I like honest feedback . Call it what it is . Give me specifics without the fluffy pillow and I'll get right on it. I don't need all the emotional cushioning.
 I prefer details and direct feedback. Judgments are emotional responses and bring to bear defensive emotional responses in others which  can  block out intentions because of the wall you just built between you.

nolo,

The scorecard won't define your errors.  It might quantify their severity, but not their nature.
 
Consequently, the notion of technique errors need a model of technique as a reference.  It is an inescapable conclusion that movement errors require a movement reference.