Peceptions on the effectiveness of PMTS - Page 3

skiingman, just to clarify and not to belabor a point that belongs in another conversation, my comment about forward mount was directed at the reasoning behind the blanket generalization: if people want to ski the back of the boot, let's mount the binding to make that easier for them. Then you responded: :

Maybe it's because I am a woman that these genderalizations make me so mad.

What does "openness to individuality " mean in this context? As coaches, we always have to deal with individual personalities and abilities, but technique is the same for everyone. Bode Miller can change the standard technique, but that's not going to happen except at the highest levels of racing (I was going to write "World Cup," but Bode changed things as a Junior.) And even athletes who try to extend beyond what we now believe is the best technique need a solid grounding in fundamantals. You have to know the rules before you can break them.
PSIA-E is the biggest and best ski school in North America, for its own members. It runs over 1000 days of clinics for its members every year. A large number of those clinincs are aimed at issues relevant to beginners, intermediates and children. It is a pyramid scheme if by that you mean that the people run it are among the best skiers around.
I think that pretty much sums up my point that the PSIA "brand" has little value to the public. But in fairness, PSIA markets itself to instructors, not directly to the public. Some instructors are disappointed about that, but the reality is that it's hard to market to such a small group as skiers (particularly the subgroup of skiers who think they need lessons), especially when you have no meaningful control of the product you are offering.

BK

The same could be said for flying...become a CFI. Another topic for another day.

What you stated there is wonderful and true. If ski instructing isn't our bag, most of the quality PSIA product is out of reach. It goes back to what sir turnalot said about the pyramid scheme. The top levels of achievement and biggest opportunities for learning are more or less limited to members. A portion of the killer business model is training these uber-instructors.

Why can't I go take a group lesson at the local mountain with an uber-instructor and some other experienced skiers? Is it because I'm not willing to pay for it, because others aren't willing to pay for it, or sm I crazy and I actually can?

I'm just part of the large group of people that have been skiing for years, could definitely use a lesson, but won't take one for whatever reason. I would think thats a huge market, but it seems PSIA doesn't cater to this market and other groups Bode mentioned pick up some of the slack. They largely can't provide me with the Wal-Mart-esque availability and prices I need as a brokeass college student. PSIA does do a great job of providing the Wal-Mart-esque availability and prices to the beginners.

i' ve got to run this morning. i feel obliged to say i think this is one of the better/more thought provoking threads i have read in the four years i've been at epic.

it is making the wheels turn.

i have cited this before. i have a 12 year old daughter. her instruction for the past three years has solely been in the hands of a psia examiner.

she is an average all mountain skier. she looks at the race kids her age and points out that in powder, crud, wind slab some have trouble. someone recently said here that kids in austria just go ski at early ages. i think that is the answer. bring on the gates later rather than earlier.

i think, and i believe my daughter would agree psia has done fine for her.

Let me offer a slight edit to what you said, skiingman. PSIA offers great training for people who are already skiers, not beginners. Ski schools tend to focus on the entry level because they follow the money as dictated by the bean counters.

Sorry to say, the upper end market comprises only about 16% of the total, so profit-minded enterprises do not focus their product line on the upper end. The upper end market is in fact a niche, better served by the specialty shops. This holds true for equipment as well as instruction.

Actually, you can get group lessons with top level PSIA instructors, but expect to pay a premium price. Several current and former PSIA Examiners (including Jim Cardenali and Mermer Blakeslee) do group programs.
The beginner lesson is actually PSIA's strength, and that's exactly as it should be. The beginner lesson is the most important lesson anyone ever takes. If you want high level lessons with Wal-Mart availability and prices, you will have to join PSIA.

BK

I think I was trying to get across the idea that the crutch isn't a crutch if the end user is happy with the way they walk. Some people, indeed, do ski "the back of the boot" very well. Sometimes its better not to correct an individual's stance, technique, whatever. I'm actually a dude that often moves bindings forward and sometimes...gasp, uses heel lifts...so I assure you I didn't mean to generalize based on gender. Genderlization is brilliant btw.

There are some skis out there that love the backseat riding when mounted in the suggested spot. Pressure the tip every once in a while for good measure, but some of these boards act completely indifferent to it. Salomon's new Foil is a good example. I won't tell you how I know this...some coach somplace will read this and call me to complain about me riding the tails again.

What I'm wondering aloud is whether that 16% is small because people really don't want lessons or just because they haven't been properly encouraged to take one? I understand the obvious need for new skiers to take lessons, but it would seem as if getting some portion of the general skiing public to take lessons on a semi-frequent basis could have long term advantages for the profession.

Dude, thats great and all, but how does that translate into "my daughter's instruction has been with PSIA instructor at local mountain program offered with special combo deal through her middle school"?

I wish I had that kinda access. That would be sweet.

Re: gatey kids and their shortfalls, I was strongly anti-race till about 1996. I distinctly remember a group of J4's wallowing through some deep northeastern sludge when a coach called out to remind them to "keep those feet shoulder width apart and arms forward!" Hilarity ensued with three or four kids immediately making snow angels.

Ask....and you shall receive.

Sweet! May have to skip work and return to NM a week earlier in January.

Too cool. Thanks a ton.

Who has the biggest ski school in the world?

I second most of your comments in the original post. In my experience, I have seen PSIA get better over the years. I've heard horror stories about the past. I've seen some elements of those stories. It's disappointing to see past experiences presented as a blanket condemnation. But it is understandable that these stories stand out because there is little motivation to post "good news" and positive stories and such stories make for boring reading compared to the horror stories. I don't want to take away from the positive focus of your post because I agree with it.

But the "largest ski school" got me thinking. The PSIA-E web site lists all of the examiners and clinic leaders for all disciplines. A rough count of active folks comes in about 400. If PSIA-E is almost 1/2 of PSIA member wise, let's use the same ratio for staff and say that there are 1000 staff members in the PSIA ski school. I don't have the exact clinic day numbers from PSIA-E, but we do know there are 30,000 total PSIA members. My guess is that the average # of PSIA clinic days per pro is at best about 4. So lets call it 120,000 lesson days. At 7 hours/day that's 840,000 lesson hours.

I asked at Vail one year and someone said 1700 pros for the Vail/Beaver Creek combined ski school. Can you count that? What about Whistler/Blackcomb? I wouldn't count all ASC resorts as "one" ski school, but are there any other candidates (e.g. Aspen/Snowmass, Mammoth, Killington)? Figure a 16 week (active) season and 10 hours teaching average per pro per week and 3 students per lesson hour that would work out to 816,000 lesson hours. That works out pretty close to PSIA. But if some of my conservative estimates on average hours taught or # students/class are off, it would be easy to think of these schools as larger.

At my school, we teach approximately 100,000 lessons hours over a 10 week season with about 225 pros. We have a tiny school. Is Vail/Beaver Creek 10 times bigger?

Can anyone confirm or deny some of these guesses? Should we say "largest" is based on staff, hours taught, student hours taught or something else?

I said arguably. I should have added "focused on upper level skiers." Each PSIA member has an education requirement to maintain membership, usually satisfied by attending a two day clinic every two years. Not many upper level skiers take a two day clinic every two years, I'd reckon. Not many upper level skiers have access to the caliber of clinicians that PSIA members have for training either. I can skip down to Big Sky in December and ski with Nick Herrin and Megan Harvey for a pittance at my division's Fall Festival.

PSIA membership gives me access to the best ski training in the world. The only other membership I know of that gives a person as much access is EpicSki and EpicSki Academy.

You can't take a group lesson at the local mountain with an uber-instructor because you can't choose your pro for a group lesson. If there is an uber-instructor at your local hill, a request private lesson is the solution. There's a myth that all the top pros are booked a year in advance. Our resort has been bringing in Michael Rogan (PSIA demo team member, frequent appearances in SKI mag) for 3 days of staff clinics over the last few years. One of his shocking revelations was that he often teaches group lessons at all levels at home in Heavenly and that his private request schedule is open enough that the major concern is avoiding his travel schedule as opposed to wading through a wait list. If you want a lesson from an uber-instructor, there are options.

The biggest problem is finding out who fits the bill of "top pro" in your area. Although it is possible to do this with a lot of leg work, the easiest way to do this is to go to a camp. There have been public camps taught by PSIA demo team members. The Egan and DesLaurier brothers run high end camps. There are others that have been highly rated by Bears on this forum. If travel and time are issues (i.e. you want this local), you're forced to either do the legwork to find the top guys or lower your requirements. It is fairly easy to walk into any ski school and request a private with a level 3 (or equivalent) certified pro. While they may not be "top", it's hard to get a bad lesson from such people. Getting an examiner for your pro is a little harder, but here you're starting to get into the tradeoff of doing actual work to acquire the quality of instruction you desire. By definition, the "top" guys are rare. It is unrealistic to expect it to be easy to be taught by one. The tradeoffs are time and money. That should not be too surprising.

I agree. But you did pique my interest about just in general. With respect to upper level, I wonder how CSIA compares?

Everything is being discussed except if what Harald said (in the quotes) is true or not.

Most of these clinicians do teach members of the public. It's easier for PSIA pros to get access to these clinicians, but we "earn" this access through our teaching efforts. My view is that not many upper level skiers are willing to do the work to get access to the "top" coaches.

Here's a silly question: How many professional athletes "poach" their coaches from instructor ranks?

As far as choosing uber-instructors, at Breck, if 3 or more
people request a certain instructor for a group lesson,
they will get that instructor if that instructor teaches
groups and is not doing a private. We have many PSIA
examiners at Breck who teach group lessons and are
available to the public. Many of the examiners take
their turns teaching the lower level lessons as well.

As far as the clinics for instructors, during most of the
season, there are 1 hour clinics every morning before
line-up. In addition to those clinics, there are many
other clinics for exam prep, teaching children, teaching
women, park and pipe and a huge variety of others.
These are all available free to all instructors.
Many of the PSIA examiners are willing to go and
ski with any instructor to help improve the person's
skiing. There are so many people who are wililng
to share their knowledge. Becoming an instructor
is the best thing I have done for my skiing. I

So...you'd like expanded discussion as to whether Rick's an idiot or not?

As far as content, delivery, and quality of lessons goes, it will always fall on the shoulders of the individual instructor. In PSIA-C, our new model will now include PMTS (authorized to be used by Mr. Harb himself), Intro to Skiing (authored by the Arcmeister) and ATS for a more traditional approach. Stepping stones is all about options, not rigid models. Some will teach PMTS but because of personal reasons or ideology, not acknowledge it. Who cares? If they want to say all of PMTS was always around and they have known that stuff for years, fine. It's the people who simply will not even look at something different who are the problem. Remember, there is 98% of the ski industry out there that probably doesn't even know Epic exists.

are you doubting it appeared at another site?

go to a line-up at any major colorado resort and ask how many folks are familiar with pmts. your percentage will apply there as well.

I don't teach PSIA. I teach people to ski, Mike. As far as I'm concerned, PMTS has no trademark on good skiing, nor does PSIA, nor does any body.

He's there a lot, he knows it appeared there.

Coach and Rusty and MilesB

I think what Miles is asking is how do you know Harald Harb said what is ascribed to him.

That which appears here sure sounds like Harb and was not adamantly denied by Mr. Mason. (Which would have been the case had it been a fake post)

But consider how easy it is to post something with a *fake, un-logged in name over on that site.

I can go post as "HARB' of "HH" if I wished to. I might have to add an odd space, character or something---but to the casual reader---no one would know the difference.

Unlike here, where registration is required to post anything.

MilesB, if thats not what you meant--------please elaborate, I'm confused as well.

It appears nobody wants to discuss the validity of what Harb said. Is that more understandable?

are you asking if what is posted here is Actually what he said?

are you asking if what is posted here, as what he said, is valid?

Sigh. Never mind.

Yet, therusty, that's essentially what most potential ski instruction students are being asked to do when they sign up for a lesson at nearly any ski resort. Your reluctance to put any faith in Harb's system is precisely the way an awful lot of moderately-good skiers feel about taking a lesson from most "traditional" ski schools.

For the record, I have no investment one way or the other in either school of thought. I'm just an observer who occasionally takes ski lessons.

I think what Miles wants everyone to discuss is not whether HH

actually said that stuff but whether the statements accurately

reflect the state of PSIA skiing.

Perhaps this is getting off topic but anyway:

I mean basic technique as modified by individuals. I'm not talking about young kids. By age sixteen top level racers are beginning to develop their own "styles". It's not always good. But top skiers at that age are skiing in the fall-line as much as possible and trying to maximize speed. The skiing is not so much of a cerebral exercise, but an instictive one. When the instincts take over, individuality comes out. Also, as you alluded to, the physical attributes of the skier contribute to the individual style or technique.

The skier must also step back and work on basic technique. I gather from reading your posts, I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know.

you're probably right. somebody probably went in and used Haralds name to write those things.

HH probably just didn't notice the posts and protest or issue any denial.