Bullet Proof Short Turns - PMTS - Video - Page 15

I mostly train advanced skiers, and I use guided discovery almost exclusively. I start with a simple task, and observe what happens. I might tell someone to stand taller or tip their boots. PMTS guys seem to want to hear a 15 step description of the movement of every body part. I don't do that.
A few months ago, someone posted a video of HH himself in a clinic. It was 12 minutes long, and HH talked the whole time! They never moved an inch. The best part was, whoever posted it thought it was an example of a great clinic. That was all I needed to know about PMTS.

BK

PSIA definition of skidding:
Alpine Tech Manual, 2nd Ed
"A combination of sliding and slipping as the skis move forward through the turn. This occurs on a ski that is not carving."


PMTS definition of skidding.
"Skidding results from foot steering and from hip and leg twisting actions."

That's an interesting difference. PSIA talks about what the ski is doing on the snow. PMTS talks about what the skier is doing, but never describes the result.

BK

I believe daslider sums up the entire thread in saying:

Nailed it. I would have laid down and died or dug a hole to china with my poles....

Command style teaching is fine for beginners, but it loses its charm as you build skills. The student needs to be brought to a level where he can evaluate his own skills. That way the learning never stops, and it's actually a worthwhile project in any area, not just in skiing. Who wants to spend his whole life performing tasks on command? Is that how you want to learn all the time?
Command style teaching has nothing to do with Austrian WC success, except that's probably how they all started. Everyone at the WC level has great technique. What separates the winners is superior competitive skills, which are far more about mental toughness than about edging skills. I don't think you can teach that by command style.
I agree that the old style week long program was a more effective way to teach beginners. I started that way myself. But the market has spoken, and that model was more or less left behind. That was the Austrian method, and for better or worse, we don't believe Americans have the patience for that. We may not have great retention rates, but we would never even get them in the door if the price of admission was a full week of those Austrian taskmasters.
PMTS is definitely more in the mold of the Austrian approach, even if it is less Austrian than the old time "side step until you can do it perfectly" method. It's not surprising that they have good success with well motivated intermediates, but it's tiresome to hear that I must know nothing from those same intermediates.

BK

Truth is everything, Image is less and intent can be an excuse or justification for failure/shortcomings.

You do not need leg rotation as a component. Here is one example. Keep in mind we were fooling around at the time and goofing on Tai-Chi skier, but if you were to put the hands in position I think we can all agree that this would hardly be a "gimped stance". Technically correct......no.....operational.....sure.

I would change to read:

Thanks Rusty, this is the (rotation) leg steering I mentioned before.

A truely refined skier should be able to effect BOTH types of rotation of the leg at will.

Max, It has to do with how people teach and how people learn no matter what the subject matter. There is all sorts of info here written by Joan Heaton on the subject of Teaching Styles.

Or, just Google Joan's name.

Edit.....ssh's has always commented that when working with me, I never let on about what I'm really teaching and one would not usually have an idea of where I'm headed with things. As long as at the end (of whatever you may be working on) you reinforce the correct (moves or whatever) so the student knows that they did it right.....you are fine and it works well.

Let's not get further off track.......this should cover it.

Max,

Actucally, it's "easy." I stated a thread on this a few weeks back that stemed from a clinic focused on teaching advanced skiers. Do you think a majority of our students would take the time to read through this thread? Do you think a majority of US would take the time to read this thread? Do our students really need to or care to know the mechanics of doing thing "X" on skis produces result "Y"? No. What they want to know is something simple they can do to produce a desired outcome. One of the examples from the clinic I was in was we were skiing heavy spring corn/mashed potatoes. This was the type of snow where you did not want to over pressure or over rotate your skis. So we could have stood there for 5 mins or more and explained how to ski more two footed, how to reduce the pressure on the outside ski, how to be patient with the rotation of the skis, yada yada yada, or I could have taken 20 seconds and said, "As we ski this, I want you to try to keep the pressure on the skis as even as you can all the way through the turn. Ok, let's go." Which is a more effective use of lesson time? Both accomplish the same thing. Both require the application of the proper skill blend accomplish the task. However the simple task is something simple that the students can relate to, the other, to many folks, is just a bunch of gobbely gook. Yet no matter what we tell folks, most know when a turn feels good and a turn feels bad. And most of the time, the good feeling turns are good, and the ones that feel bad are bad...

Remind me NEVER to take a clinic with one of your instructors. A check for understanding every now and then is Ok, When I cilinc, I want to SKI, that's where we REALLY learn.

And BTW, my primary learning style is that of a thinker, but I'm trying to break myself of that.

Joan wrote a lot of the PSIA manual stuff as well. She taught me everything I know about teaching. No doubt her explanations are better and more complete than mine.
The secret of guided discovery teaching is to chose a simple task that the student can evaluate himself. For example, a student may not be able to tell if he is skidding or carving, but if the task is "carve while traversing," he can turn around and look at his tracks (external feedback). Once he can do the task, the question is, "what internal feedback happens to tell you that you are doing the task correctly?" The next step is to experiment with the task to identify how the internal feedback changes with variations around the task. As his skills grow, his abilty to evaluate more advanced tasks grows as well. Learning to ski and learning to self-evaluate skiing tasks are exactly the same thing.

BK

I haven't even read through this whole thread, or even that whole post. But I did skip to the end.
If you are a thinker, learning to ski is all about getting out of that learning mode. If you can't get beyond the thinking mode, into the doing-feeling style, you're probably going to be better at something else, like algebra or something.

BK

I wasn't referring to you. The worst example of what I was thinking of was another thread where someone suggested that a Canadian guy who was struggling in a WC GS course needed to go back and learn some PMTS.

BK

Agreed 100%.

I'm a thinker/doer by nature. I am trying to turn myself into a feeler (less conscious brain, more subconscious brain). It's as hard as anything I've every tried to do on skis...

That's what Chair rides are for. If you have a student like that, don't torture the other student in the clinic with a long winded technical discussion for 1 or 2 students. I've been in that situation and it SUCKS!!!


Most often, those discussions only goes to show that the instructor knows what they are talking about, they don't really advance the skills of the group. Most of the time when I get long winded, you can see the eyes glaze over like a pond in December.

How much has our skiing improved by reading this thread?

Exactly. We are speaking different languages! Recognizing that can help us actually communicate. Of course, that takes modification of language and communication approach by the participants, and those deeply entrenched in habits may find that difficult.

This post reminds me of some thing that re-enforces my post above. Have you ever had to teach somebody in a lesson that didn't speak the same language as you? I have many times, in a beginner group lessons. At the end of the day (2 hours), those folks were doing the same as the folks that spoke engilsh. This was also a task that I've seen given in an exam situation, "Teach someone to go from wedge turns to wedge christies without talking...."

Again, do most people learn by listening or watching?

By watching and doing. Exaggeration of demonstrations is key to show the change that you want to see, especially in these situations.

I have seen a number of skiers try to think their way through their turns. I can almost hear their thoughts as I watch their skiing: "Extend this... tip that... flex this... move that..." and invariably their skiing lacks fluidity and has challenges in more difficult terrain and conditions.

Unconscious competence can be difficult to change (for example, the "pop" in my skiing comes from years (literally decades) of enjoying the sensations of an edge set as a transition), but it is the goal of skiing. It's fine to understand cause/effect in ski turns, and is the starting point for learning (unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence). But, conscious competence doesn't work at the speed of high-level skiing, so we need to break past it to trained body responses to the situations.

As Uncle Louie mentioned during a lift ride at A Basin last week, an ultimate compliment in skiing is, "It looked like you weren't doing anything."

>>>>I'm a thinker/doer by nature. I am trying to turn myself into a feeler (less conscious brain, more subconscious brain). It's as hard as anything I've every tried to do on skis...<<<<


I originally gave this advice to John Mason, but it will get you into that 'feeling' mode because all other modes are disabled

Have some Jaegermeister first


....Ott

What if he's still thinking, Ott?

At times, this is me. My wife can tell. She has litterly looked at me while skiing and said "STOP THINKING ABOUT IT and SKI!!!"

I had a student tell me this last year ("How do you turn without moving your feet?") and was one of the best compliments I have ever gotten about my skiing....

I dunno Ott, I've see Jeager disable "feeling" too!!!

I plead the 5th on ground that I might incriminate myself.