Starting off with a few gentle warm up runs both Sophie and Emily rapidly found their feet and their confidence. Both have a very similar level of skiing and use similar movement patterns. Sophie was very brave managing to overcome fears from a previous extremely serious injury and the initial anxiety and hesitation gradually disappeared.
The Magic Wall (Dynamics)
Apart from the usual occasional parent / child interaction there was little stress around – with the skiing seemingly doing its job of transporting everyone into an internal world and away from outside stress. The more aware of the use of the body that the skier becomes the easier it is to be focussed on it. I introduced Dynamics as the “Magic Wall” to give an overall framework from which to develop – briefly mentioning “centre of mass” later on. (Dynamics can be read about in depth here!) I have published a couple of interesting articles explaining where the teaching confusion about dynamics arises and the historical origins – they are here 1 and here 2) Watching both skiers it was obvious that dynamics is the most important thing for them to learn at this point. Their skiing is currently at a very typical intermediate stage with no serious problems. They have clearly been taught in the classical manner. Sophie had been tending to use a bit more natural dynamics than Emily – but in a passive way (reacting instead of moving the body pro-actively). Never having been taught dynamics before means that both were rushing the start of the turns to get the skis quickly below them. To address this I asked them to try to follow my tracks as best as they could – to round out the turns and allow the new dynamics to work. Both could feel the dynamics working right from the start – commenting that is felt easier on the hips and easier turning. We didn’t go into a lot of technical detail because today was really just about building confidence and feeling good to be on skis. When everyone is at ease then we’ll get a little bit more technical and try to make the skiing experience more rewarding. That shouldn’t be too difficult for either Sophie or Emily.