Both Paula and Esme were more or less complete beginners. Paula had skied three days before and ended up with a broken ACL while knocked over in a snowplough. Esme had only skied yesterday and learned snowplough – unfortunately! Initially I was unsure of their level so started from scratch – with what turned out to be “The Crocodile Dance”… considering they were really beginners the outcome was fine for both of them. Paula may be anxious due to her previous injury but it’s not holding her back. The goal isn’t to “ski a blue run” or anything like that. The goal lies in the quality of feeling. Patience is necessary at the beginning and pressure to move on to harder slopes prematurely must be avoided at all costs. You move on when you start feeling things are getting too easy – it’s natural. Although I explained dynamics to begin with we began our activity with skating. All of the skating exarcises are explained in detail on the fixed page here… http://skiinstruction.blogspot.co.uk/p/beginners.html
The dynamics are also explained on a fixed page… http://skiinstruction.blogspot.co.uk/p/dynamics.html
Both skiers had to be taught the basics of skating and Esme picked this up strongly. Paula appeared more comfortable with dynamics – perhaps due to her cycling experience. We worked on side stepping, traversing, sideslipping and dynamics – up to parallel skiing. We worked on the feet and ran through the same exercises and demonstrations that I described on the previous blog entry for this morning – except that this time we all had our ski boots off to feel things properly. The feet are complex – each with 26 bones and 33 ligaments each – and they are our connection to the skis so they need to be used intelligently.
By the end of the session I could see that both were working hard on overcoming the snowplough and implicit defensive actions. Paula made some nice parallel turns on the gentle slope and Esme, although still in a slight plough, was clearly moving her centre of mass in the right direction. 
