Zoe went as far as her concentration and stamina would allow today. She likes speed and isn’t afraid of falling – very promising qualities! On the other hand I’m cautious for her and prefer to take things slowly and patiently (which she naturally finds frustrating and boring!).
Having my hands full with her on the piste I had to wait until she was skiing on her dad’s back before filming. This is a good thing to do because she learns to relate to the overall motion of the body – the movement of the centre of mass – which is what really drives skiing. She had a few short exercises on snow for this also but the bumpy and sticky snow made progress very difficult. There’s a lot of adaptation going on however as she makes adjustments when sliding or stepping – this takes patience but it’s essential. The important thing is to avoid defensive exercises such as “snowplough” and being supported too much. When holding onto my pole I make sure she is actually leading – I’m mostly not supporting her but only giving her that impression – or catching her when it does go wrong.
The real exercises and principles she would ideally be working on are found here… (also on the menu at the top of the page) http://madeinmountains.com/beginners/
Alex is a little bit older and stronger than Zoe so we took a slightly different approach and went straight into the subject of “dynamics” http://madeinmountains.com/dynamics/ . He wasn’t told that this is what it is though. Standing alongside me I asked Alex to push hard into me with his shoulder (left shoulder) and asked him if he could feel his right leg pushing. This is the correct thing to do when you want to turn left – you just push hard to the left. (note: This is not taught in ski schools – but it should be!) Holding onto my pole we practised that together then when sliding Alex was in charge of making the turns when holding onto the ski pole. Eventually he could manage on his own – despite the tricky snow.
We worked on management of using the button lift properly and he’s getting close to being able to go up on his own. We also worked on the herringbone step – ski tips widely diverging – for stepping uphill – while standing on the inside edges of the feet. The trick here is to open up the legs wide at the hip joints! His breakthrough happened when I physically opened his skis wide with my hands and moved the skis with my hands. His concentration was good all the time and he learns well.
