Last day and unfortunately minus Maya – victim of a tobogganing incident – seems the toboggans don’t offer as much control as might be imagined. The rest of the group was however suffering from very typical “Day Three Fatigue” so it was clear we had to take it easy.
Warm up was a descent on the easiest blue run – which means a certain amount of skating. We repeated our skating exercises – emphasising “falling forward” to use gravity for propulsion. This exercise is partially because ALL children try to use the backs of their ski boots and skis but unfortunately most of the turning capacity of a ski is at the front. Turning on the flat with skating steps was also used to drill in dynamic movement of the centre of mass. The key to higher levels of skiing lies completely in developing greater awareness of such fundamentals – getting the centre of mass forward and moving laterally. After one descent into Arcs 2000 we had to go indoors to warm up for a while – more a sign of tiredness than anything else.
When skiing Ishay was instructed to lift his inside ski up and down during the turn and this time he understood it and was able to succeed with it for skiing more parallel and bringing his skis a bit closer together. Everyone was also told to tilt forward the upper body from the hip joints – which displaces the body’s centre of mass further forward – this being preparation for some steeper off piste terrain we were heading for. Nitzan coped well with the steep terrain by choosing to successfully side slip the steepest section. We stayed away from the steep red pistes due to ice. The inter-piste off-piste which is heavily ski-pisted has far better snow conditions and no people to worry about.
The final scene in today’s video is their first attempt at pivoting properly by themselves. I’d assisted each one through a couple of pivots by holding onto them and guiding their centre of mass so they could feel the correct sensations – then it was up to them. It’s obviously a tricky but essential skill to learn so their very first attempts were completely as expected! I’m sure though that Maya would have succeeded first time.
Ishay was today’s biggest improver despite being bit chaotic at times but Nitzan also stepped up a notch and was much more confident. For Gili it was more a day of consolidation and her turns at speed were looking really good.
My advice for tomorrow is to warm up on blue runs then if everyone is going well attempt the first red run from the top of the Arcabule/Transarc. If anyone freezes then revert to side stepping and side slipping for as much of the slope as is required.
