PSIA ALPINE TECHNICAL MANUAL Introduction
Here’s the opportunity you face as a ski instructor today: You’re currently standing in the middle of a “big bang” evolution of both the sport’s equipment and participants’ aspirations.
Skiing’s top athletes push the boundaries of what’s possible on all fronts of skiing: big-mountain, racing, and park and pipe. Equipment manufacturers sprint to keep up by designing skis, boots, and bindings that support those athletes and make it easier for the rest of us to mimic their feats. A worldwide audience watches the Winter Olympics, Winter X Games, ski film premieres, and clips of skiing heroics on YouTube. Guests who come to your resort today each have their own perceptions of what defines “good skiing.” Equipment choices, discipline choices, and individual motivations dictate your guests’ expectations, regardless of whether it’s their first day on skis or their hundredth day of the season. Your challenge as an instructor is to meet their expectations and help them get closer to their ultimate goals. As a result, your lessons may take significantly different paths.
CHOICES ABOUND WHEN DEFINING ‘GOOD SKIING’ When it comes to defining “good skiing,” more choices and variables exist than ever before. How do you decide what is the best path toward your guest’s unique goals? How do you decide if your student is doing it right, with so many options defining what “right” is? Most important, how do you keep yourself relevant to all your guests? Given the vast spectrum of possibilities that define good skiing, today’s ski instructors must be versatile. You need to understand the most effective movement patterns for any given style of the sport, the techniques and tactics that work best for carving, bumps, powder, or park. Your success in recognizing effective movement patterns also requires a strong foundation of the common mechanical elements of all these applications. Do you know the shared characteristics of a halfpipe rider, a sidecountry hiker, a mogul enthusiast, and a World Cup racer? You should, because those elements are the concrete mechanics involved in our sport: the action of the skis on the snow and corresponding body movements. Tough techniques get refined and modified, the laws of physics do not change. Motivations and aspirations evolve, but the human body’s biomechanics remain constant. Tese are the absolute elements in which instructors’ knowledge and experience must be rooted.
If you understand these common elements of all of skiing’s different sub-groups and styles – as well as the relevant physics, biomechanics, and equipment design – you’ll stand a better chance of guiding your students in the direction they want to go. You’ll more clearly see if their movements are the most effective for their intentions. You’ll be better able to explain why they should make those more effective movements, relating your coaching to their chosen goals.
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INTRODUCTION 11
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