PSIA-AASI

One of my many “truths” in skiing is “tip them before you twist them”

I go with the CIA approach “There is no truth, just the story that pleases the most people”.

They don’t know what you don’t know! (Sometimes we don’t either!)

After skiing with a bunch of instructors, who are always after improvement, I chased a great skier down the hill. He isn’t a highly technical skier, but he has a lot of fun. I set my goal to have more fun and focus less on “improvement”. Now I am skiing with my feet too close together, not always carving my turns, a little too banked, and having a blast doing it. My purpose for each run is to be smiling at the end.

My truth, “All turns begin with a flat ski.”

Learning is fun and you enjoy something more when you do it well. There is a reason why sucking sucks.

“Skiing Truths”...I like that. 
Here are a few of mine:
- Getting a good nights sleep and a filling breakfast works wonders for my skiing. 
- Being flat footed never worked in any sport.  Skiing is no different.
- What works in one moment will make you fall in the next one.
- A good habit makes skiing easy and a bad one makes it feel like work.
- It’s hard to see without goggles.
- Manage the forces of skiing. Do not try to create them.
- Know slow to go fast.
- Teach slow to learn fast.
- Hangovers suck and skiing with a hangover also sucks.

There are many truths in skiing.  All truths will be proven wrong at some point.  I guess my only truth is that if I’m not having fun in what I’m doing I shouldn’t be on the hill. 
Oh I think being able to ski hungover seperates the public from the pros, I had a friend that told me the first year I moved to Vail, “that’s part of the challenge, you gotta be able to do this job hungover.  You might as well go back to Ohio to your desk if you can’t handle that.”  Oddly enough he turned 30 and took a desk job.

There really is only one unbreakable truth in snowsports, ” good skiing is defined as the skiers ability to have a positive selective effect over there equipment in any direction at anytime”.

My ski school forces this down the throats of it’s instructors, both new and old: “before they care how much you know, they need to know how much you care.” We also teach our instructors that the priorities for each lesson are safety, fun, and learning, in that order.

Also, there is no need to advance terrain to advance a student from a wedge turn to a parallel turn. This is especially important when teaching at a ski area that has very limited terrain. I hate getting students whose previous lesson consisted of skiing on terrain that was too difficult for them because they will expect to be spending every lesson afterward on harder terrain. They get discouraged when you take them back to something easier to work on something technical. PSIA should come up with some mantra like “if you can’t teach it on a green trail, you’re not teaching it effectively.” Not to say that I keep all my students trapped on green trails. I’m more than happy to introduce them to harder terrain, I just feel it shouldn’t be done until they have the skills to ski the trail confidently and safely.

Oh and my favorite question to start off any lesson before noon is “what did you have for breakfast?” or “who are breakfast this morning?” It’s a good question for any age group, makes everyone a little more comfortable because it breaks the ice and it gives you a little bit more background on your students other than how many times they’ve skied before. And if they’re nervous, it helps get their mind off being nervous.