Author Topic: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!  (Read 2149 times)

jbotti

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Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« on: December 14, 2012, 09:48:59 am »
Let me preface by saying this is not about the religious war. It's more about the success of a small business and a different and innovative way to teach skiing. Is it taking over the world? No. Is it making inroads steadily year by year? Absolutley. Does it continue to turn major naysyers every year, well a few of them post here and are committed PMTSers now.

BTW, let me say in advance that "I never said that"  :D

This is a brief post from the PMTS forum about what is happening at a little hill in Minnesota called Welch Village:

Last Friday and Saturday, Dec. 7-8, Harald and Diana were at our ski area training our developmental race program (D-Team) coaches. The program has 250 kids who train and race on 12 Saturdays or Sundays. Ages are 7-17. We have 50 coaches in the program. Many of the coaches have some background in racing either in high school, college, USSA or in a Nastar adult league. Some of the coaches also coach high school, are pace setters for Nastar leagues, etc. The problem over the years has been the lack of a consistent, high quality training program. The D-Team will officially be coached with PMTS: with HH and DR's help we developed a PMTS Standard with five levels, and exercises to train to each level. There were around 25 coaches each day, plus key people from the ski school. We were in two groups and it was fun to see the enthusiasm of the coaches as they learned to make PMTS movements in their own skiing.
Jim Peine and Ryan Nordel are in charge of technical training for the D-Team; both were at Tech Camp in Nov. preparing for this change over. Some of the racers have trained with HH at Welch for a few hours last year and last week; one of the racers was also at Tech Camp (Emma). We also have four green accredited instructors and another 3-4 instructors who have been studying PMTS and have trained for a few days with HH when he was at our area the last two seasons. Coaches training is on Wed. eve, instructor training is on Thurs eve. and D-Team kids can also train on Thurs eve. It's all about the Essentials. Messy? Intimidating? Sure, but as we are fond of saying now: "What is the alternative?" We are all in and here we go!

We have the same process going on on the instructor/skiing public side: around 70 instructors who teach 8,000 to 10,000 lessons. All of them being coached green progressions A-E over the last three weekends with the green accredited instructors as coaches. The four green coaches are also preparing for blue accreditation, which means we have lots of opportunities to coach instructors on their own skiing.
Because the decision was made to go "all in" with PMTS with these two programs, it is easy to feel overwhelmed with the task. The reality is that it is working and we will move quickly in our teaching/coaching abilities. The alternative of incremental change would have probably resulted in a lot of blending of PMTS into a traditional approach, which would not have worked. The approach of "all in" forces us to stay focused and move forward. This year will be good, next year will be better and on we go.
We have a green accreditation scheduled for late Feb. at our area; the discussion now is whether we can get enough PMTS examiners here to handle 18 instead of 12; both instructors and race coaches. That is a good problem to have!

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jim-ratliff

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2012, 09:59:50 am »



John:
Thanks for posting that.  Do you have any insight into the political challenges faced by the hill in going all-in with PMTS (I like that phraseology, by the way). Since it sounds like they are doing that with their commercial ski instruction as well, did the hill management and/or their insurance company have any objections to the change?
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jbotti

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #2 on: December 14, 2012, 10:41:30 am »
I don't know all the details. I did ski with a lot of the skiers from Wlech Village at the Tech camp in November. I know tat the race coaches at the mountain over time became quite willing to listen and learn from the PMTSers. Ultimately they bought into the teaching 100% and all attended the training that HH and DR gave. I don't have any of the details about how the mountain ownership and mgmt interacted with this process and how they came to make their decisions.

LivingProof

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #3 on: December 16, 2012, 08:33:22 am »
I've been following the Welsh Village and Whistler/Blackcomb PMTS ski school development on the PMTS forum. It's great to see some traction for Harald in lieu of traditional ski schools. My read is that Welsh Village came to PMTS via the racing program first and then into the ski school. At my little mountain, the racing program and the traditional teaching programs are different entities, and, the "holy wars" exist between the groups. I can understand racing coaches becoming excited about the material in "Essentials of Skiing" as there is little good material on the subject. I have vivid memories of Helluvaskier ranting that as a junior he was frustrated at lack of good race coaching. At season's end, it would be of interest to see the improvement records of the Welsh Village junior racers.

I've mused about how PMTS movements are introduced to a brand new skier and how they develop without the stability of a basic wedge turn. Presumably, the movements are those shown in his Expert Skier I book. It seems the movement progressions would take a lot of time and require very gentle terrain. Friends who teach at my home mountain have expressed concern about turning new skiers into guided missiles (skiing parallel), and, that's one, safety-based argument for a wedge system. (not trying to start any holy wars here ;D).

I look forward to a season's end summary from Whistler as several very high level Canadian instructors participated in the training. Can "lift and tip" be something we hear a lot more on the slopes?

Josh or Epic,
Could you comment on how the racing teams at Stowe are trained as differentiated from the ski school.

« Last Edit: December 16, 2012, 08:45:31 am by LivingProof »

jbotti

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2012, 02:24:04 pm »
At season's end, it would be of interest to see the improvement records of the Welsh Village junior racers.

I've mused about how PMTS movements are introduced to a brand new skier and how they develop without the stability of a basic wedge turn. Presumably, the movements are those shown in his Expert Skier I book. It seems the movement progressions would take a lot of time and require very gentle terrain. Friends who teach at my home mountain have expressed concern about turning new skiers into guided missiles (skiing parallel), and, that's one, safety-based argument for a wedge system. (not trying to start any holy wars here ;D).


I think it will take more than one season to fully integrate PMTS ino the tecahing and for the skiers to more fully integrate this into their skiing. You could actually see some regression first. This is not unusual when skiers try something comepletely different.

As for the second comment, I did a lot of the instructor training at the most recent Tech Camp. It all comes down to the intsructor using the terrain that is available properly. If you are teaching with garlands often there is one direction that a turn will slow the skier down and another that will bring the skier directly into the fall line (and gain them much speed). Our training was ocurring at A basin with only one lift open and two runs both of them blue or dark blue. While some sections would have been too challenging for a beginner, it was amazing how much terrain we found to work on beginner drills. A well trained PMTS instructor with green slopes at his or her disposal can easily teach a beginner skier an entire day without ever teaching the wedge or the student needing the wedge to stop or slow his or her speed.

What most instructors don't realize is that the first day on skis in a PMTS lesson does not involve a lot of skiing. It is very different approach than teaching the wedge and putting them on the bunny slope and telling them to power their big toe edge and hope that they figure out how that makes them turn. 

bushwacka

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #5 on: December 16, 2012, 07:40:10 pm »
LP - Mount Mansfield Ski club has no affiliation with the ski school. I believe they are USSA. IMO the Coaches are MEH. I know some of the younger kids coaches and I am certain I can coach skiing better than they can.

Wedge turns......are not a pressure move to make a turn happen unless your from the 60s....they are rotary move which doesnt exist in PMTS.  typical lesson starts of without skiing, lots of tipping exercises from the videos I take it. Which is all valid stuff and all stuff we do with people. but the deal is we want people to come back and sometimes do not have a halfday or a full day to really lay down a foundation before we can get them moving.

Personally my typical beginner lesson. go like so.

into to balance concepts, ankles, looking up
boot games, bow ties with boots, side stepping with boots, duck walk with boots
intro to gear
intro to one ski skiing and dynamic for and aft balance
intro to one footed turns on flats with an emphasis on turning on our outside foot
repeat boot games with one ski on.
repeat with other ski.
go up carpet with ONE ski
one footed straight runs
one footed traverses on the downhill foot
one footed turns on what your guys call the stance foot
one footed J turns to a stop
repeat with other foot
put 2 skis on (FINALLY)
walking around with 2 skis on, side stepping, herringbone, skating if athletic enough
go up carpet
straight runs
traverse on edge
straight gliding wedge run
first 2 footed turns if you did your homework as an instructor while doing the one footed turns these will just happen
once turns our controlled and can J turn to a stop .....
....go up easy chairlift

ski them for how ever much time you have, More than likely they the wedge will be so hard to hold that its just goes away. We never press our big toes anywhere all we do is balance on it.

and BTW in the entire HArb DVD(that I jsut watched for the first time in the past week) there is not single move I have never seen or never taught before.  IE I have used every single move that he explains to teach people at some point in time.





« Last Edit: December 16, 2012, 07:44:14 pm by bushwacka »

epic

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #6 on: December 17, 2012, 05:48:19 pm »
Josh or Epic,
Could you comment on how the racing teams at Stowe are trained as differentiated from the ski school.

I'll just start by saying that I get a good discount at the Stowe Ski School for my kids, and don't get one for the Mount Mansfield Ski Club, but I chose to have both of my kids at MMSC (one is a U-10 and one is U-8). The Club and the Ski School have no official connection although our SSD is on the Board at MMSC and certainly coordinates snow-making and what-not with the club.

Just as our Ski School is not monopolized by any one organization or system, neither is MMSC. The President is Slovenian and there are other coaches from France and Slovenia. The head coach of the J-1s is Scott Moriarty who is a product of the club. I think he was an Olympian in the 70's, and was probably trained by the Austrians who used to dominate both MMSC and the Ski School (which in the beginning were one and the same. It was MMSC that brought in Sepp Ruschp from Austria and also MMSC that funded the first chairlift at Stowe). So many of the coaches are kind of homegrown. They train at MMSC as juniors, go on to a D-1 College or the Ski Team or both. Chip Knight has been working with our kids.

The J-4s are getting a healthy dose of PSIA as their coach is a former member of Eastern's Ed Staff. I don't know about all of the coaches. Certainly some have more experience than others. I can't say I am 100% happy with what I see in my daughters' program, but I pay 4-4 times what I would at the other program and feel that above all they offer a safe and healthy environment for my kids to learn in. USSA has some interesting changes this year as well. The club is actually looking for hill space to have a closed off demo arena as that is going to be part of the race weekends at some levels. That's right, they will race for time, but will also be skiing tasks that they are judged on. I don't know any of the details on this. I think it's a good thing though. I just hope that the judges know what they are doing.....

jim-ratliff

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #7 on: December 18, 2012, 12:22:04 pm »

Just as our Ski School is not monopolized by any one organization or system, neither is MMSC.

USSA has some interesting changes this year as well. The club is actually looking for hill space to have a closed off demo arena as that is going to be part of the race weekends at some levels. That's right, they will race for time, but will also be skiing tasks that they are judged on.
1. One sentence (and one sentence only  :D  ) on what you mean by not monopolized. Instructors need not be PSIA certified?  Insurance company doesn't require PSIA certifications or standards?  I have no idea how much latitude most ski schools have to run their program.


2. That sounds very interesting. Sounds like there may be value assigned to technique rather than just winning. From baseball coaching, I have certainly seen kids that did well with just sheer physical ability but were passed in their teens by others growing into their bodies with better technique or with better minds. At lower levels, catching what is hit at you is OK.  At higher levels anticipation and positioning pays dividends. Similarly, you can't coach hand-eye coordination, but you can coach a hitting stance and approach that allows the kid to best apply the coordination they have. A stride forward when hitting (what I was taught as a kid) lowers your eye plane by an inch and makes hitting more difficult than maintaining a steady eye level, for example.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2012, 12:25:17 pm by jim-ratliff »
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epic

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #8 on: December 18, 2012, 06:33:41 pm »
1. One sentence (and one sentence only  :D  ) on what you mean by not monopolized. Instructors need not be PSIA certified?  Insurance company doesn't require PSIA certifications or standards?  I have no idea how much latitude most ski schools have to run their program.

At our Ski School you do not need to be PSIA Certified. You don't have to be certified. More than half of our instructors are PSIA Certified and higher cert = higher pay. We also have or have had instructors certified by other systems (CSIA, BASI, Swiss, Austrian and USSA are the first ones that come to mind) and those instructors are paid at an equivalent level. For the record, I checked with our SSD and he will pay a PMTS Instructor the same as a PSIA instructor provided that there is a written curriculum available for review.

edit below

btw - our parent company is an insurance company. LOL
« Last Edit: December 18, 2012, 09:04:38 pm by epic »

midwif

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #9 on: December 18, 2012, 08:27:00 pm »
Wedge turns......are not a pressure move to make a turn happen unless your from the 60s....they are rotary move which doesnt exist in PMTS.  typical lesson starts of without skiing, lots of tipping exercises from the videos I take it. Which is all valid stuff and all stuff we do with people. but the deal is we want people to come back and sometimes do not have a halfday or a full day to really lay down a foundation before we can get them moving.

Personally my typical beginner lesson. go like so.

into to balance concepts, ankles, looking up
boot games, bow ties with boots, side stepping with boots, duck walk with boots
intro to gear
intro to one ski skiing and dynamic for and aft balance
intro to one footed turns on flats with an emphasis on turning on our outside foot
repeat boot games with one ski on.
repeat with other ski.
go up carpet with ONE ski
one footed straight runs
one footed traverses on the downhill foot
one footed turns on what your guys call the stance foot
one footed J turns to a stop
repeat with other foot
put 2 skis on (FINALLY)
walking around with 2 skis on, side stepping, herringbone, skating if athletic enough
go up carpet
straight runs
traverse on edge
straight gliding wedge runfirst 2 footed turns if you did your homework as an instructor while doing the one footed turns these will just happen
once turns our controlled and can J turn to a stop .....
....go up easy chairlift

ski them for how ever much time you have, More than likely they the wedge will be so hard to hold that its just goes away. We never press our big toes anywhere all we do is balance on it.

and BTW in the entire HArb DVD(that I jsut watched for the first time in the past week) there is not single move I have never seen or never taught before.  IE I have used every single move that he explains to teach people at some point in time.

Having been taught the wedge as a new skier, it has been HORRIBLY HARD to get rid of.
I still don't understand why beginners are taught a movement they ultimately need to get rid of, in order to achieve higher levels of skiing. Yeah, I've heard the "get on the slope any which way you can" rationalization.
But that is just a rationalization. It  is a real disservice to new skiers to teach them a dead end movement, IMHO.

Maybe your progression above doesn't inculcate the wedge as deeply as other first lessons do.

I wish I had never been shown that as the primary ski movement.
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bushwacka

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #10 on: December 18, 2012, 08:56:44 pm »
first you were most likely taught wrong.

Did the instructor say push your heels out? or spread your feet out? or make a bigger wedge? or press your toe to turn? if so they have not a clue what they are talking about.  these are all movements that are dead end bull **** movement patterns. they are not PSIA's paradigm. i am sorry you had such shitty instruction and getting a L3 doesnt promise anything better. since we can do our own thing some do their own shitty thing, we have a couple here at stowe trust me.

the wedge I use is only used to stabilize people its made by rotating your toes together. and not spread your feet any wider than how you naturally stand.

Once a skier is

balanced in a for and aft plane.
has separation at the hip socket(which you dont even have Midwif)
is tipping their inside ski
and balance on their outside ski(stance ski)

the wedge will be nearly impossible to hold and literally just goes away. It happened today with my 2 never ever in an hour and half.

and yes we need people to have fun. skiing is fun. Not skiing is not fun!  PMTS wouldnt be viewed as fun to most people. So you losing that battle right there. The DVD were the most boring skiing DVD i have ever watched.

PMTS Bet

If I can prove that this all works IE I have mostly matched turns by the end of a 2 hour beginner lesson. You have to come to stowe so I can teach you to CA/CB better than any of your PMTS instructors I ll do it for free. You just have to post up on the PMTS,epicski and here how I did it. You only have to post if I succeed at making a change in your skiing My guess is your way to scared to take up this bet and wont follow though.

jbotti

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #11 on: December 18, 2012, 10:05:09 pm »
I'll bet you've never read "How to Make Friends and Influence People". Just a guess.


bushwacka

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #12 on: December 19, 2012, 04:29:20 am »
dont care Jbotti.

she was taught wrong I bet I just listed one if not many reason why she was taught wrong.

Now her PMTS instructors are teaching her to angulate/counter at the spine. instead of at the hip joint. I could easily fix it.

Right is right whether or not people like you or not. Just watch House ;)
« Last Edit: December 19, 2012, 07:38:18 am by LivingProof »

LivingProof

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #13 on: December 19, 2012, 07:06:03 am »
Having been taught the wedge as a new skier, it has been HORRIBLY HARD to get rid of.
I still don't understand why beginners are taught a movement they ultimately need to get rid of, in order to achieve higher levels of skiing. Yeah, I've heard the "get on the slope any which way you can" rationalization.
But that is just a rationalization. It  is a real disservice to new skiers to teach them a dead end movement, IMHO.

Maybe your progression above doesn't inculcate the wedge as deeply as other first lessons do.

I wish I had never been shown that as the primary ski movement.

When I learned to ski, many ski area's offered "Learn To Ski" weeks, 5 day mid-week instruction with the same instructor for 5 days. For at least my first 5 years, I'd attend one each year, and, even later would return to ski schools for shorter periods during vacation weeks. One benefit of Harald's PMTS classes includes that type of extended learning, permitting any level to advance. Sure, pencil skis made skiing more difficult and modern ski equipment makes it easier, but, ski instruction for continuing education and improvement is dying due to time constraints, low benefit and cost. Most people I know just want to ski and have fun, technique - who cares? In the three technique-centered sports I've learned (tennis, golf and skiing), it's pretty much the same. Homemade technique rules! :o

Contrast JB's comment the never-never's spend very little time actually skiing on the first day with Bush's comment that in two hours some may get to a gliding, centered-stance, actual skiing. What percentage of the public, especially younger people, would pay and return to a second of non-skiing instruction? To return to the OP, I'd love to see the progressions of Welsh Village's PMTS based new skier instructions. It's an experiment, in the sense that PMTS gets introduced into a mass-market ski area with an instructional team that is less qualified, and, perhaps, less committed to the technique.

Converting 70 PSIA trained instructors WILL have it's share of challenges.Trust me on that one, I spent several years working as a "organizational change" manager. I wonder if Welsh Village would trade lift tickets for my consulting services (and I'm not talking about technique consulting) . ;D

Riding chairlifts, standing on the first tee or watching local tennis, I'm totally judgmental about crappy technique. But that's more a statement about what I value, if someone is out-there having fun, good for them.

And, BTW, I've always been proud that many years ago, at my first "Learn to Ski' week, I made parallel turns after a few days, no small feat back in the day.

« Last Edit: December 19, 2012, 07:19:05 am by LivingProof »

gregmerz

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Re: Slowly, One Small Mountain at a Time!
« Reply #14 on: December 19, 2012, 07:42:18 am »
A little local perspective.  I live in the Twin Cities and ski Welch (Welch, not Welsh) regularly.  It is without question the best terrain we have in the Twin Cities.  Many of our day ski areas here suffer from very old insfrastructure.  Welch has a new chalet, some of the newest lifts around and top notch snow making equipment.  Their ski school has it's own building and a nice set-up for never-evers and timid beginners.

Disclaimer:  I'm affiliated with one of three Twin Cities based traveling kids ski schools and these schools are all run by PSIA people with plenty of active Ed Staff sprinkled in.  Many of those instructors are aware of and understand the value of PMTS methods.  My ski school has an annual enrollment of about 750 kids.

In my experience, ski students in this area take a similar path.  Parents often provide for lessons until children are competent to ski on their own (basic parallel skiing) and then there are often two forks in the road.  If the child takes Path A, they end up focusing on free skiing or succumb to the draw of the terrain park.  Path B leads the student to an adolescence of running gates.  Race training is big here.  On Path B, as much time is spent on race training and technique as is general ski instruction.  The kids in the race programs are die hard snow sports fans.  Watching them bang gates and ride super fast rope tows until 10pm week nights at Buck Hill when the temps are below zero gives me respect for their desire to slide.

Welch has a good pool of dedicated instructors and while it make take them time to get fully fluent with their new program focus, I'm sure they'll do well.  I don't think it will make a big difference in their overall number of lessons sold in a given year.  There's a lot of history in ski schools here and many of them are as much family as they are business.

Skied Welch last Saturday all day in the RAIN.   >:(