Pole Planting

My girlfriend moves her shoulders when turning which takes the weight off the leading leg and makes it hard for her to turn. So last night an Instructor told her to plant her pole and go round it, if the other arm was trailing she was told to keep the arm up as if to carry a tray. (does that make sence)

Trencher,

When you were learning to ski, and I mean from intermediate stage up to very confident and competent, ~ did you use poles?

Dave Mac wrote:Trencher,

When you were learning to ski, and I mean from intermediate stage up to very confident and competent, ~ did you use poles?

I never used poles, preferring to let my my arms move to where they best work for balance and weighting. I often experiment with upper body rotation and hip counter. That's why I don't see that poles are needed to direct movement. I also think that without poles you must develop the ability to skate on your skis. These skating movements can be Incorporated subtly into many skiing maneuvers. I do think the need for control in the lift line and generally moving around without poles develops better ski awareness or least more quickly.

Bob

Pole Planting, or the move on longer turns, very important IMV :wink:

Trencher wrote:

Dave Mac wrote:Trencher,

When you were learning to ski, and I mean from intermediate stage up to very confident and competent, ~ did you use poles?

I never used poles, preferring to let my my arms move to where they best work for balance and weighting.

would that mean you didn't have lessons? I can't see any main stream school giving lessons without poles, it's not part of CSIA or PSIA teaching practise I'm fairly certain.

ise wrote:
would that mean you didn't have lessons? I can't see any main stream school giving lessons without poles, it's not part of CSIA or PSIA teaching practice I'm fairly certain.

Deliberately. I wanted skiing to be an experiment in guided discovery and cross benching concepts from snowboarding. I didn't want to pick up any bad habits from instructors ) Actually, what I mean is that I didn't want to be infuenced by conventional technique as taught by most instructors. Of course I have been inflenced to some degree as I pick and choose ideas from observation, reading, and technical discussion with people who are instructors and coaches. I don't just want to know how to do something, I want to understand it at the conceptual level. I don't accept technique at face value, I need to break it down and see what's really happening.

Aside from that, I didn't want to drive some poor concrete sequential instructor nuts with my questioning :lol:


Trencher

Trencher wrote: I don't just want to know how to do something, I want to understand it at the conceptual level. I don't accept technique at face value, I need to break it down and see what's really happening.

Aside from that, I didn't want to drive some poor concrete sequential instructor nuts with my questioning :lol:


Trencher

Trencher, pretty well none of my ski learning has been what you define as "concrete sequential". I did however get to attend evening seminars after lessons, on ski structure, what sidecuts do, servicing skis, video analysis of the days' classes, plus slideshows showing carving, angulation, just general background stuff like that :D

Mind you, these were BASI Grade 1 teachers by and large, (occ. Gr2) very keen. I only know of one personally who I could recommend to you in the USA.

You don't paint a very positive picture of US teaching methods.

bandit wrote:
You don't paint a very positive picture of US teaching methods.

I'm sure US instructors are as good as any. I'm talking about formalised instruction programs of any kind. I do have some experience of sports instruction UK and US.

Instruction programs do a great job, but they are a mass production machine. Except at the highest levels, independent thinking is discouraged. For this reason they are inflexible and slow to change. Many instructors are very concrete sequential and that often serves the programs well.
Having observed that in so many sports, the greatest innovation seldom if ever comes from the instruction programs, I see real benefit in an independent path. That's not to say any that another person would be served well by avoiding instruction, but it was something I wanted to experiment with, believing that I am equiped to do so.


Trencher