Private lessons

Now I understand......clear as mud!

Lessons: slow way to gain moderate confidence and decent skill.

Beer: fast way to gain supreme confidence and get back to the bar to help make you think you have skill.

Fractured skull and broken coller bone: excellent method by which to unstich your bad habits and learn to get through a week without hitting the deck once by doing it properly.

I tried all 3 ......

• option 1 lasted 45 minutes
• option 2 lasted 3 years
• option 3 will hopefully last a lifetime

I'm sure I will stray occasionally mind :)

A couple of years back I had a private lesson and it was brilliant fun. The instructor made sure I ski-ed rally hard for a couple of hours and made me do a few exercises to improve balance, feel etc. I felt I really learned a lot whilst, just as importantly, having a good laugh with him as well.

Although pricey,I would say it was well worth the money and would recommend anyone, whatever their ability, to have a private lesson or two in resort.

I have never had a private lesson..... I feel one comming on 8) 8)

I am a slow learner. My first year of group lessons got me ploughing just about confidently. The second year I took group lessons again and fell behind. Not helped by having to stop on the penultimate day and go to see the man I was due to marry 10 weeks later in hospital. He had suffered a terrible broken leg.

Year three I was worried about my confidence due to husband's break the previous year. I booked private lessons in Sauze. Best thing I ever did. I was confident as I had the instructor's full attention and I managed to get rid of the bad habits that were mainly due to lack of confidence. Year four we had an hours lesson at Chill Factor before we went back to Sauze where my husband and I had the same instructor I'd had the year before. Again a great idea, he gave my husband his confidence back and it was fun to learn together, just the two of us.

Year five, I didn't bother with lessons, bad mistake. I got lazy and hit a few bad runs, denting my confidence. Next year about 3 of us (at a similar level) are going to hire an instructor to give us a couple of days of private lessons. The bonus is I get to learn which runs are suitable for me whilst having someone there to boost my confidence.

I heartily recommend private lessons in resort. I felt they were much better value than learning indoors at home. They may be more expensive than group lessons but I get far more out of 4-6 hours that way than 10 or more in a group.

I had private lessons several years running from BASI teachers in France. Very good value for money, I learned loads and still remember the things I learned.

My lessons with ESF were in Val Thorens over Xmas 2001. I hated it for the first 3 days, just couldnt manage to do a snowplough turn at all, but then it clicked once we started doing parallel turns. I used to spend every spare minute for the last 3 days skiing when the lessons were not on. I did a lot of falling over as I was always trying to push myself and try really hard. Confidence is not something I am or was short of. Ability and experience was, sadly.

My next trip was to BKK with Skidaddle. There was 1 red run open, a white line cutting through the glorious spring countryside. In the mornings this was like a sheet of glass, and from about midday onwards it turned into a river. Skiing was hard enough for anyone, let alone a beginner like me with one weeks worth of lessons behind me. The first morning we were as badly hungover as I can ever remember being, something which resulted in a comical moment in the cafe which included Skidaddle lying down on a table trying to sleep and me being sick thanks to some squirty cream. Therefore, skiing would have been hard enough at the best of times, but when you were rubbish like me with a hangover, it was almost pointless. 3 days we were there, and my first day I managed just 2 complete top to bottom runs, which would now take me in the region of something like 5 to 10 minutes I would guess. I was soaking wet, my head was banging, but I was hugely determined and persisted with it for 3 days. Looking back, those 3 days probably taught me more about skiing than any other experience I have ever had.

Since then, I have tried to improve my own technique, conscious of what my own faults and weaknesses are, and I think I do alright now, but thats down to having gained a lot of experience over a short space of time with 3 trips each season in the past few years. I am sure I would benefit from a private lesson, although I have also benefitted from skiing with good skiers, being offered advice from them, and following them to mimic their stance and movements. Personally, I want to simply enjoy myself and maximise the time on the slopes. Like Tino, I quite like going fast and doing as much as I can in the limited daylight that is available, but each time I go I try to improve something, and I think I have dont quite well.
Confidence and knowing your own limits are massively important factors.

I think the moral of my story is that chucking yourself in the deep end, if you have either the confidence or drive to want to succeed, has been my way of developing. I think you need a really tough experience to make you realise how awful you are. I probably went from lessons ability to being thrown down a difficult red in horrible conditions without my full senses working, but it did me no end of good.

I am thinking about having a lesson in order to tidy up my technique though.

I'm also happy to sing the praises of private lessons over group. Last year, my OH and I spent a fortnight in Sauze, having previously learnt the basics in group lessons the year before. The first week we were both in group lessons, but were split up. I was placed with a more advanced group (heaven knows why! :shock: who all had several weeks experience and the only thing I really learnt was to keep up! (Oh, and that I could pretty much hurl myself down anything, survive and most importantly, thoroughly enjoy it, which was great for building confidence though not a lot of use for improving skills!) :wink:

The second week, we had 3 x 2 hour private lessons with my husband's instructor from the previous week, who was fantastic. He worked on completely different things with each of us, but used a variety of slopes (including the Olympic run at Sestriere) to give us a change of scenery. On the steeper pitches (which were purely for my benefit as my OH is infinitely more sensible), he coaxed my OH down and improved his confidence no end, whilst I was allowed to pick my own way down with an inane grin on my face. :D

The main things that I improved upon were un-weighting my skis as I turned (which I'd successfully mastered the week before, but needed to seriously tone down as I looked a bit like Tigger :lol: , pole planting (which I'd been told not to do the week before which seemed a bit odd) and keeping my weight forward, all of which made things so much easier. It really does help to have someone who is concentrating just on your faults (or at most a couple of others), rather than being with a large group where nobody really learns anything at all.

My next challenge is to have a go at skiing moguls and powder, both of which I think I'm going to need lessons for, or at least someone who knows what they're doing to give me few pointers and prevent me breaking my neck!