Latest posts for the topic "What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?"

What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

Sat, 9 Mar 2013 09:21:03 GMT

What is the aim when trying to improve? I would be interested to hear what others think. I start by setting out my own thoughts and aims.

Some people seem to be looking for more speed. But abfahrt / downhill speed is not it IMO. Anybody with the balls to point the skis down the mountain can ski fast? Going down from Rendl (St Anton) some people passed us close at racing speeds. Good style too. What is great driving on an F1 track is atrocious driving down the High Street. Maybe it is reluctance to take the Helicopter Ambulance "shuttle" which operates all day between St Anton or Ischgl and Innsbruck Hospital, but I feel the same principle applies to public pistes...

Races held socially for example in ski schools will be something like GS, which are more a test of control but not as hard as normal slalom. Maybe going fast in that context is the aim.

For me safety is number 1 and injury would not be fun. Second, efficiency. It is not fun ending the day exhausted. Third, good style.

But what is good style? Who knows, when ski teachers have so many competing theories (especially in America). Maybe they over-complicate things. There are various videos on the net illustrating these ideas. In the end style is in the eye of the beholder. I have no idea how to pick between these teachers and schools. For inline skating I have a lot of contact with a very technical instructor whose own style becomes a model for me, but I have never had a ski lesson. I like Austrian style because I ski in Austria and have received some informal tips on how it is done. Sofa Ski School would be the best example on video. This teaching appears to have a fairly loose connection with race training.

On the other hand for some advanced skiiers the aim is all about using and developing "real" off-piste skills, where a whole new range of skills and moutaincraft come into play.

Touring is also great for fitness. I am not qualified to do a real tour without a guide but I do enjoy walking up reasonably close the piste on touring skis (I did get lost in the woods once...skiing several km back down the footpath was even more strenuous than walking up it), and I do not really believe anyone who says they ski for fitness unless they have tried this type of skiing (which is surprisingly addictive).

What are your aims? And do you have views about what is "good" skiing, beyond the few basics which every skier could jot down on the back of an envelope (like not sitting back, and not starting a turn with the shoulders)? And why should we care anyway? If you can get into and out of the ski hut bar safely, and bullshit about your skiing exploits back in Blighty with your mates, maybe that is what a skiing holiday is all about?

Re:What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

Sat, 9 Mar 2013 13:30:39 GMT

First and foremost a ski holiday is just that, a holiday, in a wonderful mountain environment.
Good skiing is relative to your level, control is everything, skiing as fast as you can safely control can be good skiing, skiing faster than you can safely control is not.
I love to ski fast, but as soon as it gets busy, particularly if there are kids or beginners about (both by their nature are unpredictable), I wash off the speed. Same goes for junctions, you see so many skiers ski straight across oblivious of the risk.
I strive to be able to ski whatever conditions throw at me, being able to adjust my technique to suit.
We have saying in the club, the best skier is the one that enjoys it the most.

Re:What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

Sat, 9 Mar 2013 14:13:10 GMT

For me a good ski holiday is coming home bubbling with enthusiasm for the next one. Sometimes it may be that I have made progress with something I have previously found more difficult steeps/bumps/pole plants/powder etc Sometimes my skiing may have been average but the company hilarious/resort beautiful/conditions fantastic.
I go with the agenda of having fun no matter what the conditions, I always take lessons, sometimes group ski school if I'm travelling in a mixed ability group or a couple of private lessons if it is just myself and boyfriend. It will depend where we are and what the conditions are like as to what I choose to concentrate on in a private lesson.
I'm disabled and my physical condition varies wildly depending on a lot of things so I have no real style as I often have to adapt the way move to the amount of pain I am in or not.
Some holidays I will have to be content to enjoy the views on green/blue slopes skiing without poles because planting poles can cause electric shock type pains, my last holiday however I was feeling pretty good and was able to to spend a couple of days on the reds and blacks at VDI working on pole plants and generally more fluid movements.
A great ski holiday to my mind involves learning something (even if it is just to manage your expectations) enjoying the local eateries and bars, being in great company and arriving home in one piece with a big grin and photographic evidence.

Re:What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

Sat, 9 Mar 2013 16:07:25 GMT

What great answers, especially the emphasis on fun :-)

By the way, speaking as someone who spends a lot of time in Innsbruck, I can highly recommend revisiting the Alps in summer. On a sunny summer day the ski huts can be buzzing with walkers and mountain bikers (who may use the ski lift one way).

Re:What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

Sat, 9 Mar 2013 18:06:38 GMT

andyhull wrote:First and foremost a ski holiday is just that, a holiday, in a wonderful mountain environment.
Good skiing is relative to your level, control is everything, skiing as fast as you can safely control can be good skiing, skiing faster than you can safely control is not.
I love to ski fast, but as soon as it gets busy, particularly if there are kids or beginners about (both by their nature are unpredictable), I wash off the speed. Same goes for junctions, you see so many skiers ski straight across oblivious of the risk.
I strive to be able to ski whatever conditions throw at me, being able to adjust my technique to suit.
We have saying in the club, the best skier is the one that enjoys it the most.

Superbly put

Re:What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 09:36:57 GMT

I always find these kinda threads a bit on the tedius side ...... surely is it not up to the individual to decide, I do think we are all different :roll:

Re:What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:25:14 GMT

An enjoyable holiday is the key thing.
To achieve that you need a reasonable technique to be able to ski on piste safely - comfortable on blues and reds. I would say you would need to be able to ski most blacks, not necessarily fast or even with grace and style but well enough to get down safely if you need to.

Many would say their first week on the snow was their best ever but that's not an experience that can be repeated.

Beyond that it's really about personal preferences - some like the feel of high speed, off piste or moguls - in which case you need to develop a better standard of skiing (to do it safely) compared with cruising blues.

Re:What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 12:47:35 GMT

People will have different reasons for going skiing, especially the first few trips. I met quite a few people going for their first trip and it was a mixture of people following their partner and willingly trying it out, others were literally dragged along by their partners or mates.

The only rule is that you should know why you are going and what you want out of it. That's what mostly matters and do what's necessary to reach the goal whether it is having a good time, improving your skills or just going for a leisurely ski when you fancy it. This diversity makes it such a great activity. Of course safety should always take top priority and a little bit of danger is healthy too.

I took a strange approach to it though. My first trip was a load of fun with my friends but the skiing side of it was hopeless and even forgot how to stop after a day or so. My second trip was not meant to be a holiday and was basically boot camp for me. I was determined to improve and truly decide whether it was for me or not. I went on my own and improved beyond what I thought was possible. My next trip will be a true ski holiday as I'm now an intermediate and I've decided it is for me and I can sit back and enjoy while improving, etc.

Re:What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:09:55 GMT

I learned to ski 13 years ago because we wanted to have a christmas holiday, and it was snow or sun and I did not like the idea of sitting on a beach christmas day, so we picked skiing. Mrs H had learned years before and been with school several times, and another mate who came was similar standard. The rest of us - myself, mates wife, and all 4 kids were total novices.

I have to say that first week was one of the worst of my life. I hated it. I was useless with the first 3 lessons, snowploughing - pain, aches, tantrums, etc. But then on day 4 we learned to parallel and I was away. It felt natural whereas snowplough felt wrong. Very wrong.

I continued with lessons all week, morning and afternoon, with lunchtime spent skiing about with Mrs H to practise, and by the end of the week I was comfortable going down blues and had been down a couple of reds but found them tough.

The weeks/years that have gone by since, I have tried to better myself, take on board tips and advice, copy good skiers, cut out bad habits, try new things. As time has gone by, I have found things I used to worry about I dont any more, slopes I used to dread I eat up, and now I am always looking for something off the edge which presents a challenge. But its only been my desire to improve and get better all the time that drove me on. The first4 or 5 trips I was doing a fair bit of falling over as I was pushing myself on slopes I probably couldnt handle, but going to a resort like Mayrhofen so many times early on really brought me on as it was towards the more difficult end of run classification.

Personally, I love speed and as Andy posted above, when its safe to do so I love to really open up and clock how fast we can push it. 88kph was the fastest recorded time 2 years ago in St Moritz, but I am sure I've been faster than that in the time since.

I've cut out the one bad habit I had, which was moving my shoulders too much, because friends and family kept telling me I was doing it so I really worked on that myself. Lessons probably would have helped, but I wanted to develop myself and with people I skied with, and I also couldnt really afford them even if I wanted to. But I certainly push newcomers to take a week of lessons.

It took me several years, something like 4 weeks skiing, before I felt I was able to go anywhere round the mountain on piste, apart from maybe some blacks or moguls. But these days I find it is nice not to have to think about where we can or cant ski, or worry about how we would cope on a certain run. Friends we ski with get hung up on the colour of a piste on map and convince themselves they wont be able to ski it because its a black or a red etc etc when they would probably develop quicker on harder runs. I certaianly found that helped me but everyones different.

Some people probably are quite happy to pootle about on blues and bob around from cafe to cafe, maybe for them thats enough. For me I wanted to ski everything and anything, and now can pretty much, so thats why we like to travel to somewhere with mileage and a variety of terrain.

But everyone is different. And the main thing has to be enjoying it. I now love skiing so much it has become something of an obsession, a compulsion, a desire.

Re:What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:39:07 GMT

andyhull wrote:... the best skier is the one that enjoys it the most.

:thumbup:

Re:What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:45:58 GMT

Tony_H wrote:....Friends we ski with get hung up on the colour of a piste on map and convince themselves they wont be able to ski it because its a black or a red etc etc ....

This was, and to some extent still is, me; but an Austrian friend I ski with always tells me: "don't worry about the colour: learn to assess the conditions". I'm sure he's right.

Re:What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:03:09 GMT

Billip - that's fine if you are an experienced skier.
With experience comes the confidence in your ability to judge what terrain is skiable for your ability.

A relative novice will hopefully underestimate their own abilities so they don't get themselves into the poop. The colour of the piste is the only indicator of difficulty available to most of us the first time we ski a run. The problem that many hit is a undergraded piste and the inconsistent grading both form resort to resort but also within the same resort.
To give an example one of the reds dropping down to Courcheval le Praz I ski'd last year. Nothing untoward for a red at all. However my friend and I both had a chuckle when we realized that for a part of it's course it merged with a green and the bit that was labelled green was the steepest part of the red! Not an issue for us but a beginner meandering down the green would reasonably have been spooked to say the least. It just goes to show how you can't trust piste colours.
It also goes to suggest that being comfortable on reds is the standard to aim for unless you want to really restrict where you ski and not be caught out resorts that manipulate gradings to imply they cater for all abilities. Similarly we all take a wrong turn (or more if I'm map reading) and don't want to end up leading people into difficulty. When skiing with relative beginners we have to be careful but I would argue that the standard to enjoy skiing is comfort on all reds otherwise there is that doubt in the skiers mind about "Is it OK for me to do this?" And for safety I don't think anyone should stop working on their technique if that question comes through their mind on reds although some that question will always be asked of themselves even if their technique is fine - but that's about confidence rather than ability.

Re:What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 20:27:32 GMT

I think assessing difficulty does only come with a bit of experience. It is even harder off piste because it can be difficult to impossible to assess snow quality just by appearance. I ski with an Austrian friend who has always assessed what I can handle, which is nice, albeit without regard to colour coding, and off piste she sometimes says 'we cannot safely go there without checking with a guide first.'

She said that local girls are told 'if you cannot ski well you will never get a man.' Another motivation for skiing! (reminds me of the funny ski scene in Bridget Jones Part II). Ironic that this Austrian girl found a middle-aged guy who started skiing by repeatedly falling off a kiddies' lift :-/