idea
Skiing is a progression on 4 axis: mobility, gliding, speed control and direction change.
There are four axis that require attention:
- Mobility of the joints
- Direction control with lower body
- Lower and upper body separation
- Coordination and timing for fluidity
There are five essential skills:
- Stance and balance
- Timing and coordination
- Pivoting
- Edging
- Pressure control
Like most things, 1/2 of it is just mileage.
notes
Reflective learning:
- Task targeting motor skill/objective
- Student reflects - active listening
- Student understands - debrief & clarify
- Vary - guided mileage & experimentation
Decision making is based on:
- learning contract (goals, experience, psychological, physical)
- situation (weather, snow, terrain, traffic ...),
- skiing objectives (mobility, direction, gliding, speed management)
- motor skills development (what to develop, how to develop). How to develop - stages of a skill: initiation, acquisition, consolidation, refinement, variation. Use reflective learning to push student to think about it.
Lesson plan:
Plan lesson based on:
- Mobility
- Gliding
- Direction change
- Speed management
Gliding experience - the 1st time, focusing on gliding and mobility:
- introduce equipment
- moving around and climbing
- falling and getting up
- gliding to a stop
→ On a safe spot.
Progression:
- First turns: from snow-plow, balance out. Show.
- Linking and create rhythm
- Get mobile
- Learn speed control
- Learn turning
- Learn linking turns
- Green-run: reduce size of snow plow, round turn shape
- Blue-run: use terrain, hop turns, shorter turns, pole plant
Skills:
- Stance and balance
- Timing and coordination
- Pivoting
- Edging
- Pressure control
Technical reference:
- 4 guiding principles
- Use of all joints helps maintain balance, providing ability to manage forces acting on ski and skier
- Turning is led by the lower body and ski design
- Upper and lower body separation allow angulation to provide grip
- Coordinate movement patterns direct the forces acting on the skis and the momentum of the skier from turn to turn
- Assess, develop
Look for:
- Stance is up, forward, loose
- Shoulders are levelled
- Upper and lower body are separated: independent, disassociated
- Upper body is facing down
- Pressure is controlled during turns
- Timing is fluid, transition in turns is sequences and not sequential
- Balance is shifting out of the skis
- Carving: legs are parallel, not A-shaped
Toolbox:
- Tug of war
- Pole plant
- Follow the leader
- Corridors
- Terrain
- Flat boxes
- Switch ski
- Inside ski turn
- Synchro ski
- Hands to outside
- Reverse plane / Lean outside
- Lift inside ski / tap inside ski
- Snowplow turn initiation
- Outside hand on hip
- Wide track
- No poles
- Shoulders leveled with poles
- Hockey stops
- Poles behind
- Eyes shut
- Games
- Toss and fetch
Disabilities
Progression for people with disabilities is the same, it is simply transposed depending on the disability. E.g. someone who's paralyzed from the hips down will turn with their hips rather than feet. So angulation starts at the hips.
Kids
Kids are different in a mental and physical way.
Teaching kids follows the same progression, but the methods might differ, using more showing and less telling, much more games, rewards and showing than for adults, and a different rhythm (pauses to play in snow). One step at a time. As they grow older, they need less assistance and more challenges.
references
- Snowpro is the CSIA's website with resources.
- CSIA's guide
- CSIA's former manual
- CSIA lesson plan is giving a few lesson scenarios
- CSIA's guide on Teaching to kids by age group
- CSIA's guide on Science of skiing