A Good Instructor: The Case of Jim the Magician

Sally was down in the private lesson office buying your first ski lesson in five years. She didn't know what ability skier she was or what she needed to work on. All she knew was that she wanted to get better and get over her fears. She explained her circumstance to the ticket office person by saying she feared steep slopes and wanted an instructor who would go slow with her. She bought a two hour lesson and was assigned to Jim who had a reputation for calming fears and giving great lessons.

When she met Jim, he asked her what she wanted to work on. She said she was petrified every time she found herself on an intermediate hill. Jim knew right off that the fear factor needed to be overcome. Jim had to show her how to maintain the control even when the going became steep. Jim took her on the easy slopes first and worked on control techniques by using turn shape to control speed (if you make wider zigzags or turns across the hill, you will go slower). Jim also worked on edging drills to give her added control. Once Sally felt comfortable, Jim took her to a steeper slope where she applied her new found skills and finally found the speed control she was looking for.

Sally is like most skiers because she needed to work on fundamentals on the easy slopes before attempting them on the steeps. Sally had the right idea. She went to the ski school after finding difficulty in her skiing and told the person at the ski school desk exactly what was wrong and what she wanted from her instructor.

Take a lesson from a certified instructor Taking a ski lesson is the fastest way to becoming a great skier. One of the keys to finding a good instructor is simply asking the ski school for a certified ski instructor and explaining the problem. Certified instructors have passed rigorous tests and have been deemed gurus by their peers. This is an important point as many instructors are only high level intermediate skiers themselves. Try to match your personality to that of the instructor. Most big name ski schools have hundreds of instructors and matching personality types could mean the difference between a great lesson and an average lesson. Simply ask the counter person at the ski school desk for the kind of person you would most enjoy as an instructor. Remember, they can only go by what you tell them.

Alpine Skiing School section in english version of WWW.SKI.BG is based on
"A Guide To Becoming An Expert: From First Time To A Lifetime"
by John Mukavitz Copyright © 1998