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Josh Matta

Skiing the powder
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Rounded turns work better in every conditions...

so its for a sure a good goal. :)
 

Jerez

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Hmmm. slightly divergent rant:

It has always seemed that PSIA is besotted with trying to turn everything into charts, graphs and rubrics. From skiing to teaching to interacting with people.

Imagine trying to teach or perform ballet by describing the physics of a jette, or balancing on one's toes -- or trying to pin every possible ballet movement into five fundamentals.

You surely wouldn't end up with dance.
 
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Bob Barnes

Bob Barnes

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Funny that you say that, because I've been concluding that, lately. I am an intermediate with only dozens of days of ski life. My last lesson, this past weekend, was simply centered on that: focusing on the outcome. In my case, turn shape. There are certain movements needed to achieve that, and hardpack is different from wet powder, but ultimately, my immediate goal is rounder terms in both. Next, the move :)

Students are smarter and more resourceful than we tend to think. If we show them the goal (in this case I am the student, but it doesn't matter), they'll find ways of getting there. We can, and we should, show how to achieve the goal. The problem really arises when we put the cart in front of the horse, and the means to achieve a goal ... become goals themselves.

Brilliant post, Medieta! I wish every instructor would read that and consider its implications.

There is a lot of science that supports your observations. Recent research (search for "OPTIMAL Theory of Motor Learning" for lots to read) reveals what many instructors have long known: that focusing attention on the outcome or effect of movements, and feedback directed externally on the outcome, rather than internally on the movements of specific body parts, is usually far more effective at producing results and facilitating learning.

Identify and shoot for the target. Our bodies are geniuses at figuring out how to get it done, and at learning to do it better. For a long time, instructors and instructor organizations have focused strongly on identifying, understanding, and describing movements with objective "body-part-specific" language. And that is, certainly, an important skill for instructors to develop. But it is not usually the best way to teach those movements, or to help a learner improve, the research clearly shows.

It's not a new concept. Among others, Tim Galwey and Bob Kriegel described the principle nearly 40 years ago in their classic, Inner Skiing. Horst Abraham, in the now-almost-forgotten manual, Skiing Right, posed the question: "does a butterfly flap its wings up and down...or does a butterfly just fly?"

And so it is with the Infinity Move. While I've broken it down and focused on some of the mechanics of it often enough, I've also seen skiers experience breakthroughs simply by visualizing the two separate, intersecting paths of their Center of Mass and Base of Support (neither of which are body parts) and focusing on making them move in the smooth, uninterrupted patterns of the Infinity Move. Don't worry about how to do it--focus on the outcome, and let your body make the "how" decisions, from the neck down.

Certainly, even for those who are mechanically focused on body parts, optimal performance virtually never arises until you abandon the conscious control of body parts and focus on the tactics, the outcome, the goal. Many instructors have focused on the three-stage motor learning model of Fitts & Posner (1967), in which learning new movements begins in the "cognitive stage," requiring conscious thought to make the body move the "correct" way, until practice and skill development allows the movement to occur increasingly "automatically" with less need for conscious direction. It's still a relevant model, but I do find that very often, focusing on the intended outcome, rather than the movements, can produce surprising success and rapid improvement--even for new, never-learned specific movements. I've long emphasized the motto that "intent dictates technique," which implies that you should be able modify technique by changing intent, by emphasizing tactics or environments that naturally evoke the desired movements.

Whether anyone believes in these intent/outcome-based learning strategies or not, it is still clear that, unless there is a clear outcome or purpose in mind, it's impossible to determine whether movements or focuses are "correct" or not. If you don't care where you end up, any road will get you there.

Technique in skiing (and most things) is not an end in itself--it is the means to an end. For some skiers, and some instructors, though, it seems that technique is the end in itself. They're the ones who focus on certain movements, in a "vacuum," without tying them to any particular desired outcome. They may ski like robots, but if that's their "thing," then no harm done--decide what movement you want to make, and then learn to make it. The reward is "getting it right." But for most of us, the reward is something far beyond the technique--it is the sensation of gliding and g-force, the floating effortlessness of cleanly linked turns, winning the race, getting big air, the rhythm of a bottomless powder run, ... and the technique is important only as the means to hit the target.

You've hit it straight on, Medieta!

Best regards,
Bob
 
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Nancy Hummel

Ski more, talk less.
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Brilliant post, Medieta! I wish every instructor would read that and consider its implications.

There is a lot of science that supports your observations. Recent research (search for "OPTIMAL Theory of Motor Learning" for lots to read) reveals what many instructors have long known: that focusing attention on the outcome or effect of movements, and feedback directed externally on the outcome, rather than internally on the movements of specific body parts, is usually far more effective at producing results and facilitating learning.

Identify and shoot for the target. Our bodies are geniuses at figuring out how to get it done, and at learning to do it better. For a long time, instructors and instructor organizations have focused strongly on identifying, understanding, and describing movements with objective "body-part-specific" language. And that is, certainly, an important skill for instructors to develop. But it is not usually the best way to teach those movements. or to help a learner improve, the research clearly shows.

It's not a new concept. Among others, Tim Galwey and Bob Kriegel described the principle nearly 40 years ago in their classic, Inner Skiing. Horst Abraham, in the now-almost-forgotten manual, Skiing Right, posed the question: "does a butterfly flap its wings up and down...or does a butterfly just fly?"

And so it is with the Infinity Move. While I've broken it down and focused on some of the mechanics of it often enough, I've also seen skiers experience breakthroughs simply by visualizing the two separate, intersecting paths of their Center of Mass and Base of Support (neither of which are body parts) and focusing on making them move in the smooth, uninterrupted patterns of the Infinity Move. Don't worry about how to do it--focus on the outcome, and let your body make the "how" decisions, from the neck down.

Certainly, even for those who are mechanically focused on body parts, optimal performance virtually never arises until you abandon the conscious control of body parts and focus on the tactics, the outcome, the goal. Many instructors have focused on the three-stage motor learning model of Fitts & Posner (1967), in which learning new movements begins in the "cognitive stage," requiring conscious thought to make the body move the "correct" way, until practice and skill development allows the movement to occur increasingly "automatically" with less need for conscious direction. It's still a relevant model, but I do find that very often, focusing on the intended outcome, rather than the movements, can produce surprising success and rapid improvement--even for new, never-learned specific movements. I've long emphasized the motto that "intent dictates technique," which implies that you should be able modify technique by changing intent, by emphasizing tactics or environments that naturally evoke the desired movements.

Whether anyone believes in these intent/outcome-based learning strategies or not, it is still clear that, unless there is a clear outcome or purpose in mind, it's impossible to determine whether movements or focuses are "correct" or not. If you don't care where you end up, any road will get you there.

Technique in skiing (and most things) is not an end in itself--it is the means to an end. For some skiers, and some instructors, though, it seems that technique is the end in itself. They're the ones who focus on certain movements, in a "vacuum," without tying them to any particular desired outcome. It that's their "thing," then no harm done--decide what movement you want to make, and the learn to make it. The reward is "getting it right." But for most of us, the reward is something far beyond the technique--it is the sensation of gliding and g-force, the floating effortlessness of cleanly linked turns, winning the race, getting big air, the rhythm of a bottomless powder run, ... and the technique is important only as the means to hit the target.

You've hit it straight on, Medieta!

Best regards,
Bob


I have been learning to play golf in the summers. The optimal learning environment for me seems to be a combination of outcome based learning with a decent amount of specific movement depending on what I am doing and whether I am producing the desired outcome. Knowing when to use one or the other is an art that both the instructor and the student share responsibility for in order to maximize learning.
 
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Bob Barnes

Bob Barnes

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...
Imagine trying to teach or perform ballet by describing the physics of a jette, or balancing on one's toes -- or trying to pin every possible ballet movement into five fundamentals.

You surely wouldn't end up with dance.

While I don't disagree, Jerez, that's an interesting analogy that may not, actually, hold true. I've related this story before....

Many years ago, at Keystone, I had a fascinating intermediate-skiing student who was a recently-retired prima ballerina from a renowned ballet company. Such was her body awareness, balance, flexibility, and precise body control that she could reproduce--perfectly--any movement I could describe in detail and any movement I could demonstrate. I could point to a skier, and she could imitate like a perfect double. What she could NOT do, to both of our fascination, was find "her" way to ski. She could ski tall, short, or medium, on command, but she was unable to find the functionally optimal "natural" stance that just worked best and "felt right." She could ski to any rhythm--but could not find her own.

On reflection, she realized that for her entire career, she had trained herself (and was among the best in world) to make movements precisely and on command, with robotic perfection and consistency, regardless of how they "felt," how "efficient" they were, or what effects they produced. It was her job to make movements and hold positions that were often unnatural and painful, and to ignore the pain.

Unlike skiing movements, this student's ballet moves were not means to an end. The movements themselves were the end and the purpose, and she had trained herself to ignore their often painful consequences. I'd argue that, left to themselves, our "genius" bodies would never learn to make some of the unnatural, painful movements of ballet!

On the other hand, my wife Susan, who also danced ballet, often describes the best dancers as dancing "with abandon"--but with still extraordinary precision and discipline. I suspect that even my intriguing student must have been able to progress to a stage of "abandon" where conscious self-direction quiets and highly-trained movements arise from the music, the dance partner, or the emotion of the performance. But since the precise movements came first and foremost, she had to focus on them directly, at first, and only then could she "forget about them" with the confidence that her body would do it right when she is lost in the moment. "Discipline," as champion skater Elvis Stojko says, "will set you free."

For all its flow and elegance, beneath the surface, ballet is one of the most technical, precise, and unnatural mechanically-based disciplines there is. I suspect that great ballet instructors are actually very good at breaking down and analyzing the movements into their tiniest components. I suspect that many of them are strongly grounded in physics and biomechanics--if not formally, then through experience. Dancers themselves--like skiers--need not understand all these things, but their coaches and instructors must.

You don't need to understand much of anything to ski well--witness the naturalness of children, and the "unconscious competence" of top athletes. But any significant misunderstanding will devastate your performance--whether it is your misunderstanding or your instructor's. Accurate working knowledge (at least) of physics principles, biomechanics, technical models, movement analysis, and so on are very important for instructors and coaches. Again, they are not what is taught, but they are a critical foundation that underlies the simplicity and accuracy of what is taught. Students who have little interest in these things (and there are some who do have that interest) should be grateful that their instructor is up to speed on them, and willing to put in the time to learn these details!

Best regards,
Bob
 
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Tricia

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Hmmm. slightly divergent rant:

It has always seemed that PSIA is besotted with trying to turn everything into charts, graphs and rubrics. From skiing to teaching to interacting with people.

Imagine trying to teach or perform ballet by describing the physics of a jette, or balancing on one's toes -- or trying to pin every possible ballet movement into five fundamentals.

You surely wouldn't end up with dance.
Its funny you should bring up dance in this conversation.
A friend of mine, who happens to be a relatively new skier, @Stephen (who also did our intermediate ski reviews) is a professional ballroom dancer and ballroom dance instructor. When he took a lesson from another friend of ours, @TimD59, Tim was impressed with how Stephen understood movement and pick up on skiing immediately.
He's not your average intermediate, which I credit to his dance instruction experience.
Both Tim and Stephen are people who don't tie everything up into (5) fundamentals.
 

Tricia

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David Chaus

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I was thinking of the question of "how exactly does one direct pressure to the outside ski" and liked how Bud Heishman put it in his "The Target" article on working with beginners; teaching wedge christies with a passive rather than active movement to direct pressure to the outside ski. Release old outside ski edge, allow the skis to seek the fall line, and in so doing weight is transfered to the new outside ski, and simultaneously weight is transferred to that new outside ski, which initiates the turn.

I've been playing with that a little mindfully, and noticing it leads naturally to the infinity move, in which the skis move underneath me in the crossover/transition, rather than me making any efforts to make it happen. It's more a state of mind than a movement, or series of sequential movement.
 

Tricia

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Bud Heishman put it in his "The Target" article on working with beginners; teaching wedge christies with a passive rather than active movement to direct pressure to the outside ski.
This was a particularly difficult thing for me when I was attempting to being an instructor.
 

Nancy Hummel

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I was thinking of the question of "how exactly does one direct pressure to the outside ski" and liked how Bud Heishman put it in his "The Target" article on working with beginners; teaching wedge christies with a passive rather than active movement to direct pressure to the outside ski. Release old outside ski edge, allow the skis to seek the fall line, and in so doing weight is transfered to the new outside ski, and simultaneously weight is transferred to that new outside ski, which initiates the turn.

I've been playing with that a little mindfully, and noticing it leads naturally to the infinity move, in which the skis move underneath me in the crossover/transition, rather than me making any efforts to make it happen. It's more a state of mind than a movement, or series of sequential movement.

It is like the beer and cigarettes on the dashboard of your car. Car turns left and beer and cigarettes fly out the window. Everyone in the lesson laughs but most people understand the concept.
 

David Chaus

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It is like the beer and cigarettes on the dashboard of your car. Car turns left and beer and cigarettes fly out the window. Everyone in the lesson laughs but most people understand the concept.
I don't typically have beer or cigarettes on my dashboard, but I have been known to leave my warm beverage on the roof of the car, with the same result.
 

Chris V.

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The optimal learning environment for me seems to be a combination of outcome based learning with a decent amount of specific movement depending on what I am doing and whether I am producing the desired outcome. Knowing when to use one or the other is an art that both the instructor and the student share responsibility for in order to maximize learning.
That sums it up beautifully. Properly balancing the two approaches epitomizes both the challenge and the joy of ski instruction. And then of course one has to tailor the lesson to the ages and personalities of the students.

I believe students can learn a tremendous amount just by observing other skiers. I regularly ask students to pick out other skiers on the hill while riding a chair lift, and think about what those other skiers are doing well or doing wrong. It can be very affirming for a student to realize that he has overcome an awkwardness that another skier is struggling with. And if one sees a skier practicing the movement pattern that we are calling the infinity move, its grace and effectiveness is obvious to all. A rank beginner isn't going to be able to just start skiing that way without a good deal of preparation and guidance, going through steps directed to that outcome. But at some point the student will start to figure out on his own fine adjustments that bring him closer to the observed ideal. I also believe that as instructors we furnish maybe only 5 percent of the knowledge that a student needs to succeed, while the student acquires the other 95 percent through self-discovery. But the selection and presentation of that 5 percent is crucial.

Also, compliments on the the beer and cigarettes thing. :)
 

Chris V.

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Here's a little history, for those who haven't followed the evolution of American ski instruction.
The current Alpine Technical Manual has a forward giving much of this history. But it leaves out the whole more recent Center Line Model episode. Thank you for that!
 

LiquidFeet

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Is the infinity move a MOVE?

I view it more of a consequence of everything else working right, which would require a lot of words to describe here online.
It's something I try to be aware of through proprioception.
Fine-tuning one's awareness of the whereabouts of body's center of mass and the feet is required in order to sense it happening.

But an action, a movement? Not in my worldview.
 

bud heishman

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BB said,

"find it curious that the Five Fundamentals describe controlling "the relationship of the center of mass to the base of support" only in the context of fore-aft pressure regulation. In fact, that relationship (CM and BoS) is the basis for regulation of fore-aft pressure (Fundamental #1), lateral pressure (Fundamental #2), and overall magnitude of pressure (Fundamental #5). In other words, that simple relationship is the basis for Pressure Control, which is why the Skills Concept did not need to separate it into three "fundamental" separate movements. (It is pertinent to the question, though, that The Infinity Move describes only this simple relationship of the CM and the Base of Support--and nothing more.)"

Money!
 

bud heishman

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When standing vertically (perpendicular to the snow), for example, fore-aft movements of the legs at the hips will affect fore-aft pressure, and rotational movements of the legs will turn the skis. Lie down on your side on the snow, though, and the same fore-aft hip motion will make your skis point in different directions, while rotational movements of your femurs in the hip sockets will affect pressure along the length of the skis. The effects of these movements literally reverse when your body is vertical vs. horizontal, and they blend along a spectrum in the real world of varying degrees of inclination in ski turns.


Mo Money!
 

bud heishman

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I still have my copy of "The Inner Game of Skiing" by Timothy Galloway! Read that book my first year of teaching and it gave me so many great ideas for experiential teaching. Still have a copy of ATM Teaching Concepts III and will sell it for $500 because it is worth that much! Another treasure in my skiing library (well book shelf) is "Psycho Cybernetics" by Maxwell Maltz and "Lateral Thinking" by ?. Though these books never mention skiing, they taught me so much about the mind and skiing. Worth a look if you are so inclined.

I second Bob's thoughts that the "Centerline Concept" was perhaps the greatest evolution of our organization yet very few grasped it's value and goal. Everything I have ever heard Bob Barnes teach is based in this Centerline ideal. The "Target" piece is based on the efficiency of the Centerline Concept. Good skiing fluctuates from side to side of the Centerline but it is the detent intent that drives my skiing.

Great to see you active here Bob! Always learn something from your posts!
 

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