....And the sad reality is that getting Mr. Orange Pants to undo that very ingrained movement pattern is harder than taking the time to teach it properly at the entry level.
Heel-pushing is indeed very hard to delete when it's deeply embedded.
The skier needs to know that it's happening (skier is often unaware), needs to want to replace it because of its dysfunctional consequences (skier is often aware something goes wrong sometimes but doesn't know why), needs to know how to do the appropriate replacement movement pattern (needs quality coaching, hard to find), needs to do the appropriate replacement movement pattern often enough to know what the replacement feels like (takes effort and involves dealing with sometimes disappointing implementation), needs to be always proprioceptively monitoring whether the heel-pushing is happening or whether the arch-rotation is happening (takes conscious concentration on the issue, which is not necessarily what people want to do while skiing), so that when auto-pilot kicks in and heel-pushing returns that situation can be reversed.
Then the skier needs to be committed to doing this monitoring and enact those corrections on every run, everywhere (which is in direct conflict with "having fun" - for most people).
This is "work." It requires continuous conscious self-evaluation until the new movement pattern is embedded, and this takes a lot of time skiing with the focus to be successful, maybe even seasons. Most adult recreational skiers are not willing to do this. A LIII candidate should be willing, but recreational skiers on vacation - not so much.
T'would be so much better if skiers were willing to take enough lessons at the beginning to get the right motor patterns embedded in the first place, as @JESinstr says.
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