Monarch Ski & Ride School’s Guest Survey

Here is another way to rate an instructor. This document is handed to all guests that sign up for a ski/ride booking at Monarch Mountain. It asks the guests to rate their satisfaction with our school and their instructor on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 meaning strongly agree)to statements. Here are the statements:…

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How To Rate A Ski Instructor

PSIA (Professional Ski Instructors Association) has established standards for ski instructors in the industry. There are currently three levels of ski instructor certification in the U.S. At cert exams, a system of scoring three specific skill categories is used by examiners to ultimately determine if a candidate has reached the level of standards (actual current Level III Scorecard here).…

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New Business Card

Just got my new cards from VistaPrint. Not quite sure what I think about ’em yet. Even though I designed it myself, I have to see what people’s reaction to them is. I think they may be too “busy” or too hard to read. I was vasilating between blue or black background. Black would have…

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Asking Guests to Request Me

In yesterday’s afternoon rehire session on MA (movement analysis), near the end we talked about how to encourage guests to return for more coaching. I feel like I kind of went off in left field talking about developing a relationship with the client and stuff. What I should have said was that, bottom line, the…

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New Zealand Ski Instructors Association Manuvers

Ran across this today. I thought it was worth posting here. I want to learn to talk like that. Perhaps the best way would be to work down under next summer. Or . . . maybe I can get my good friend Hayden Melsop to teach me fly fishing and I can learn how to…

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The Tight Collar: The New Science of Choking Under Pressure | Wired Science 

via wired.com Here’s an article about a topic I mentioned in a previous post that referenced a 10 year old article. This one in wired is from September 2010 Wired.com. Very interesting discussion on the thought processes going on in athletic situations. Seems there is a “working memory” that if clogged with, or occupied by,…

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Choke or Panic? Implicit or Explicit Learning?

Ran across an interesting article from the New Yorker today (see it here). It’s kind of long, but so are most New Yorker articles. The subject of the article is why athletes/professionals sometimes fail under pressure. This post is so I can reference the article later and reference it to other topics. It’s over 10…

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Fixed Gear Cycling and Skiing

A concept I’ve been exploring for a while is how fixie riding can improve skiing. I intend to expound the following, but for now I just want to get ’em down somewhere before they are lost to damaged brain cells or whatever. Overall Fitness Spinning improves leg speed, thus improves quickness on snow. Pressure Control…

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PSIA Lexicon

Alpine Description Words The following descriptions are copied from the PSIA-RM demos found on www.vimeo.com. These are just the words imprinted on the skiing demos. They can also be found in a PDF document called Skiing Standards IDP (instructor development pathway), and they’re broken down into ski/body performance. The PDF contains the standards for all…

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