Should it be a site?

You should know if you are contemplating a web site if I took it upon myself if doing it without pay. Now what if I build something nice. There’s a real whole that’s not filling a real need. What happened to ski school’s web site? We had a whole bunch of web site info available.…

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CS1: Gateway to Excellence

It may seem silly to think that improving your teaching skills with children can help you to become a better skier/rider, instructor/coach, individual/citizen, supervisor/staff member. You may have heard an instructor or two say, “I’d much rather teach adults.” Our personalities and world views are pretty much formed by the time we’re 10 years old.…

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Elements of a good PSIA bio

While clearing notes of scrap papers on my desk I found a list I’d jotted down referring to what makes a good biography in the ski industry. Here they are: Be eternally grateful to someone for their inspiration. Encourage people to take lessons and offer a guarantee. Have other “cool” activities that you do. Talk…

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Getting Folks Into An Athletic Stance

This is probably one the hardest and most important skills that needs to be developed in skiers. If they are not in an athletic stance then they just will not be able to keep up with their skis. In other words their center of mass (their balance) will be behind their base of support (their…

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Thoughts on Being Inspirational

You may have seen the PSIA/AASI posters that encourage us to inspire. Sounds good, but what does it mean? Why should we even care about inspiring others? Isn’t it enough to just enjoy what we’re doing? Or, “Hey I’m just trying to have fun!” Let’s say we do look at being inspirational from a selfish…

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Attention idea for article

I’m reading “Attention and Motor Skill Learning,” by Gabriele Wulf. So far I’m seeing that many studies have been done that suggest one’s attention affects motor skill learning, performance, and retention and shows that relevant external foci generally improves these three compared to internal foci. As I’ve been playing around with trying to figure out…

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Attention and Performance

Thinking about the movements needed for high performance can actually be a detriment to high performance. Depending on the skill level of an athlete, thinking about how to move to perform a task will likely result in stiff, slow movement patterns. Many high performance skills rely on smooth, fluid, and quick movement patterns. An athlete…

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PSIA-RM Fall Training 2017

All signed up for the upcoming fall training in Breckenridge, November 12 to 14th. It’s an excellent opportunity to meet lots of folks in our division. Rub shoulders with my counterparts from other areas. It’s been a broadening experience every time I’ve gone. I think I’ve been about 10 times over the years. I believe…

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A Cool Learning Tool?

Just read an article in WIRED, RHETT ALLAIN “The best way to test students? Make them explain it on video.” It’s about how this physics teacher uses videos, that students create and submit, to test their depth of knowledge and help to learn. What a great idea! We talk about having measurable objectives in our snowsports…

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Phase Terminology

Heard someone call the end of a turn an “exit.”  Psycho-linguistically, that may be a more effective way of labeling the end phase of a turn. Describing the start and ends of turns as “entries” and “exits” may at times be better, especially during coaching instruction. I know people use “shaping phase” a lot to…

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