Finn 1

Finn has only skied once before – for 5 days in February 2015 – and has only ever skied with skating or directly parallel. Today we had to get him going again for the first time since this experience and due to not having a defensive snowplough to fall back on this required starting completely from scratch – but with the result being that within half a day he already surpassed his previous level.

Today we literally began from scratch – how to properly put a ski on – sliding on one ski and stepping to the inside (left ski to go right) – skating (with some skating instruction) – skating step turns – button lift – gradual replacement of skate with dynamics – basic dynamics. This process took Finn back up to skiing parallel on gentle slopes within a few hours without recourse to defensive actions such as snowplough.

Indoors we looked at how to use the foot correctly and avoid twisting actions.

Some of the skating progressions and dynamics exercises are explained in expanded detail on the fixed pages of the blog…

http://skiinstruction.blogspot.fr/p/beginners.html

http://skiinstruction.blogspot.fr/p/dynamics.html

In the end – after 4pm – Finn was getting tired and we ended up on a steeper blue run – which was altogether a bit too much for him at the moment. Fortunately a passing ski patroller on at skidoo took him on board and straight down to the gondola so we didn’t miss the last descent into the valley. Tomorrow we can begin to work on developing Finn’s technique to be able to cope with steeper and more challenging conditions. Today he did extremely well and surpassed my own expectations. Now that Finn is back up to speed we will be able to work on getting to the next level already.