Derin 2016 Day 2

Derin skied for another 4 hours non-stop today. Staying on blue runs is allowing her to gain confidence and speed naturally. It’s the only way really that I can get her to improve at the moment. She’s a little bit over-cautious about most things and especially anything new. Her favourite word is “scary”! On the other hand she wants to ski – and doesn’t want to stop for a break – so she maximises the 4 hour session.

It’s a bit hard to get her to work on basic skills because as soon as she finds something difficult she doesn’t want to work at it – but then I see her trying again in her own time when she feels up to it – so she is listening and wants to progress. Some other things just seem to require a lot of repetition – but that’s fine.

Yesterday she couldn’t sideslip or side step uphill – today she could do both. This along with greater speed and being able to follow me now on blue runs is adequate progress.

My only concern is that she is leaning far too far back in her ski boots for support and is using the right leg all the time. When turning to the left the right leg is fine and the skis almost parallel nearly all the time – but when turning to the right she stays on the right leg and pushes out the left ski into a “stem” (like a snowplough). This is due to not feeling strong on her left leg.

My tactics so far have been to get her to jump between turns – to try to get her off the backs of the boots and into a narrower stance – but she is so stuck backwards that she can’t jump. We will continue to work at this. Also, we have stopped frequently to work on “pivots” on one ski – where I assist. Then she has tried lifting the inside ski and made it work a little. I tried to get her to pull the ski inwards into the turn instead of pushing outwards but she didn’t understand that. I’ll try to work through that more clearly with her.

We worked on her feet – indoors initially with the boots off – rolling onto the inside edges of the feet and feeling the muscles on the insides of the legs. She had trouble doing that on skis but slowly it’s coming.  When skiing I emphasised moving the body (centre of mass) into the turn – and rolling the feet – to try to overcome being on the backs of the boots and stemming.

Perhaps half days are just too short and she needs to get more chance to ski in general. She seems to have plenty of energy. The following video shows how far she is currently back in the boots and how the turns are different in each direction…