Zermatt - Day 8

[Photo above: walking to the first gondola station at 8:30 am]

Today was the first day of my second week. I started the day determined not to complain about any aches and pains and to really give'er. Rory and I are now the only two people in our group as Sandy does his best to give us the maximum amount of opportunity to improve in time to get to Level 3 standard. Yesterday Sandy asked me who we wanted to ski with and I asked for Josh Foster from Big White and Pontiac World of Skiing. I had Josh for a couple of days last year and was impressed with keen eye for detail and his relentlessness in his desire to improve us. So Josh it is.

It was a challenging day. While Sandy recognized how far Rory and I have come, with Josh we are a blank slate. Therefore he was a lot harder on us. I think Rory felt quite discouraged. I personally would rather have Josh find things to improve in our skiing now than during the exam. I think Rory is getting nervous as we near the exam date. He has started asking for feedback constantly and seems to be getting worked up. I'm still relaxed. I figure all I can do is try to do everything asked of me. It helps that I have been getting consistently good feedback through the week.

Josh did a great job of picking up where Sandy left off. We started the day working on eliminating unnecessary lead change. Today was the first day I was called out as having too large of a lead change on one side. Wonder if it is my knee? It was bugging me again this morning, making it easier to turn to the right than the left. Thankfully my knee felt better by afternoon. Not sure if it was loosening it up or the Ibuprofen.

The tactics Josh used to improve our skiing were:

1. Begin the day by doing "shmedium" (small to medium) radius turns where your feet are parallel in the fall line. Don't concern yourself with carving, just alignment. Your ability to increase edge will be improved as you improve alignment.
2. Think of the beginning/end of the turn as being in the fall line (phase 2) rather than across the fall line. This will move the impulse further up the turn. A simple way of working this is to try to direct snow off your skis to the side instead of down the hill.
3. Most skiers begin each turn with a shuffle step forward. Their turns are not rounded but rather more in the fall line. The key again is minimizing lead change. An easier way to elminate lead change is to drop the inside ski back rather than my bring the outside ski forward (which is hard to do as it is under a lot of pressure) . I almost felt like I was telemarking today!
4. Once you have mastered foot alignment, make sure your pole plant is done with elbows down rather than elbows up. This ensures you get pinching or angulation rather than rotation.
5. To lighten the ski at the beginning of the turn, use inside ski turns (lifting the outside ski) for the first half of the turn, then put down your outside ski in the fall line and continue to bend through the turn. Once you have done a couple of runs of this, do a run simulating the feeling of lifting the outside ski at the beginning of the turn without actually doing it. This worked really well for me. I had my best run of the day after doing it.

Pontiac World of Skiing was here filming today. They are doing a four minute segment on My Swiss Trip as their two ski tip presenters (Josh and Steve) are here teaching. Steve is actually hosting several episodes of the TV show this year so they will be filming more of Zermatt tomorrow. Maybe I will get a chance to be an extra. ;) On that note I am going to sign off and have an early night. It was a big day today! Still getting a lot of compliments on my skiing which is nice. I followed Josh down one run right by the T-bar today totally ripping it up that got lots of admiring glances. :)Wheeee!