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Tell me…what are you trying to accomplish?
OscawanaSkier
Posts: 101 Baller
Over in the “Towline Tension” thread @ski6jones added this really insightful post:
I had a coach ask me a question about what I wanted to be doing at some point in the course. I fumbled and bumbled my words and couldn't formulate a cogent answer. His comment to me was you should be able to tell me what you're trying to accomplish at every point in the course. Until he said that it never even occurred to me to try. So I went and tried to write it all down. Was that ever enlightening! I had pieces and parts but nothing continuous. I even found some contradictory ideas.
He went on about how that comment was super helpful in furthering his understanding of his skiing.
In thinking about this idea, I thought about all the skiing posts, tutorials, and podcasts I've listened to. They're almost always some great skier writing/talking about what they think or do at one specific part of the course. What we usually miss though is the larger context - what did they think/do in the previous part of the course, and what happens to them at the next part of the course. As we all know, they're all connected.
Additionally, differences in nomenclature or just unintuitive descriptions (like "leading shoulder") can easily confuse an inexperienced skier. But if you're able to follow a skier's description from beginning to end, I think they'd be more likely to grasp what's being described.
So the question is, do you guys agree? Would it be helpful for less experienced skiers (perhaps even for more experienced skiers too?) if we had a number of start-to-finish written descriptions of what an accomplished skier thinks/does at each and every point in the course?
And if you do think this is a good idea - would you take the time and think through what you do at every step, and write it all out to share with everyone?
If there's interest in this idea…then we can work on defining the different parts of the course (for consistency), and maybe even some common nomenclature to make it easy to follow.
I had a coach ask me a question about what I wanted to be doing at some point in the course. I fumbled and bumbled my words and couldn't formulate a cogent answer. His comment to me was you should be able to tell me what you're trying to accomplish at every point in the course. Until he said that it never even occurred to me to try. So I went and tried to write it all down. Was that ever enlightening! I had pieces and parts but nothing continuous. I even found some contradictory ideas.
He went on about how that comment was super helpful in furthering his understanding of his skiing.
In thinking about this idea, I thought about all the skiing posts, tutorials, and podcasts I've listened to. They're almost always some great skier writing/talking about what they think or do at one specific part of the course. What we usually miss though is the larger context - what did they think/do in the previous part of the course, and what happens to them at the next part of the course. As we all know, they're all connected.
Additionally, differences in nomenclature or just unintuitive descriptions (like "leading shoulder") can easily confuse an inexperienced skier. But if you're able to follow a skier's description from beginning to end, I think they'd be more likely to grasp what's being described.
So the question is, do you guys agree? Would it be helpful for less experienced skiers (perhaps even for more experienced skiers too?) if we had a number of start-to-finish written descriptions of what an accomplished skier thinks/does at each and every point in the course?
And if you do think this is a good idea - would you take the time and think through what you do at every step, and write it all out to share with everyone?
If there's interest in this idea…then we can work on defining the different parts of the course (for consistency), and maybe even some common nomenclature to make it easy to follow.
2
Comments
The best coaches figure out your language. If even an average coach can be given your “Google Translate” version of what you think you’re doing, I would think it’s very likely you could get on the same page quickly.
I haven’t been able to ski since January, so my thoughts might be rusty but, I’m writing it down tonight.
https://denaliskis.com/pages/gut
Regarding GUT - I first read through it all about two years ago after stopping in at Trophy to ski a few sets and sitting down with Adam to chat. Blown away by his understanding of the physics. It’s a required resource for all skiers. But it’s a lot! And we (or at least I) need to boil all that theory down to simple goals to accomplish at each and every point in the course. And back to the point about nomenclature, I bet that if the two Adams did this exercise separately, they would describe it in different ways. Maybe the way @AdamCord describes it “clicks” with me?? That’s one of the benefits I see in doing this.
@MichaelWiebe - thanks for posting the GUT link. As said, any newbie skier should start there. I’m going to reread all of it today with this frame. Looking forward to it!
Now, I was originally thinking of getting this type of description from multiple skiers - and we all take from those descriptions what seems to make sense to each of us. This approach might still be valid and helpful.
But I can also see a different approach, where we together work to translate the GUT theory into a step-by-step guide for the entire course. Essentially a crowd-sourced guide that's similar to GUT Gate. Would that be as good as if the Adams had infinite time on their hands to sit and write this all out for us, maybe not. But as we all know, they have given us a LOT of their time and wisdom on a daily basis through their insightful posts here on BoS. The problem is all that wisdom is spread out over hundreds of posts. I bet the community could do a lot of the heavy-lifting of pulling this guide together, and then the Adams could help us tweak where needed.
Is this a crazy idea? Maybe. But I have to say, if I had a step-by-step guide like the Gut Gate when I started skiing the course, I'd be a LOT further along today.
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Just know if my dad ever adjusted your fin / gave you advice while coaching I have it written down in a notebook, Ive read them all and it was really interesting to realize how much he would write down.
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