teaching pmts to a preschooler?

[cauthers]

I couldn't agree with you more about being selfish and taking kids on runs that are too steep. What good iI
sit to ski straight down snowplowing without a single turn?

When I want to ski a run for real I leave the kids with my husband so that I can make through the rest of the day on the green runs. I also try to balance how much teaching we do as compared to free skiing so they don't get burned out.

[sorinj]

Harald is spot on his advice. Guide their moves, keep it simple intellectually, and use visual aids.

I am not a ski coach but I coach youth soccer. Moving different body parts in a coordinated manner is a common activity in many sports.This is what I've been doing for soccer when working with young children including my own:
* getting down to their physical level, moving the feet for them, checking that they are learning and starting executing the move by themselves. This is a long and iterative process until they learn. The moves break down, they forget them, and sometimes it feels like everything needs to be started all over from scratch.
* getting down to their intellectual level and breaking down a complex move or a concept in pieces they can understand. Being able to do this is challenging and a true mark of a good youth coach.
* use video aids such as watching practice videos. We get down in front of TV and let the TV do the talking unless the child has a question. It may seem that nothing gets picked up but later on either I'd seen them doing it or heard them talking to their friends about what they'd seen.

In particular, I have a 7 year old that I am hoping he'd learn to ski with PMTS. He is working on the following:
1. think tipping instead of turning, as in say loud or in his mind "tip, tip...." when he wants to turn and then tip LTE
2. keep the skis close.
3. avoid bouncing up and down between turns.

We do sit down and watch "how Harald skies" and he shows interest in that. I take videos of him and ask him to tell me if he is doing the one, two, three things above.

Next, I'd like him to try more balancing and skiing on one ski.

Jay (skiersynergy) has suggested a visual image for keeping skis close: imagine there are ants trying to crawl up inside his legs and he needs to slide over those ants. There are cute animals next to the ants and a cute animal is squished when the skis come apart.
To avoid bouncing up and down (in order to use flexing to release), Jay suggested he skis in a tunnel instead of bouncing on trampolines.

It's so much to talk about coaching, coaching and parenting, etc. Just as in soccer, I've noticed that it is a huge accomplishment just getting children to focus and improve on one simple thing at a time. Gifted children have in common what I call "insight": the awareness of their body, mind, and the environment, plus the ability the purposefully question, answer, and use that information to improve. This is what fuels motivation and the interest to watch and emulate what they see.

[SkierSynergy]

Luke was the only child in a group of middle aged adults and everything worked great.
There are obvious differences with working with kids in their attention span, ability to focus, etc. However, in many key ways the fundamentals are the same.

1. Know the young skier’s motivation and connect your instructions to his motivation
2. Movement analysis: identify a movement change that will take the skier toward his/her goal
3. Work with the skier to develop an accurate understanding of the movement change in a language that works for the skier – often in their own language, and give accurate feedback in that shared language.

Luke wanted to become a good slalom skier.

I identified 3 potential changes for the 3 days with Luke.
a) narrower, stance with practice in transfer of balance.
b) Staying down through transition– no up move
c) Tipping

Luke watched videos of Harald and of himself ski and I asked him questions about the difference in one area that we were practicing. The following dialogue didn’t happen all at once, but is the kind of discussion we had while we worked on staying down.

Example: When Harald skis, does he jump up when he changes edges? In your video, do you jump up when you change edges? What do you look like when you jump up? I’m on a trampoline. Does Harald look like he’s on a trampoline? No. [My comment:] To me he looks like he is going through a low tunnel when he changes edges. Can you stay down like you are skiing through a tunnel? Without sliding show me how you ski through the tunnel. Is Harald a good slalom skier? When you watch other good slalom skiers do they bounce on trampolines or ski through tunnels when they change edges. This run, are you going to bounce on trampolines or ski through a tunnel?

I think you can get the idea from that. He had a very clear idea about the movement change and he provided much of the language that worked for him to understand and remember it. Sometimes he got too low, but now we had a good shared language to make adjustments. “Oh, that tunnel was too small and you got stuck back. Show me skiing through a tunnel that is little bit higher.”

It takes some imagination, but it isn’t that difficult. Every once in a while he would get fidgety and we would have to do some goofy things or have him to do a loop, but that is part of the process with kids – and many adults.

Here is a clarification of the ant example. The focus was on narrowing the stance and active transfer to the stance foot. I asked Luke if he liked ants and he said that they were itchy and bite. So, I suggested he imagine that there were ants just about to climb up the inside of his stance leg and he had to tap them down with the inside foot before they got on his ski/boot. We practiced lots of very fast, small taps to do this and he started the foot tapping just before he wanted to start every new turn. Just for extra motivation, we put guinea pigs away from the stance ski: wide stance = skiing over cute guinea pigs. We did lots of variations on this analogy and had good fun with it. Eventually, I was able to ask him questions about how keeping the ants down helped him ski like a good slalom skier. “Do slalom skiers keep their feet close together or wide apart? When you tap the ants, are your feet close or wide?” Etc. Etc. He also applied his knowledge to the other skiers in the group when he would comment on who else tended to ski over the guinea pigs and might think about narrowing their stance.

If you treat kids like they cannot understand or learn movements then they won’t. If you assume that they can, but that they have to do it in their own way of understanding things, then they will learn fast enough to do accurate movement analysis on you. Watch out.

[h.harb]

Great Post Jay, I had Luke the first three days. It was fun to have him in the group. All the adults were extremely helpful with him and he added an element to the group, never a distraction.

[cheesehead]

The great thing about these Wisconsin kids is that they start early enough they are comfortable blasting down the hill without snowplowing because they weigh about 50 pounds at most. It is hard to find a steep enough hill to make them have to turn. So, it is difficult to overchallenge them. Most of them never learn a bad turn because they never have to. Unfortunately, a lot of them get lost to snowboarding.

The challenge is getting them hooked up with an instructor who knows how to ski.

More PMTS skiers ... more instructors ...

[cauthers]

Great responses. We just got Haralds videos today and also one of the books. So much of it is even new to me because I am of rrthe straight ski generation. I think we can adapt it all. I dkd some of the tipping in the living room last night. Funny you mention body awareness. My daughter has much more natural movements in sports compared to my son. Thanks for everyones guidance.

[nickia]

Teaching kids is different, you have to physically get down on your hands and knees in the snow or at home, and move the skis and boots for them, to show examples of what you want them to do. After you repeat the movements enough times while giving them verbal cues; they can begin moving or trying to move the same way as you manipulated their equipment. Also, after that, use visual cues. Watching videos is great for kids, but they have to watch them all the time, for it to sink in. You have to use your imagination and create experiences for them through movements. Just like we do at Camps with Adults. But with adults you can explain what they should do. This doesn't always work either as we know.

Children are AMAZING learners.

I had the chance to chaperon a 7-year-old girl today since her parents have to take the other child. She only skied few times and was a "pizza" girl. I decided to teach her the phantom move.

I started the "lesson" by asking her to stand on one ski. Amazingly, she was able to do it without any difficulty. Then, I asked her to stand parallel across the hill. It wasn't hard to do that but the difficult part was to convey how to release the edge to slip down. I tried the simple "watch me and do it" approach but it didn't work well. Then, I remember this post by Harald about getting down physically and tilting their feet and boots. Voila! It worked perfectly and she understood what I wanted her to do.
After 2 runs, she was able to traverse parallel across the hill and tilt her feet to edges to stop. I have a huge smile on my face when I first saw her tipped both of her feet to the edges! The sight of seeing a child tipping both feet are so GREAT!

She was also able to do some phantom garlands. Her lifting and tilting still needs works but her progress was amazing. The last thing she learned was side slipping and tip to stop. Again, she understood the concept and was able to perform it decently.

It's important to incorporate the fun element into drills. I used the phrase like "zombie!" to cue her to release and keep her arms in front of her then "flamingo" to lift and tilt. She loved it when we pretend to be zombies to release . I also had to teach her how to skate because she was moving forward using the normal walking movement. It didn't work when I just told and show her to "skate". She would do it for 10 feet and stop because it was too "hard". As result, I changed my approach and told her we will race to the ski lift while skating and whoever goes there first wins.This approached worked really well because skating became her primary mode of transportation at the end of the day.

I'm confident this girl will able to ski parallel after 3 more lessons.

I see a lot of parents using the "forceful" approach to teach their children which will only make the children hate skiing. Parents would get frustrated and yell at their kids when they couldn't replicate movements or fell down and couldn't get up. Positive reinforcements such as high-fives or "that's was amazing" are effective against children.

[h.harb]

I like it when someone takes the (bull by the horns) ideas and runs with them, this is brilliant. Way to go Nickia! You have done more in that one session then most ski instructors do in their whole career.

Like me, now you know it works, because you have done it, but you have to try it before you know. Most instructors will just sit back and criticize what they don't know.

That's called apathy, institutional, ordinary, routine, matter-of-fact, and mis-directed loyalty. It's definitely not, inventive, creative, innovative, imaginative, resourceful, fresh, groundbreaking, or revolutionary.

We will be the keeper of the flame for those definitions with PMTS and always stay creative, innovative and revolutionary.

Hey, why not use the dictionary, it's online.

[A.L.E]

This thread has a lot of good information and could be considered as a sticky.

[sorinj]

Great Post Jay, I had Luke the first three days. It was fun to have him in the group. All the adults were extremely helpful with him and he added an element to the group, never a distraction.

Just wanted to mention that Luke has won his first open ski race in slalom at Wild Katz, J6 class, Stevens Pass, WA state. This is a great accomplishment for him and I am absolutely certain that skiing with Harald and Jay made it possible. He was not the fastest kid on the hill, nor did he have the best technique but it was his day to win in what was rather difficult conditions (it snowed 2.5 feet in the last 24 hours at Stevens Pass). His time was competitive: 2:00.66 combined time compared to the time of the winner in the J5 class 2:00.59.

He got creamed in GS. He still has light years to go in terms of skiing proficiency and so, I am not trying to read to much into times and standings. He was so bummed after the GS race and before we went to bed the night before the slalom race we watched parts of "Anyone can be an expert skier II" DVD.

I was paying attention to how other kids were skiing. For a non-trained eye like mine, it was clear that some kids have the fundamentals even at a very young age such as J7. Very inspiring to see them developing big angles in their body, narrow stance in slalom, the retraction, and quick feet from edge to edge.

I am very happy for him and I'd like to say that all children that launch themselves from the start gate down a race course deserve my respect.

[cheesehead]

Likewise, my son got first in a beginning slalom race in his age group of 9 to 11 (not a formal race).

He has developed basic PMTS movements by watching the Essentials videos once all the way through and then little in the way of drills. But he has developed speed and balance by going straight down the hill and hitting the jumps we have. It might seem non-productive, but it taught him NOT to snowplow and NOT to steer. And I would like to think that I taught him by example by him watching what I was doing.

So, when faced with a slalom course, he didn't steer, he didn't snowplow, and he used edged turns to make the gates. He was also well-balanced and used counteracting well. (Ok, he wasn't perfect -- he needs more tipping, and he pushes off a little with his inside leg.)

My point early on in this thread was not to say that videos don't work for younger kids. It was that they might use them in a different way than adults would.

I don't know how much he will eventually stay with PMTS -- he wants some trick skis because he thinks that would be more fun than racing. Hopefully he will continue to make progress and have fun with whatever he decides to do with it.

[cheesehead]

.... Not to get all Art Linkletter-y on you but the night before he actually worked on doing turns. He said, "it feels like I'm dancing." When he said that I knew he was getting it. I don't know where he got his dancing ability -- I was born with no natural gracefulness.

[cheesehead]

Here is the top of his first run. I told him to not be as cautious on his second run (in other words, stop the A-framing) and he shaved a couple of seconds off the next run. I didn't get video of that because I had to change the batteries in the camera.

[A.L.E]

Were you wearing army camouflage or a bear suit?

[Misha66]

This thread is great and I'd like to continue it rather than start another. I'm a first year ski instructor at a small-medium sized resort where the bulk of our lessons are with kids, many 5-7 years old who have never been on skis before. While we are expected to use the PSIA progression, we are given some latitude on adapting it to the students- we have to teach the "pizza," for example, but we can move them past this to "french fries" as soon as they feel comfortable and demonstrate the ability to control their speed. The school also emphasizes developmentally appropriate instruction, stressing that very small kids often don't have the fine motor skills to effectively distinguish between upper and lower body movements like tilting the feet with counterbalancing to avoid falling over- which is why the wedge is taught at all. So what to do? I've been stressing one foot gliding to develop balance and the feeling of "riding the boot tongue," and then having them shift from foot to foot in the pizza to turn (what I call the "gorilla handshake"), but working with kids is so new to me, I often feel lost. It almost seems like the kids are learning by osmosis rather than my "teaching." Any suggestions? Since our surface tow area is so small, I've got to get the kids to the point of using the bunny chair as soon as I can which means being able to stop and some rudimentary turning.