Background and Experiences getting involved with PMTS

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Background and Experiences getting involved with PMTS

Postby SkierSynergy » Fri Nov 05, 2004 1:02 pm

Ott,
This is an answer to Ott?s question from another thread about my cert level. I ended up giving you my background and something about my experiences getting into PMTS teaching. I would encourage anyone else to do the same in this thread and allow others to ask questions that come up.

I am currently a green level PMTS instructor and I am proud to have passed that level, though maybe a few extra comments about my background and experience with PMTS might be informative and get some discussion going on a few things.

I have skied since I was 3 or 4. I grew up in Central Wisconsin right next to Rib Mountain (now Granite Peak). Throughout my youth I skied everyday after school and on weekends. I was a national level USSA junior freestyle competitor. I was a camp kid (Mainly with Eddy Ferguson?s camps) for years and trained year round. I skied all events though my real love was air. My coaches were mainly Eddy & Robert Young (Air: One of the guys who did the stunts in Spy Who Loved Me) and Karen Huntoon (bumps). I floated among several coaches for ballet (yes that was when we still had ballet ? taught me a lot about edge control and balance).

I was friends with people like the Beddor brothers (Frank was world Champion in 81 and 82, Mary Beddor, Katy Murphy, Ian Edmondson (world Ballet champion), etc.

I won some Central Division events and I was 17th overall in the junior division of USSA Nationals at Wildcat in 1979 ? that was along time ago, huh. After that I quit competing because of the insurance crunch on the arials side of the sport ? we weren?t allowed to go inverted at the Wildcat nationals and we were suddenly forced to ski on 15cm longer skiis for ballet . . . so, I just lost interest in USSA. I kept a water ramp and continued to jump with friends for years after, but just did it for fun. The hardest thing I ever threw on snow was a double back with a full twist: I did both lay fulls and half halfs). I still have a trampoline in my back yard that I bought from Don Meek of Charlie Pond?s Utah Academy of Gymnastics ? can you say Franki Bare (he was doing quads with twists in 1983!). I have taught circus sports and trampoline for skiers at a couple of different schools.

I pretty much shifted into climbing in the 80?s and I spent a lot of time back country skiing ? still managed to put in a couple days a week for 9 months a year, just earned my turns instead. Just to give you an idea, I have rock climbed in the 12s, soloed 10s, done grade 5 water ice, climbed up to grade V alpine including the ?nordwand? routes on Rainier and Yocum ridge on Hood. I have also skied a few of the faces on Hood (some that are definitely ?you fall, you die?). I worked as a climbing guide for many years, including ski mountaineering and dealt with groups of up to 40 for city parks and recreation classes.
However, by the mid 90?s I had almost completely stopped skiing at ski areas. By that time, I was at my present job as Coordinator of Technology and Instruction at Portland State University. I still climbed a lot, especially in Canada during the winters, but I only thought of skis as a method for getting to climbs (or something to do when the climbing wasn?t good) and I had completely lost interest in traditional alpine skiing.

A very long time friend who is a really skilled alpinist wanted to up his skiing skills and he recommended that while we were ice climbing for a few weeks around Golden BC that we attend an all mountain camp that he found on the internet. I said ?sure? and we showed up to Harald?s Kicking Horse Camp. That experience totally changed my skiing and my interest in skiing. There was little new snow that trip and we skied 5,000 foot vertical runs of bumps and hard gullies every day. I was on a pair of randonee boots and 190+ Atomic Ten EXs.
After that experience, I was learning as much as I could as fast as I could. Since then, my skiing has become better than it ever was when I was young and I was also getting less tired. Everything was more fun and I could see that I was just beginning to tap the performance that was there. I ski all year round now and each season (fall, winter, summer, etc.) I make a bigger leap in skills than I thought I could and I feel that I have just started. I also started moving towards the instructor training. I began practice teaching people when I could and I attended last years Fall Instructor?s Camp, though at that time I had no interest in certifying. At that camp I saw several PSIA level IIs and I think a III that came into the camp certain that they would easily pass several levels only to find out how rigorous the standards were. It was no worry for me . . . I was just learning and having fun without the pressure. At the camp, I especially concentrated on movement analysis skills. After the camp, I think I taught about 30 skiers last year (full day lessons) for free and in the spring, I decided to go for certification.

I passed up through the Black level on the written stuff: pedagogy, theory, movements analysis, etc.; I passed through Blue level skiing (we couldn?t test for anything higher at that time); and I got passed the Green level teaching. I was close to Blue, but . . . well I have a tendency to tell people what I want them to do (instructor centered communication). The ?Guest Centered Ski Instruction? model (Kim Peterson) that is at the foundation of PMTS requires instructors to be fluent with Guest centered communication patterns. Dianna and Rich would tell me that my assessment and choice of skills were good and that my progressions were good, but my self centered communication patterns wouldn?t cut it. I think I said ?I want you to . . .. or You have to . . . 30 times a lesson. Finally, Rich just pulled me aside and said ?so, do you talk to everyone in your life that way: your wife, friends, employees?? I said, ?Of course.? They shook their heads.

Ok, they sent me back to my life to practice being less self-centered (whew, that?s a tough one) before I could get Blue ? who would have thought I would get personal counseling homework!

I also know that I wasn?t proficient enough at individualizing the group lessons. In PMTS there are no group lessons as such. They are individual lessons in a group setting. I do well with one or two individuals and I am used to teaching big groups as a group, but I really did need to raise my skills at individualizing within a group. The standards for a Blue level instructor are really quite high in every category that is tested: Your skiing cannot falter from PMTS standards in demonstration or free skiing, your analysis skills must be accurate and you must individualize the lessons and communicate instruction within a Guest Centered Teaching Model.

I worked hard on my skiing and teaching (and Harb Carving) over the summer ? easy since I am at Mt. Hood a couple days a week throughout the summer-fall seasons. I added gate training to my skill set. Spent a lot of time Harb Carving with lots of teams, good racers, and some bump skiers. This fall, I just completed the foot bed training ? though I was studying it for the last year and I hope to be doing foot beds, instructing and selling lots of Harb Carvers. By the way I have a really good flush axle upgrade for the Carvers that will be available soon. E-mail me if you are interested.

So, there you go, your green level PMTS instructor. I want to up my cert level, but I won?t be able to until the end of the winter. I?m just too busy skiing. I?m really interested in doing more work on the uses of PMTS for ski mountaineering. I have already mentioned in other threads what a difference it made for my skiing with a big pack and I want to develop and share that application more.
Last edited by SkierSynergy on Fri Nov 05, 2004 2:51 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Postby Pierre » Fri Nov 05, 2004 2:05 pm

Lets see, I was a level III PSIA instructor who had heard of PMTS and had done some cursory looking but nothing jumped out at me. THEN SCSA came along and did the "I need to rub you're nose in the dog shit so you don't do it again" thing. From that point on for the next few weeks I had my nose rubbed in the dog shit every day. Sorry for the S word but no other will do.

Naturally after spending thousands of dollars on certification I did not want some long haired feeble minded beginner holding up his unfathomable god to me. Do I need to tell you what my opinion of HH was after that and some cursory searches looking for ammo on the internet were.

After a while I quietly got the instructors manual and began to really look at it. I don't see a whole lot there that I disagree with and a whole lot that I like as well or better than what I had picked up through PSIA.

Until now I have been working at a resort that forbids any kind of direct parallel and it likely would have caused me problems if I had sought certification in PMTS. Well thats changed.
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Postby Ott Gangl » Fri Nov 05, 2004 2:41 pm

Jay, you are an ATHLETE!!! I'm impressed.

Me, in my youth and until coming to America as a young man, I just skied, with some casual instructions from some Austrian and German friends who were instructors. At those times there were no groomers except a shovel brigade now and then to dig out some snowed in lift towers, mostly t-bars.

Then I learned the French technique of down-unweighting, tricky, since the unweighted period is much shorter than when first going up as in up-unweighting. Also I had to be extended at the end of the turn to be able to drop down, while in the Austrian up-unweightig the end of the turn was low.

But let there not be a mistake, typically European, the imprtant thing about skiing was the good food, good beer and wine, a little Schnaps before and after dinner, a Sacher Torte and strong coffee for dessert and courting the best looking girls in the place. Hardly anybody talked about their skiing. I skied, they skied, everybody skied. How they skied was not important.

I always thought skiing was easy, then I came to the US, became an instructor, was fully certified by USSA before there was a PSIA, then PSIA and ISIA was kept up until several years after retiring from ski instructing for 25 years. I have kept up with the new trends and PMTS has some interesting ways to ski which I am going to make my own. But that will be in addition to what I know, not instead. Naturally, over the sixty years of skiing there were always changes, often from year to year since all skiing is equipment driven.

I am not going to teach again, I am only interested in things that will extend my skiing years since I am totally unathletic the rest of the year.

....Ott
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