skijim13 wrote:I was at my first Superblue camp this year and was surprised that some of students would pay money to go to the camp but did not do pre training and learn some basic concepts like CA, CB from the books and videos to prepare for the camp. When I taught college classes it was the students job to read the book on the lab before they came to class to know what they would be working on. My role was to be available to help with problems in the class and be a model for good technique, not make up for something they did not put any effort into.
A useful analogy, though one or two differences may explain (if not excuse) why some PMTS newbies don't respond as one would expect in a university setting.
Before reaching university lab classes, students spend 12+ years in school. They've been exposed to countless examples demonstrating just how little they know. They expect to encounter levels of knowledge exceeding anything they can easily imagine. They've practiced preparation habits and have learned - the hard way - that failure to prepare produces poor outcomes and perhaps public embarassment.
Few recreational skiers, especially newbies, have had similar preparation in their skiing experiences. Skiers who haven't been exposed to very high level skiing in person cannot appreciate the almost unimaginable gulf between them and HH and other PMTS coaches. Newbies coming here are effectively walking from kindergarden directly into the university lab and can't appreciate what they're getting into. I sympathize with them and with the coaches, who are understandably frustrated because (unlike the students) they've seen this 1,000 times before.
While I'm relatively new to PMTS, I've had the good luck or good sense to ski and/or be coached by several WC level skiers over the last 25 years. Every one of them skied in ways that were utterly mind boggling. Even casual free skiing on the tails of a WC racer is a shocking, mind-opening experience. If he/she were skiing seriously, attempting to actually ski with them would be laughable or suicidal. In other words, I know how inadequate my skiing is because I've skied with a fair number of world class skiers up close.
That sort of humbling is helpful in letting go of preconceived ideas, extraneous questions and the other "noises in our head" that can frustrate learning. It's most effective when experienced in person, less so from a book, internet forum or even video. Until you have that experience, it's hard for many skiers to appreciate what's on offer here, and equally frustrating for PMTS coaches when they don't.
That said, read and master ACBAES1...