USSA and ski team staff lack the quality to be giving skiing

[h.harb]

According to Sasha R. US Ski Team mens Head coach, this is how "simple" skiing is. His idea isn't simple, it's naive. This material is so out of date, so irrelevant, so hollow and shallow, so misleading, it makes me sick. An 8 year old PMTS trained racer can describe the important parts of skiing better than this. It's all passive voice to begin with, and no where does it say anything about how to ski, how to move, how to learn, and I know from talking to Sasha he doesn't know how to teach. This is USSA coaching, now they can lower themselves to the PSIA level and be proud of it.

I tried to work with Sasha, but I decided with his level of knowledge; I would be spending far too much effort and time educating him. And in the end, it's only one person which in this case not worth the effort, even if he was open to being educated. I'd rather put out free information for anyone to see than spend the time with people who already think they know everything. Yet the CEO of USSA and the US Ski Team tells me "We are not the best, we have lots of work to do", but that message doesn't seem to be getting the right reaction from his managers.

http://www.thesnowpros.org/NewsInformation/NewsAnnouncements/tabid/117/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/713/National-Academy-Day-2-US-Ski-Team-Celebrates-New-Level-of-Cooperation.aspx

[skijim13]

Same old PSIA statements that describe what they want without any roadmap how to acheive it. Our race instructors are from our ski instructors that want a change. Watching our racers ski is very hard, they all ski with a wide stance extend and push themselves into every turn. The USA is going to have trouble winning in the future if this trend continues.

[DougD]

This has nothing to do with teaching racers how to ski better. It's just two bureaucracies binge-feeding on self-generated PR.

The ski instructions are a gaggle of disconnected outcomes... not one word on how to achieve any of them. The article quite tellingly stated:

Rearick felt his coaching team was lacking in the ability to explain the fundamental elements of skiing and instruction.

He's been a USST coach for 13 years and Technical or Head Coach for 7 years but never got around to hiring or training coaches to explain fundamentals? World class coaches (Lombardi, Wooden, Auriemma, that Harb guy) begin and end every single day preaching and drilling fundamentals... of course they understand fundamentals.

The USST has two remarkably successful WC technical skiers. Neither one attended this bash or was subjected to the "program". Let's hope they stay away, for their sake.

[h.harb]

Well said Doug. The presentation has no educational value or material anyone can use, however it is a devastating indictment of US Ski Team coaching. I don't know who is leading whom here, is PSIA training US Ski Team coaches, or is it the out of date, old, hackneyed, trite USSA dogma pounding it's useless skiing method on clubs and instructors or is it Sasha's complete ignorance of skiing movements that compromises him; making him to look this stupid?

[DougD]

Thank you, Harald. Your insistence on mastering correct fundamentals (which you've imparted to Diana and the other coaches) is why I know PMTS will do more for my skiing than anything else out there.

John Wooden started each crop of incoming players with the same lesson... he taught them how to put on their socks. No joke. If you wanted to play for UCLA that's where you began. Like Max says, Book 1, Page 1! The socks lesson achieved a planned outcome (avoiding blisters) that made his players more effective. It also taught new players that nothing is trivial - winning players work on EVERYTHING and a good coach is there to help.

WOODEN:SOCKS::HARB:BOOTS
You've posted a lesson on how to put on ski boots. Some would laugh but, like Wooden, you understand that everything matters. I've been putting ski boots on for 30 years but I learned something from it. Now if I could just get that tipping thing...