MA for young Tommi

[h.harb]

Visual learning is the weakest form of absorbing skiing movements, there are many reasons for this. Skiing movements, especially high level ones, are mostly hidden and very hard to interpret. That's why PMTS literature is all about creating the right movement, in the right order, with the right body part. If PMTS could be learned by following, everyone would ski like Hirscher or Gross. I think it's fine to have someone follow a good skier to help with their timing, especially if they have a good movement base. However it's not the best way or is it a way that will achieve top level results. Also, what what i saw in the videos here, there is some serious work to be done with the basics. At 10 years old, T's technique should be much more advanced. The reason it may not be, the coaching is not helping him become successful with development of PMTS skiing.

[Ancient]

Also, what what i saw in the videos here, there is some serious work to be done with the basics. At 10 years old, T's technique should be much more advanced. The reason it may not be, the coaching is not helping him become successful with development of PMTS skiing.

Thank you very much Harald for your comments.

I seriously struggle with Tommi's Coach to try to introduce some PMTS Tecnique in Tommi's skiing but it's not that easy because of the Coach unavailability, lack free skiing time outside the race club training and because of my inability to do so.
Notwithstanding I'm really committed to make Tommi a better skier. Could you be more precise in highlighting the most weak points in Tommi's skiing in order to try to work on it.

Thanks in advance.

Ancient

[h.harb]

My response here is straight forward and based on watching literally hundreds of kids and parents going through what you are. I can't individually coach everyone who needs PMTS movements. Most parents who do become aware that there kids are not getting the right coaching, and learn about PMTS, want PMTS. However this won't happen in your club with your coaches. So you have to take over. You have to take your son to a different slope and have him do exercises and free skiing using the videos and materials we have available. It's very simple anyone can do this. If you only focus on getting the feet closer, transferring weight from ski to ski, lift the inside ski all the way around the turn, you will make great progress.

[Ancient]

My response here is straight forward and based on watching literally hundreds of kids and parents going through what you are. I can't individually coach everyone who needs PMTS movements. Most parents who do become aware that there kids are not getting the right coaching, and learn about PMTS, want PMTS. However this won't happen in your club with your coaches. So you have to take over. You have to take your son to a different slope and have him do exercises and free skiing using the videos and materials we have available. It's very simple anyone can do this. If you only focus on getting the feet closer, transferring weight from ski to ski, lift the inside ski all the way around the turn, you will make great progress.

Many thanks Harald,

I'll try to do my best to fulfill this goal.

Cheers.

[Max_501]

Ancient,

Harald confirmed the MA you originally received back in 2012.

As a reminder...

The one improvement that he can make instantly that will set him aprt from others his age and older is moving his feet and skis closer together. Youngsters tend to rely more on a wide stance for balance. He clearly has the ability to ski with a tighter stance. This allows and promotes PMTS movements better. I am going to guess that his coaches may disagree with this.

Try to get him to narrow his stance and teach him the Phantom Move. If you have him touch his stance boot with the edge of the ski that he is lifting and tipping, it will give him a good external cue for managing his stance. Have him finish the turn on the little-toe-edge of his old free (inside at transition) foot so that when he lifts and tips the old stance (outside at transition) foot, it will trigger a release of the old turn. The tipping actions of the Phantom Move at this point, combined with the forces of the released turn, will allow his center of mass to move naturally into the new turn.

Read and reread this gem from Harald.

If I had had this forum as an 18 year old, and could have used everything in it, I would have certainly stayed in ski racing and on the Canadian team for at least 5 more years. The free information from my Blog and on this forum, not to mention what I have on You Tube, would have easily motivated me to stay with racing. I had barely scratched the surface. At that point in my life, when I was retiring, I barely understood how to evolve techniques I have and know now. Everything in my skiing came from natural instincts and the need for survival.

What a difference it would have made to me, if I had known, at that time, the techniques PMTS provides to get one to the very top level.

Although there were times when I scratched the awareness of what a top level run or turn was, I couldn't sustain it, those experiences came and went. They were random because I hadn't evolved enough yet to make them a focus for every turn. I'm sure at 21, I wasn't ready. And to achieve the consistency not knowing how, would have taken at least 3 more seasons. Without guidance, it's a frustrating road. With the understanding of how each turn is made, as we have today, for each gate, constructed in a way that maximized your potential, what a different state of mind and level of confidence that would have been created.

I'm writing this to give you some perspective of what you have at your finger tips. No guess work, no need for confusion, just go out and practice PMTS with what we have created, there are no excuses, it's all here.

And these old posts I wrote...

Learning PMTS can be very simple if you follow the progression HH has given us. Book 1, Book 2, then Essentials. No need to over analyze or question the steps that HH has laid out in the books and on this forum because they simply work. Nike has a slogon "Just Do It" and that applies here. Just Do It [PMTS] and you will be on the road to expert skiing.

Start with page 1 of Book 1. Don't skip chapters or drills. Don't move forward to the next chapter until you have mastered the material in the current chapter. After book 1 go to book 2 and master each chapter. If you want to ski anything like Harald that is the way to get there.

Harald has been saying to read and follow the material for well over a decade. Here's a post from 2004!

Many readers tell me they go directly to the page in the book that addresses their skiing motivation and they read those pages. They do not read the pages where the steps are explained and built to achieve the movement they want to perform immediately. Exercises that build your basic skills are not sexy and they don't look like fun, so they are too often passed over. I have skied with such readers. They are always astounded at what preliminary work must be done with fundamentals before they are really able to perform what they want in their skiing.

I can guarantee, if you read my books and follow the steps and practice to become somewhat proficient with all the exercises in the books, you will attain a level of skiing beyond your wildest dreams. The challenge is that not many skiers are able to evaluate which exercises are needed next or which exercises are most important for their own personal development. Remember, everyone's movement needs are different. There is no substitute for a well trained PMTS instructor at varies points in the learning process even with the books and videos. I have countless skiers come to ski with me; most of them have read my books. They tell me, "I have really focused on the phantom move and I have it down." When we get to skiing, I often notice that the quality of movement that I see on the snow rarely matches the skier's enthusiasm for the movement. This brings up the topic of practice vs. perfect practice and how to evaluate your own performance. I will be covering these topics in the new book.

[Ancient]

Allright, let'see what I will be able to do following your advise in order to make T and A better skiers and come back to you hopefully in the near future to get new MAs.

Many thanks in the meantime.

Ancient

[h.harb]

This may come as a surprise. The goal of your coaches is to set courses, get the kids through the day and take your kids to races. If you have a goal, and your son has a goal, great! I have no idea what that goal is. If your goal is to have your son ski well, that goal can be accomplished, but not with TTS or USSA Skills Quest and coaching. Coaches are concerned about who is going to ski well, who is going to make him and the program look good, not in how to teach or how to ski well. This maybe a surprise.

If you ask your coaches, what is the plan, how will my kid get the skills to compete? coaches don't want you to ask that question, why, because they don't have an answer, try it! Also ask, What is the time frame for him to get results, what is missing in his skiing? You will be amazed that there is no plan, or you will be given a plan the suits everyone, that makes no sense for your kid.

Ski racing is a mess in the US and coaches are even worst. There is no integrity, it's all about themselves, and their next move to get a better job. Reality hurts, and no one asks or realizes that these issues exist. Most parents just have a preconceived notion that ski coaching has their best interest at heart. They only realize the truth after it's too late. You only have one pass in life, you go through your development years only once. Why leave that opportunity to chance, and a very bad track record for coaching results?

[Ancient]

Harald,

I hope that here in Italy the situation can be better although there are many similarities.
As far as Tommi concerns, our goal is to make him ski the best he can and that's why I look at Pmts as an extraordinary opportunity to get him improving his skiing technique.
I think it will not be easy but I'll try my best to find the right coaching solutions for him (believing I'm inadequate) starting already from the next summer attending to some ski campus (maybe the Giorgio Rocca's one), and come back to you and your forumists after an improvement has been reached.

Maybe, in this journey I will ask again your MA to check our progresses.

Thanks again to you and everybody in this forum.

Ancient

[Max_501]

As far as Tommi concerns, our goal is to make him ski the best he can and that's why I look at Pmts as an extraordinary opportunity to get him improving his skiing technique.

How many hours per ski day are you working on the PMTS drills?

[Ancient]

How many hours per ski day are you working on the PMTS drills?

As I said already, there is only little time left when T and A finish their ski courses with the racing team, so seldomly I try to teach them some basics of PMTS. But today we had an amazing surprise: T and A had the opportunity to ski with Heluvaskier here in Italy at Cervinia ski resort.

https://goo.gl/photos/AtDV8r5Ju4M1KCf7A

It was a fantastic experience, he taught them some specific drills and apart from some difficulties in practicing them, the effect was really surprising with both kids feeling they were learning and skiing better and I hope they were right.
Heluvaskier is a great skier and man; I want to thank him publicly for his expertise, patience and dedication to share his experience with me and my kids hoping to share again some turns with him later this week.

Cheers for the moment.

Ancient

[Max_501]

As I said already, there is only little time left when T and A finish their ski courses with the racing team, so seldomly I try to teach them some basics of PMTS.

Here's the issue. MA is basically useless if you don't spend the time it takes to master the drills that address the issue(s) raised in the MA.

How did Shiffrin become such a great skier and racer?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/o ... story.html

“They practiced the things they weren’t good at,” Jeff Shiffrin said. “It’s easy to just get too competent and get stuck there because that’s easy and it’s comfortable. The few people that are willing to push themselves past that limit can rise above, can keep moving forward.”

So Mikaela took that approach, developing a voracious appetite for training, often eschewing competition or free skiing for drills. “The more I trained, the more I liked to train,” she said.

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/03/12/sk ... -training/

One thing that set Shiffrin's development apart was an emphasis on racing less than other kids her age while training more. There also was a focus on drills working toward "mastery" of technique.

https://www.vailmag.com/articles/2013/11/1/girl-power

Shiffrin, meanwhile, credits Dwyer for teaching her how to enjoy the less glamorous aspects of ski training. “He really ingrained it in me that I needed to work on my fundamentals and I needed to love the drills and love the excruciating pain of taking 45 minutes to go down one run because I’m practicing one thing so in-depth,” she explains.

See this thread for some ideas on teaching your kids: Teaching Children

[Ancient]

Many thanks also to Max 501 for his perseverance during these years to push me with patience to do the right thing in order to get my kids improving their skiing experience and skills.
I hope to be able to match up with this task.

Cheers for the moment.

Ancient

[sgarrozzo]

How many hours per ski day are you working on the PMTS drills?

As I said already, there is only little time left when T and A finish their ski courses with the racing team, so seldomly I try to teach them some basics of PMTS. But today we had an amazing surprise: T and A had the opportunity to ski with Heluvaskier here in Italy at Cervinia ski resort.

https://goo.gl/photos/AtDV8r5Ju4M1KCf7A

It was a fantastic experience, he taught them some specific drills and apart from some difficulties in practicing them, the effect was really surprising with both kids feeling they were learning and skiing better and I hope they were right.
Heluvaskier is a great skier and man; I want to thank him publicly for his expertise, patience and dedication to share his experience with me and my kids hoping to share again some turns with him later this week.

Cheers for the moment.

Ancient

...................o vai!!!! questa potremmo chiamarla una bella botta di culo!!!

In English: ........ a brazen fortune.....

[HeluvaSkier]

How many hours per ski day are you working on the PMTS drills?

As I said already, there is only little time left when T and A finish their ski courses with the racing team, so seldomly I try to teach them some basics of PMTS. But today we had an amazing surprise: T and A had the opportunity to ski with Heluvaskier here in Italy at Cervinia ski resort.

https://goo.gl/photos/AtDV8r5Ju4M1KCf7A

It was a fantastic experience, he taught them some specific drills and apart from some difficulties in practicing them, the effect was really surprising with both kids feeling they were learning and skiing better and I hope they were right.
Heluvaskier is a great skier and man; I want to thank him publicly for his expertise, patience and dedication to share his experience with me and my kids hoping to share again some turns with him later this week.

Cheers for the moment.

Ancient

Now that I'm back and settled, I'd like to thank Ancient and his boys for the hospitality and a great morning of skiing. As we have all noted, T and A are very good skiers by traditional coaching standards. They have great potential if they focus on the right things. We spent most of our time on snow working on tipping and flexing - using several PMTS drills to get their feet and ankles in the game. I think if they continue to focus on working through the Essentials they will make very quick progress, however a lot of this work will need to be done and reinforced outside of their normal coaching (especially tipping and flexing). That focus will ensure that their skiing will not stagnate at the U14/16 age and they continue to be strong competitors. Both boys are focused and attentive so if pointed in the right direction they will have success.

As an aside, what I observed in these guys' skiing as well as other athletes and coaches on the mountain while in Europe is that European coaching is FAR ahead of what I observe in North America.

[Basil j]

What do the Europeans do to make them far ahead of US coaching? Areas of focus? More drilling? I have my own thoughts and ideas on this, but since you were over there and witnessed training first hand, I am very interested in your perspective. I feel like US racing has "Stalled"" and it needs some fresh blood to kick start it up again.
Thanks in advance for your comments.