Here are some of my thoughts.
1. I like the fact that I do not know or can do everything.
I think if I ever achieve full expertise in skiing (full expertise =: I will decide that I have learned whatever I could) it will be the end of skiing for me.
Learning is fun, for me it is what skiing is about, and I hope I will never hit the ceiling of expertise, I hope that such ceiling simply does not exist.
2. Frequency of learning.
Now, everyone will think that I am a complete weirdo. I have notices that some of my ski improvements comes from summer. I have noticed that many years ago. It is not about rollerskating in the summer (I did not do any this year or last year). It is more about having time to think things through. Sort of digest the implications of analysis of my current skiing.
I do improve after couple of days on slopes. Each time we take a ski vacation I will notice improvements in balance and execution of turns after couple of days. This is normal and only natural for someone who can squeeze only some 20 days each year.
But I do think I get more systematic improvement if I distribute my skiing more sparsely, say once a week.
I know now everyone thinks that ?weird? would be a complement for piggyslayer.
The concept of overtraining is quite well known in other sports. I think that some of us on this forum have a very intellectual approach to skiing. This approach requires time to digest the information, familiarize with the mental representation for sequence of actions in the turn. It helpes me a lot to simply imagine perfect turn, think of sensations I should expect when executing it. I can do that at home, I can do that during the week, I can do that during summer. However, I need time to do that. If I don?t I will just go and ski the way I did yesterday. And this is no breakthrough. It is stagnation.
Many of us (me included) can get overwhelmed when introduced to new concept in skiing. My wife had a hard time on one of the camps and started ?falling apart? when Harald stared working with the group on pole plant (by the way, now her pole plant is great!, it just took more time to sink in). Taking it slow maybe what we need.
I see and know may skiers who have done 100+ days of skiing per year (takes me 5 years to do that) and they skiing has a lot of problems (problems obvious to me). It is not necessary the time on slopes which makes you perfect. It is time well spend, and for some this requires more time in-between.
3. To improve, don?t regress.
Sound trivial. It happened to me. When I looked at pictures from 7-8 years ago (still on skinny skis) I see a guy with decent pole plant (and obviously no piggy-even hard to say I have 2 legs not a one fat one
). The pole is not dragged far behind, nice anticipation, arms up and stable, good separation of arms and torso.
Then I started rollerblading a lot. I did it without poles (decided I will look stupid with them). No need to keep your hands up if you have no poles (I would look even more stupid). Last season my pole plant suck.
I think it is important to keep checking on all aspects of your skiing. Harald used an analogy of dialing a different radio station. So keep turning your dial and dial to ?check strong arm?, ?check my tipping?, ?check my fore-aft?, ?check if no direction change between turns?, ?check arm position?, ?check pole-plant?, etc.
Just some of my thoughts. Some weird, I do admit that. So take it with grain of salt or a glass of good red wine (I prefer the second).