by h.harb » Thu Oct 16, 2014 10:08 am
Skijim13, Thanks for the response, and your experience is exactly what I know happens in PSIA and at most ski schools, not only from my personal observations, but from many PSIA instructors that are willing to speak up and tell the truth. Unfortunately, the majority are under the PSIA spell, and they give homage to the arrogant Level 3 and examiner types who have built themselves into Emperors of skiing. As the old story goes, the Emperor has no clothes.
Again on the USSA topic, I don't think you would hear Tiger Shaw disagreeing with Geoffda's assessment. As I said, I have confidence in Tiger. He's a very smart guy, he sees through the issues and he listens to smart people. He's surrounded himself with many of his Dartmouth alumni skiers. I know him well, I knew him as a ski team member and he was also product manager at K2, when I was on the demo team, when I was sponsored by K2.
I also believe that there are some Austrian coaches on the Ski Team Staff that know a lot about World Cup skiing. They may not be able to transmit this information well, or even teach it well, but that doesn't mean they don't have the right ideas. The problem is that the structure in USSA, which I have publicly stated and written about, has a PSIA filter. This was in place before Tiger arrived.
Information from the US coaching staff goes through the PSIA filter, which is full of concepts. Concepts are like theories, they are made to sound right, and are hotly defended, but don't give you anything to work with. PSIA methods are mostly concepts, not movements, they lack teaching and implementation methods, application and performance evaluation. You see this, as Geoff noted, about the convoluted, arrogant presentation on the Ski Racing page. It's full of concepts, but nothings fits. In fact, PSIA accepts and heralds weak performance in it's instructors as acceptable, if they go to enough clinics and certifications.
When your teaching methodology and technique is based in movements and taught as movements that can be instantly applied, it's like presenting a review for every piece and part of skiing. You can't hide your methods when you present movements; your system is exposed out in front of everyone. PMTS does this, we do this, because we know what works for skiers. If PSIA did this, their system would collapse. That is precisely why they stick to concepts, they can be interpreted in so many ways and none of them are ever wrong, according to them. The first objective is to obfuscate, primarily it's the reality of not being able to tell the truth, because you don't know what it is. They don't tell you how to do what they teach, because it would expose their inadequacies. It's easier to present your concepts and expect the student to simple do it. How many times have I heard a frustrated PSIA instructor telling a student or instructor trainee, "Just do what I said, don't ask questions"?
In PSIA teaching, it's like the difference between telling the truth, or telling a lie. When you teach prescribed movements you simply remember them and do it. When you teach concepts, like steering, which is supposed to get your twisting legs to put you skis on edge, you try to teach it as if it worked, as naturally as you would tell the truth. Getting results with this is really hard, so you make things up to tell the student, like, you aren't unweighting enough, so it's always back on the student's abilities. Teaching concepts still requires more work than teaching movements, because when it doesn't work, you need to figure out a believable alternative to use. And as a strategy, you simply need to focus the subject's attention on something else and let them concoct how they are doing using their own imagination. This becomes very frustrating for students.
This is also the easy way out for a system and the instructor. Example. There is a concept of stance and balance in PSIA and USSA. The concept is right, you have to have a good stance and you have to stay in balance. Here is an example of what happens in this situation. The skier is training with the idea that he has to have a good stance and needs to stay in balance. In practice runs he loses his balance. Coach says, You are out of balance again, get into your athletic stance, you know what that looks like, I've showed you. Stay in balance, says the coach. The Athlete goes out again, runs the course, same result. The coach says, You just can't stay in balance. This is a crude example, but what is amazing is that most of coaching works like this. It happens at the national level, I've heard it personally standing on the hill.
Another example, the racers are free skiing and they stop by the coach to get feedback. Coach says, get your hips forward, that's what you are working on right? And sends the kid off for another run. That's it, that is all there is to coaching in many programs and by many coaches.
An athlete knows they are out of balance, he doesn't need a coach to confirm this. He needs the coach to tell him "how" and what to do to keep balanced. This is how the system works. The coach can then say afterward, See that athlete just doesn't have good enough balance to be a top level ski racer. This is how they absolve themselves of the responsibility or failure as a coach. I see this happening all the time.
I'm off on a tangent again, back to the USSA structure.
I think from knowing and talking with Tiger that he understands that this is an area of concern and that there is a disconnect between what the coaches of the US Team are doing and saying and how this is interpreted and presented to the club race programs and coaches. As I said earlier, I know this problem was not of Tiger's doing, he is evaluating everything, and I think I know the way he works, he's methodical and he's patient, but when it comes to act, he'll do it. I think in the next year or two, at the most, you will see some big changes.