In another week of glorious sunshine the ISIA group charged ever onward towards rapidly approaching courses and exams by covering almost every aspect of skiing outside of the terrain park. We started with a grueling day of bumps and variables, travelling to three of the four valleys and pausing only for a brief lunch on the top of scenic Plan du Fou. By the next morning our legs were very much in need of some respite, which they got in the form of performance analysis, and not so much, in the form of shorts. During the day we analysed each other’s skiing, in pairs and as a group, sometimes based on a template or visualized image, and sometimes simply on what we thought constituted good, technically correct skiing for the task in hand.
It was an extremely useful day in which we trained our eyes and learnt a lot of little tips that will no doubt come in hand when coaching more experienced skiers.
The week ended with two mornings of piste performance; Thursday, longs, in which we once again tore up the mountain with Camilla extolling the virtues of high speed pure carving; and Friday, shorts, in which we took all the movements and form we’d learnt in race carving and compacted it into a really tight, snappy turn. It was perhaps Friday of all the days where the dynamic movement patterns of racing suddenly became all too apparent in other piste skiing. Without doubt it was hugely helpful for our short turns. Racing might not be on the ISIA course syllabus, but it was certainly an extremely integral and important part of our training.
All in all, another good week in the mountains. Snow, by all accounts is on the way. Here’s hoping for a big one!
As always a few snaps of the. First, some posy goggle reflection shots:
Second, some of us on the chair up from Siviez to Tortin, along with a snap of the valley floor bathed in cloud.
