Yes! Bear with me, this really is about learning skiing to a higher level. I would argue that most people conflate 'school' with 'education'. Certainly governments do. But they are not the same thing, and indeed they are mutually exclusive: the one actually precludes the other. What do I mean by this, and what does it have to do with skiing, ski learning, or ski school? Well, take my own case; it wasn't until I left school that I began to acquire an education, and I went to a decent state grammar school. Others were less fortunate. Prior to that I got a schooling. Schooling is a state imposed ..read more

What I did NOT do, was to carefully read what I had written; I just wrote it and posted it. I sincerely apologise. In the process I completely reversed some its meanings! A worrying aspect of this is that nobody took me up on it! I wrote - “You will be able to see that each of those dashed lines is drawn (as nearly as a crude sketch could get it) at a tangent to the radius at that point. It is at 90º to that radius.” This an error– the dashed lines are the radii. It's the solid lines that are at 90º to the radius. The solid lines are the tangents. If you had your torso at right-angles to the ..read more

Answer: Yes. And be far more effective. The idea of ski coaching by email probably seems strange to you. But it works. It works by my co-operating closely with you and your specific questions and needs, initially frequently then, I find, reducingly often as your understanding of the processes involved, and your personal practices improve. This works, just as on a snow slope. It does not require me to “demonstrate”; I've said all along that you will not be able to learn how to ski well by watching someone else. One famous ESC Skiing Coach used to teach on a plastic slope which was kept slick by ..read more

Regular readers of my blogs or books, or visitors to my Youtube channel will know that skiing is only possible because of resistance from the snow. No resistance = no control. By doing things with our big toes, or soles of our feet, and positioning the parts of our bodies into differing shapes, we can not only obtain snow resistance, we then use it to steer our skis and ourselves where we want to go. There are two ways to obtain that resistance One way, at low speeds and for example when we are learning, is to “sink down” at the right times, by flexing a little more our ankles, knees, and hip ..read more

Ski instruction: don't believe them – why do I say this? I have a good friend, a very nice chap. I want to keep him as a friend. He likes hierarchies and authorities: I don't. I am a libertarian. He thinks that 'belief' is intrinsically 'good': I don't. He thinks the bible is authoritative. I think questioning is good: I think Doubting Thomas was given a bum rap. My friend likes to be told by someone arguing from authority, what to do, what to think. I don't – I expect them to be able to justify with evidence whatever it is they are claiming. I respect scepticism. I don't say that I never fail ..read more

This is just a short and I hope handy summertime (soon, honest) reminder about ski boots and what the unwary do with them. I can still recall the very first time I ever skied as a beginner with Coach Gerald Harrison. Actually I wasn't a beginner really, I had been skiing for 8 years, but I had made very little progress indeed, just like so many folk. I “got down” stuff, but it was pretty sketchy and getting no better. On that first day in Alpes d'Huez Gerald helped me make the single biggest difference to my skiing in just a matter of minutes. I later learned that this aligned with a question ..read more

Are ski instruction, ski coaching and ski learning different? SUMMARY: Ski instruction is an element of the tourism industry. Training organisations train and qualify instructors for jobs in ski schools. Ski schools deliver a product, mostly for beginners or early participants, which is intended to either convert non skiers into folk competent enough to manage on their own, or provide a service of taking groups around the mountain. It involves “telling” people what to do, and demonstrating what it looks like. Ski coaching is concerned with the individual performer, employing an ongoing process ..read more

Bob Trueman. Development Coach, Skiing Recently I wrote a small piece on how to handle tough skiing situations and used the word “arcs”, where most folk would use the word “turn”. My insistence on using the word 'arc' raised an eyebrow or two, on the grounds that it was perhaps mere semantics or even nit-picking. Believe me, it isn't. Every single ski instructor I have ever met only ever uses the word “turn(s)”. You are admonished to “Do turns”. Even worse, you are recommended by some to “Turn your skis”. “Do a turn left, or do a turn right”. It tells you nothing at all about what movements w ..read more

How to handle those difficult moments In the blog I posted prior to this one, I said I would address handling difficult moments during your skiing. We all get them; we encounter times when our self-belief falters. We all encounter times when we become fearful of what might happen, none more so than currently as we flounder in the face of the corona virus not knowing where it will lead. But let's stick to skiing. Issues around skiing self-confidence, apprehension, or fear are part of a “system” that includes matters of skill/technique, and circumstance. Let me explain what I mean by that. If yo ..read more

Some things we can learn from special forces training My books on skiing - ,“Ski In Control”, and ,“Skiing from Greens to Reds and beyond”, and very much the videos on my ,Bobski YouTube channel, necessarily address issues of skiing technique. But perhaps surprisingly for many, skiing technique is in many ways a secondary issue. Or at best only one half of a psycho physical system. So long as things are going well, there are no perceived dangers (real or not), skiing is simply fun. But one of the aspects of skiing – indeed anything done in the outdoors; mountaineering, sailing... - is that you ..read more