Regulars

Over the last five winters I've had the pleasure of skiing with Chris, Helen, Robbie and Olivia several times each winter. It's been satisfying to observe Robbie and Olivia develop their skiing, which is now geared towards race training. But at the same time helping their parents to continue working towards their own goals in a less competitive manner.


Today Chris, Helen (pictured above) and I skied together and re-focused. They spoke about what was going through their minds in the last couple of days when freesking with Olivia. They commented that as soon as I was skiing in front of them this morning, their performance and focus immediately changed. We went to work on double checking that old bad habits were gradually being wiped out. The Japanese call this process 'Kaizen', and is best translated as 'constant and never ending improvement'. Phew, Hemsley, that's a little intense !?!


On Saturday and Sunday I skied with their son Robbie. As mentioned in the previous post, he had an unlucky accident last winter which resulted in a major knee operation. So my responsibility was to ease him back into skiing. Hmmm, a 15 year old ski racer easing himself back, on perfect snow, empty pistes and accompanied by a well-motivated instructor. Let's just say that we skied miles and miles. However, being a perfectionist, Robbie soon got frustrated by the occasional weaker turn like this.


Although it may look impressive as an action photo, if Robbie skied in this same way on a steep icy race course he would soon lose the racing line and precious time. So we spoke about having a stable robust body position, required for these speeds. Incidently, positioning the body over the sweetspot of the ski is exactly what we aim for whatever our level, a snowplough skier, a parallel skier or a budding ski racer. In Robbie's case it looks a little more extreme that's all.


You should have seen his beaming smile after nailing together a few of these turns. It was the same type of smile that Lynn had over a week ago when overcoming her green and blue piste fears.

So what's happening in the next few days? Most importantly my wife Harriet is flying out from Stansted on Wednesday. Or I hope so anyway, I've heard that it's been nippy and a little snowy in the UK recently that's affected a few things !?!


I have very little work now until the weekend, so maybe Harriet and I will get to ski together over the Christmas period, and bump into the odd stunning 'Dali' sculpture on the mountain. Have a great festive period.

Martin

P.S. Thanks to Robbie's parents for allowing me to take and use these photos.