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Can you really learn to ski with online ski lessons?
Results so far:
| Yes | 17% | 109 votes | Total: 631 votes | |
| No | 83% | 522 votes |
Yes
by George B Nichols
Created on: September 01, 2009 Last Updated: September 03, 2009
Okay, you can't learn to ski like Bode Miller just by sliding around on the internet. But you can acquire a lot of information, at any skill level, by checking out the resources on the World Wide Web. I remember my first ski lesson like it was yesterday, and I was completely lost from start to finish. Having a little bit of information beforehand would have helped out a lot.
The first thing you're hit with on your first ski lesson is a whole lingo you won't understand to explain tasks that make no sense. If someone had told me what a safety strap was for before I got to the slopes (which proves my first lesson wasn't actually yesterday), I would have had about another half hour to ski. And as I went further in skiing, I actually did start to read some things (I started skiing before the Internet) about technique, which helped me to be a better skier.
Skiing involves doing, and most of doing can only be learned by, well, doing. And doing and doing and doing. Or trying and falling, getting a little better and falling. Falling is a constant. But there is another constant in every lesson. Before I, the student, do, the teacher does. He or she demonstrates whatever technique I'm supposed to learn. I see it first, and then try to copy what I see.
My friendly neighborhood ski instructor is going to start the demonstration right next to me and give me an explanation of what is going on. But then the instructor moves away. If I sneeze and miss the demonstration, the instructor is not going to climb back up the hill to do it again.
But on the Internet, I can find a lesson on YouTube, watch it, watch it again, and watch it again (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZaJQZwN_50 is a good place to start). If I miss part of it the first time, I can rewind as often as I want. The most patient ski instructor in the world cannot give me the same kind of demonstration. It isn't even that instructors don't have the patience; they don't have the time, especially if they're teaching someone who may be a little slow on the uptake or just completely lost.
And then there are the details and close-ups that just can't be duplicated in a live ski-teaching environment. Why does a ski turn? I didn't figure that out by skiing, I learned it from watching ski racing on TV (once again, I learned to ski long before the Internet) and by reading about skiing.
So there are opportunities to learn in the virtual world how to do things in the real world. Check it out, and you'll find you've learned something and you're having more fun skiing. Or as one skier posted on a YouTube site, "i have skied 10 years and im still watching learn to ski videos lol." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssNHAXGVlKs.
Learn more about this author, George B Nichols.
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No
by David Couttie
Created on: February 25, 2011
Having been an assistant ski instructor for 2 years, I know first hand that any ski lessons over the internet would be like trying to ski on air without solid ground. The internet reading is all theory based, much the same as the way you sit attentively at a desk at school, opening a textbook on a general topic. So, the truth of the matter is, reading does not beat the actually tangible physical experience; where you have the snow under your feet and the timing of pole plants in sync to a graceful rhythm. In real life, you learn about such techniques as fast track to parallel, short radius, jump short radius and mogul skiing.
The main picture here is understanding that there is a series of motions in skiing conveyed to the brain by specific feelings when taught. Words are not enough to replace what the proven correct feelings of a motion just like the old saying a picture says 1000 words. If you are not shown first by a real person and then if you do not follow up with practice, how are you going to ever perform the correct athletic technique.
What's more, does reading online transfer to the same realization as experiencing with the senses the icy winter air, sounds of laughing in the background on the lifts, the lively atmosphere, or the parents enjoying some quality time with their children? And the bonding of mentor to pupil does that occur by reading online text?
The answer is no to all of the above. Each are learned experiences that do not occur through online reading. If you get anything at all out of outdoor sports in the flesh it's the pure enjoyment of being there doing something completely new, getting some excercise or at the very least clearing your mind temporarily of day to day worries.
Memories are another reason to participate in real life skiing. I remember teaching little kids on the magic carpet how to make pizzas or snow plows. You explain to them it's like a pizza, so they can mimic you through visualization and demonstration. And like I said, its about feeling, if you take your dominant hand and kneel down and open up their skis with your hands to a V shape and tell them to maintain that going down the hill you will find it works wonders.
So what have we concluded? Simple, online might be a way to read about ideas and see pictures, but it can never replace the way skiing was meant to be learned and that is through one on one instruction from a certified ski instructor.
Learn more about this author, David Couttie.
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