by Zach Bigalke

Created on: November 02, 2008

The school bus pulls up to the lower slopes of the mountain. A gaggle of schoolchildren, bundled in Gore-Tex and tasseled toques, pile out through the front door and begin snatching skis from the rear loading bay. Lining up in various groups based on skill level, the children separate and head toward their lessons. As a light dusting of snow flurries fall from the early December sky, another weekly physical education class begins for the students of Moran Elementary School...

That was my introduction to skiing, a six-year-old in a new world. For anyone who has grown up in a winter wonderland, winter sports like skiing end up seeming like second nature. Starting at such a young age, the body builds the muscle memory which serves to quickly inure one to the fast-paced ballet of balancing oneself on waxed planks down an incline. Not everyone, though, is blessed in his or her youth with either a school system which celebrates skiing and makes it part of its early-education curriculum or even a locale which is conducive to learning the sport.

Thus we must learn later in life. Few people, though, have the time to dedicate to a weekly lesson every season for a five-year period. There has been a recent influx of websites - with names like skismarts.com and becomeanexpertskier.com -which purport to be able to teach an aspiring skier how to schuss down the slopes simply by reading their online documentation. Some contain charts; others have images to help illustrate techniques; still others depend solely on writing to educate those wishing to learn how to ski. But there two simple reasons why any and all online ski lessons fall far short of a licensed instructor when it comes to a person's first tentative turns on the bunny hill:

1. LEARNING STYLES - It is hard to contend that absolutely nobody can learn how to ski from online courses. Few people, though, can simply read something a couple of times and translate that written word into competent motor skills. Taking a live skiing lesson from an instructor allows a student of the sport to witness in real time the different maneuvers. Many of these sites fail to even provide adequate video by which an online ski student could view the motions. Diagrams and even photos can only do so much to teach a given move; because of their static nature, it is impossible to see how to perform each specific part of a given action through photos. The visual learning and ability to immediately apply the skills learned makes a live ski lesson the best option for most pupils.

2. CORRECTION - Even if a person can whip out his or her iPhone or Blackberry or other handheld technology to access the internet, how convenient is it for that skier to pull off gloves and reach through wet clothing to grab the device before searching for the knowledge to get down the mountain in one piece? And if you are doing something wrong in the first place, how can a beginner possibly know that without having been able to SEE how to accurately perform that move? A ski instructor not only can demonstrate how to correctly ski; that instructor, supervising each student's progress, can also help guide skiers as he or she remedies any incorrectly performed actions.

Skiing is something which everyone should get the opportunity to try. However, there is no online course out there which performs as well or better than the guidance of a certified ski instructor. While an internet site can help get a student starting to think about proper technique, there is no substitute for personal instruction.

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