by Zach Wild

Created on: November 10, 2008   Last Updated: December 07, 2008

You step out of the house after spending quite a few hours doing some online research. You are walking down your sidewalk, when you realize you forgot your key and head back in to grab them. You walk up to your car and open your door, step one. You sit in the seat and buckle your seat belt, step two. Insert the key in the ignition and go! WRECK! Would you learn to drive by taking a "comprehensive" course online? Of course not. For the exact same fact there is no way you can learn to ski from online lessons. Skiing is a learned skill, just like driving and just by sitting in front of a screen and watching videos of other people do it doesn't mean you can hit the slopes of a black diamond and tear it up. People getting off their butts and hitting the BUNNY slope would have problems, let alone trying to tackle an actual trail on the mountain.

The key to skiing, driving or any skill for that matter is real world and real life experience. Actually going out and preforming the physical action that is takes to perform the task you are trying to complete, in this example skiing. You need to feel the ski's, make sure your boots fir properly, get your poles the right length. You have to learn to carve, to adjust your speed, to have your skis move in concert with each other. You have to learn how to stop, a difficult thing by itself without ever once trying it for yourself. The muscle memories that are committed to your bodies memory are immensely more important than mimicking Bode Miller's moves as he bombs down the mountain in the Olympic Super G. Your real world experience allows you to gauge your skill and most importantly, get an actual feeling for the successful movements involved with skiing. What slowing down feels like, what carving is like, how it should feel and how it shouldn't. These movements and feelings are the basis of learning a physical skill.

Sitting in front of your computer screen and looking up your favorite YouTube video of skiing tutorials will result in nothing but broken bones and broken wallets after the mounting hospital bills. The high speed and reaction time key to skiing, must be developed through first person interaction with your equipment and the hill, not with your mouse and the computer screen. Would you drive the same way that you do when your playing Grand Theft Auto IV? I didn't think so. So save yourself from a collision or two with some fir trees and two or three visits to the hospital and make sure your actually start AT the mountain and not at the mountain of links for Free Online Skiing Tutorials.

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