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.

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