7 year old progression help

[Chris V.]

They worked on his hadn position to get him forward which (in turn) brought his legs to more of a gliding wedge position. Now that he's off skiing with mom, his hand position has dropped and he's back to a big wedge instead of a gliding wedge.

This says a lot. It seems he's comfortable with skiing in that way, and reverts to it. He has fun doing what he's doing--but maybe he could learn some additional ways to have fun on skis.

I wonder if in his lessons they might have taught him to put his hands on his knees? This is often something younger children are taught, as a way of quieting down all the random movement and of developing adequate forward pressure and balance. Anyway, it promotes success in skiing the way he's now doing it, but it's time to move beyond that. I wouldn't by any means look at the hand position as an issue in isolation. Changing what Lukas does with his hands should just be a part of getting him to start skiing in a much narrower parallel stance, which is what will put him on the path to developing solid skills for a lifetime.

A challenge in teaching children around the age of seven is that their bodies have recently grown and developed to the point that they have greatly advanced in their physical abilities--but their brains may not have quite realized it yet. They may revert to small child habits.

Teaching a child with Lukas' ingrained habits to ski parallel isn't going to be a matter of incrementally adjusting his style. It's going to be a complete break, a new and different way of moving on snow. Therefore I'd suggest looking for ways to play that are different from anything he's done before, and that will develop that new way of moving--for my money, not so much contrived, story-based games, but activities that are fun in themselves. Start again on the gentlest terrain. Perhaps--set up a narrow set of "gates" with cones, fir branches, ski poles, or whatever's available, and the challenge is just to ski in a straight line and go through the gates without touching on either side. Then perhaps practice traverses in which Lukas needs to be able to stay on edge, maintain adequate speed, and not lose elevation, and the challenge is to aim straight at a target on the side of the run and hit it. (It's basically impossible to do this skiing in a wedge.) Then perhaps take off one ski and do "scooter" skiing, learning to balance on one foot.

As for the hands, it's often good to give a child some object to hold on to. When teaching the youngest children, I often used to go around with pockets full of small stuffed animals. I'd ask a child to hold one out in front of him as an extra set of eyes. Lukas looked good holding that pole. Give him a pole--but only one, and not to be used to stab the snow. Maybe give him the advanced version of the horizontal pole holding exercise, where he has to balance the pole on top of open palms while skiing, and not drop it.

Etc., etc.!

 

[AtleB]

Two excercises I regularly use kids are ready for more parallel skiing
1. Hockey stops
2. Lifting the inside ski when initiating a turn.

 

[tube77]

He does not need poles and at his stage of skiing development they will be a hindrance.

Kids in developmental program starts to use the poles at age 5.

 

[Mike King]

Kids in developmental program starts to use the poles at age 5.

Sure. We give kids older than 5 poles when they have learned to turn parallel. He has not.

 

[Tricia]

Why do you think that is?

I think its because its a natural chain reaction in your body when your hands are in a better position.

 

[Tricia]

As a point of reference:
My nephew is 45 lbs, 46 inches tall and he's skiing
20.5 boots and 107cm skis in the rental program.

Not that the gear is the issue, but this may give some reference.

 

[François Pugh]

I would give him poles and tell him not to use them for anything, except for this one mission: keep the handles x feet off the snow (up to you if you want to include how far forward and how wide apart the handles need to be).

Then again I don't have the child-with-ski-poles phobia almost all ski instructors seem to have.

I'll never understand someone else's phobia, so don't bother explaining it to me again; I'll just go on believing it's only because they had charge of too many misbehaved kids who misused their poles.

 

[AtleB]

My daughter (5yo) is about 2 inches taller and a couple of pounds more. She is still on 100cm skis this year. I was considering 110cm but am glad I went with 100cm.

 

[Mike King]

I would give him poles and tell him not to use them for anything, except for this one mission: keep the handles x feet off the snow (up to you if you want to include how far forward and how wide apart the handles need to be).

Then again I don't have the child-with-ski-poles phobia almost all ski instructors seem to have.

I'll never understand someone else's phobia, so don't bother explaining it to me again; I'll just go on believing it's only because they had charge of too many misbehaved kids who misused their poles.

The issue with poles and younger children is one of physical dévelopment — they do not have fine motor control, they use gross muscle movements, their core is more developed than their extremities, their center of mass is much higher than in an adult. So giving them extra mass to deal with when they already have a lot of other issues and that mass isn’t doing much if anything to help is not very productive. when they are skiing parallel, a pole plant can help to move their mass forward in the initiation of the turn. But it really isn’t functional to use a pole plant in a wedge turn.

because of their anatomy, the weakness in their ankles, kids at this age tend to ski with a plantar flexed ankle, straight leg, and bent at the waist. To many, this looks like they are aft, but in reality a kid can be centered in this position. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t coach a more athletic position, but you should realize that develepmentally they may not be able to achieve it.

why do I bring all this up? Because many who have not participated in kid specific training may not recognize all of these issues. They may look at the body position and think that the hands not being forward is what is contributing to a lack of a centered stance. Go with a pro who has their Children’s Specialist 1 or 2 certification. These certs look at the cognitive, affective, and physical development cycles of children and figure out what the child in front them can and cannot do.

 

[LiquidFeet]

I want to underline what's been said upthread by several people.

He needs to ski with a narrow wedge instead of that shockingly wide one that is scary-wobbly.
He needs to learn to control speed by completing his turns instead of using the wedge's opposing edges.
Once he learns to complete his turns for speed control, he needs to want to get parallel between turns.
Later, he needs to want to learn to ski with parallel turns.
All those fun drills in that teaching-kids-video linked upthread are wonderful for keeping these goals fun.

The hands are not the issue. Poles produce confusion. He needs to work on his leg skills.
Loose boots may be an issue causing the wide wedge. Wow, hadn't thought of that.

 

[Tricia]

The hands are not the issue. Poles produce confusion. He needs to work on his leg skills.
Loose boots may be an issue causing the wide wedge. Wow, hadn't thought of that.

I will agree with you for all of that, except that I know he skied with a narrower stance when the instructor had him ski with a single pole in his hands out front.
Putting his hands down on his thighs/knees is allowing him to ski in that crazy wobbly wide stance.
I sent the Deb Armstrong video that was posted earlier to my sister to work on the "finding your edge" skill games.

As for boots, they could very well be too big, especially considering his size. He's smaller than many other kids his age, but one thing I noted when I visited family last September is that he has HUGE feet.
His dad is really tall and wears a size 13. I think he's going to be a tall skinny kid once he starts shooting up.
My first guess is that the boots are too big, but considering all of this....maybe not.

Note: I don't expect a 7 year old kid who's only skied 1/2 dozen times to ski parallel yet but its time that he starts working on it for safety and control.

What I do expect him to do is have fun.
Oh and he found the Crystal Crispies

And he found some goofy faces.

 

[Tricia]

My daughter (5yo) is about 2 inches taller and a couple of pounds more. She is still on 100cm skis this year. I was considering 110cm but am glad I went with 100cm.

LOL I know he's small but that puts it into perspective. But...he has his dads feet.

 

[Wilhelmson]

I used to call that the lazy snowplow. Athletic kids can do it all day until it gets a little too steep. Stick with the lessons; he will get over it. A 1/2 day lesson and a day with my friend did it for my kid around that age. At 14 now he is not lazy. My daughter took longer.

 

[Kurt]

^^^ This. This. This. This! Yes to everything Erik just said.

--No poles yet. No! Poles are for parallel skiers. Use them as a reward for skiing parallel like a big kid.
--No to steeper terrain. He'll go even wider in his stance because he's using stance width and the braking snow plow now to slow down. He is not ready for controlling speed on something steeper yet.
--No to trees, no to bumps. Wait until his stance is narrower, almost parallel between turns. He'll have much better control of his turn radius with a narrower stance, especially if he can get skis parallel between turns. Controlling turn radius is important when there are obstacles in your line.

This big issue of stance width has to do with speed control. He needs to be able to go slow, to avoid obstacles, and turn on command. That wide stance is inhibiting these skills.

--Work on controlling speed by completing turns on these groomers, instead of relying on the wide braking wedge. Completing turns means going across the hill towards trees at the end of every single turn. This will slow him down every single turn. He needs to know and feel how this works, and choose to use it on purpose. He's young. This may take time.

--Once he "gets" that going across the trail will slow him down, work on getting those skis parallel between turns. There are drills that work for this. The longer he stays in that wide wedge, the harder it will be to break him of this habit. Work on completing turns and getting parallel between turns right now.

--The way to get skis parallel is to stand on the downhill ski between turns and move the lightened uphill one to parallel. Work on that with him, using the usual drills. Change instructors if you can't convince this current one to help him move towards parallel right now. This needs to be done on the easiest terrain he's on, so he won't insist on the wide wedge for speed control and a sense of security. Once he's on the outside ski between turns, he's ready to be on it for the whole turn. That means he can start working on fully parallel turns. With those, he'll have much more control of his turn radius and be ready for steeper terrain, and bumps, and trees.

Oh, and as a reward, poles. Let steeper trails, trees, bumps, and poles be a reward. In which order depends on terrain and reading the child's skills and confidence level. Poles can wait until parallel is happening. That's the big prize.

Really good points. One easy drill that works to narrow the stance, practice softening the inside leg, and naturally creating balance on outside ski is a simple traverse. They can almost immediately feel how comfortable a traverse is with narrow stance vs a wide power wedge (just makes my hips sore thinking about it...).

 

[Steve]

I can’t imagine telling a seven-year-old to soften up his inside leg.

 

[Tricia]

I can’t imagine telling a seven-year-old to soften up his inside leg.

I agree 100%.
With a kid this age and with this fun side, I would think that games on snow will help him get there, not techy instruction.

I mean, he's more interested in singing while he's skiing and making funny faces....and now that he's found Crystal Crispies....well.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

Don’t forget about the power of Swedish fish.

 

[motogreg]

I agree 100%.
With a kid this age and with this fun side, I would think that games on snow will help him get there, not techy instruction.

I mean, he's more interested in singing while he's skiing and making funny faces....and now that he's found Crystal Crispies....well.

I can’t imagine telling a seven-year-old to soften up his inside leg.

Yep. And forget about all that fore-aft balance talk too.....

Just have fun. And, again, nastar at crystal runs tuesday-sunday, and is 5 bucks for 4 runs for the kiddos. My 8 year old got a platinum last week, easy-peasy, ,all she had to do was skip the gates on the bottom half of the course. Killin' it.

 

[LiquidFeet]

Let's talk about that hands-on-knees thing. When I started teaching, I was shown how to do this with adult beginners to help them get some weight on the fronts of their skis. I used it back then because it worked and people told me it was a good thing to do. But it works for all the wrong reasons.

Since then I've stopped trying to get adults or young kids forward if at first I don't succeed. With kids, we just go do stuff and have fun, with me privately choosing what fun things to do that might help them get on their outside ski and/or to help them want to complete their turns. Young kids need motivation that prioritizes "having fun" instead of "getting better."

 

[LiquidFeet]

Don’t forget about the power of Swedish fish.

They ruined Swedish Fish when they made them smaller.
Mike and Ikes are still good.