Where do you see most performance plateaus occur?

[Disinterested]

It's not their profession, we should be happy for them to be as comfortable as they like but try to inspire them to want more at the same time.

 

[jimtransition]

Most plateaus I see occur due to insufficient time on snow (many holiday skiers) or insufficient fitness, almost everyone who works hard on their skiing improves, until they hit a natural limit for their conditioning or desires.

Also at some point the law of diminishing returns means people aren't going improve much, as further increases would involve way more effort/fitness. I have skied pretty much full time for the past 15 years, putting a lot of effort into my skiing, I am now in my late thirties, am I going to get dramatically better at some point? Probably not.

 

[mdf]

teach plateaued intermediates a new way to initiate their turn

You need to tear out a whole section of your book and rewrite it. You can't tweak your movement pattern, you need to create a brand new one.

I was stuck on a plateau with bad turn mechanics for about 30 years. I was a heel pusher.

That started to change at a JH Steep&Deep camp in 2006 when I was 49 years old. Our instructor, Echo, did an amazing job getting us to see we were doing it all wrong. (Part of the trick was she never put it that way -- she explained it as there is a new way to ski instead. Here key phrase was "tip then turn instead of turn then tip." Obviously there is more to the story, but that's a good way to start with obvious but manageable changes.)

Of the 4 of us in the group, two of us bought in. (The other 2 stayed with the usual "I'm awesome, just tweak" mindset.) By the end, we were saying to each other at the top of steep pitches "First, we need to unlearn how to ski."

It took about 2 years of hard work (confusion, reading, posting video on Epicski, experimentation, practice on easier slopes) to make the new mechanics my normal way to ski. And then old patterns would still pop up sometimes under stress.

At 64 years old, I'm still getting better. The keys are to think about it once in awhile, and to spend a lot of time skiing with better skiers.

 

[newboots]

The keys are to think about it once in awhile, and to spend a lot of time skiing with better skiers.

It sounds like the key for you was a camp with a great instructor! Not to mention the two years of hard work.

The great thing about being a late bloomer, late-life beginner: everyone I skied with was a better skier!

 

[mdf]

It sounds like the key for you was a camp with a great instructor! Not to mention the two years of hard work

Oh it was. I meant the key to not plateauing again.

(I do still take formal lessons, by the way. I'm doing a Taos ski week nearly every year.)

 

[bud heishman]

I think the braking intent happens naturally in first day beginner adults. They show up all eager to learn to ski. But as soon as they click into those skis and discover how slippery they are, then discover that not only are the skis super slippery on the flats but they are even more slippery on a slope, their fear sets in and that overpowers their eagerness. Their attitude shifts fast to wanting to feel secure and safe. I can talk about the bliss of sliding, but the hear that through the filter of fear. It's there for most of them.

Most beginner adults I teach don't have experience feeling secure and safe while sliding, so stopping the sliding or at least slowing down it is what they think they need. They want to delete that slippery lack of control and feel a solid connection to the snow beneath their feet.

So how we deal with that first day beginner class matters. They will deeply embed the memory of how they first find confidence and security in that lesson. If it's bracing against the snow, then that's what they will turn to as they ski the next day, and for seasons after that.

Bracing against the downward slide is what a first straight run in a wedge gives them. That bracing, with skis scraping against the snow, offers them confidence that they can control speed and stop. So bracing against gravity will be what they remember and rely on as they progress - if a straight run is what they are taught first. I try to avoid teaching it, but if terrain and time constrict what I can do in that first lesson, I will do it.

An override can come later, if they get instruction, but so many don't keep taking lessons. When intermediates finally book a lesson because they are frustrated at their progress, I usually find that they have deeply embedded turn mechanics that are based on scraping against the snow.

Well said!

 

[Nancy Hummel]

Many people I see skiing around the mountain or who come to intermediate and above lessons have three common issues:

1. They ski in the back seat.
2. They do not use their ankles to flex and extend.
3. Their boot/binding set up limits the movements they can make.

2 more things:

Many people ski too hard of terrain before they are ready which results in a bunch of defensive stuff going on.

I really dislike the “suck at a higher level BS”.
Our minds and attitudes are a very important part of achieving our goals. The word “suck” is not part of my vocabulary when it comes to my intentions of my performance and I do not use it with my students.

 

[SSSdave]

A bit off your primary topic, basic to learning. We humans become what we do and repeat. What we correctly learn how to do but do not actually perform, we gradually forget.

Unless a novice skis enough, even if they are being instructed performing for a few days in a reasonably correct way, if that is all, after that season ends, their neuromuscular system that had built up slightly to perform skiing, due to non use until the following season, will gradually degenerate back to relatively low levels of performance. The actual neuromuscular connectivity structures are still there while the associated complex chemical aspects of neural synapses built have weakened. If a novice just returns a year later to a resort and expects they will be able to regain skills from where they left off, they are likely to find themselves floundering from the get go, awkward, confused as to what they are doing wrong or how to regain what they thought they had learned. That is where some level of refreshment by an instructor can make a significant difference. An old skier that has through neural plasticity built up skills over decades has so much robust neural connectivity built up it becomes permanent. Like riding a bike endlessly as a kid, as an adult it is always there for playing again.

With neural plasticity to repeat, the new neural dendritic arboring synaptic connectivity structures to each axon that was originally built and developed during initial training is still there in structural form. However due to non use over subsequent months, such new weakly marginally repeated neural structures will decline in complex chemical ways such that the myriad dendritic synapses built no longer have much if any affect on their axons. But if a person then has correct refresher training, those chemical structures can rapidly return to be effective because the physical structures they are part of are still there. This is why weak learning is easily forgotten forever while rigorous repetitive learning is not. Even a new skier that works at a resort and is trained and skis all winter is far likely to retain skills after an off season of non use.

A person that studies in college something for a job say HTML coding and then shortly later actually uses it in their work is far more likely to be able to retain such skill over years even through periods of non use versus learning they never used. Each time one actually uses a learned skill repetitively, especially in varied ways, it far better cements future use.

Note there are time limits to how long such weakened structures are able to be resurrected. If one studies, learning a weakly learned skill, say studying the C computer language for a job, if one then goes a year with non use before actually applying such in work, by a following year or so if they need to reuse such, they may be rusty but it ought not take too long to come back up to speed. On the other hand if one has not used a skill for say ten years after schooling, much of the structure by that time will have degenerated to un-resurrectable levels so they would have to totally relearn much. Additionally say if one in the interim studied a totally different computer language, that would gradually totally reprogram much of what one had weakly learned for C. In like manner, learn some correct skiing one winter and start out by skiing without instruction wrong for weeks the next and what structure was left may be cannibalized into incorrect motor muscle use. If ski instructors understand and explain to their students how this works so the students actually understand it, they are likely to find students returning in following seasons.

 

[bud heishman]

When it comes to plateaus, they seem to be mostly temporary blockages in learning that are very frustrating to people to have up until that point made a lot of progress. The reality is, any learning that occurs over a reasonable time-frame will have these stalls.

Why does learning stall? A lot of reasons, but big ones include:
1) Mistaken belief system to unravel
2) Temporary Injury Issues
3) Temporary mental issues (stress etc.)
4) Exorcising an ingrained habit
5) Working through the gap between having been told what you have to do and understanding what you have to do

etc. Sometimes, when you're dealing with people who have never learned a skill that has plateaued like this (or it did but they've got rose-tinted memories about it), the frustration can be enough to quit trying to fix the issue, and what could be a blockage for a few weeks becomes one that lasts for months or years for no good reason. It's true, though, that the stress of this is enough for some people to say 'look, I have enough fun in my skiing - I don't need this'.

The important thing with this kind of plateau is you have to lean in to it as hard as you can because the pay off will probably be explosive when it eventually arrives. And if you hold on to that belief and attitude, it'll also minimise your stress about not making short-term progress.

This video is worth watching as one way of thinking about the process learning physical skills.

-

On the other hand, there do seem to be people in our industry hitting firmer thresholds. For most of our guests it is 'I can make it down all of the terrain types I care to ski safely' or 'I can keep up with the kids well enough'. I think that's reasonable given the time investment they are making in to the sport and I don't want to dig too much deeper in to it, except to say: we have to keep giving them something to aspire to. That means that once they can ski everything, they need to care more about trying to improve the how. 'I want to look like that coming down', etc.

For people in the instruction business, I think the most common place to top out is at the PSIA L2 level.

I believe the L2 standard is attainable to essentially anyone who is mentally and physically capable of holding down a ski instruction job as long as they are willing to make at least some preparation. It's attainable for anyone with one season under their belt if they have a strong pre-existing skillset in the sport and/or are willing to make a continuous and dedicated training effort.

The L3 level (at least in RM) tends to hold people up more, and the why of that is straightforward - skiing sodbuster or prima/pronto in the fall line is an athletically demanding activity. That doesn't mean you need to be in prime athletic shape to do it - you don't - but you lack athleticism you are going to have to make up for it with stronger technique so that you can make consistent, fall-line turns in big bumps in 35->40 degree double black bump terrain without making major errors, probably on a bad snow day. That is where the majority of candidates in PSIA-RM get stuck.

They get stuck on other things too, but that seems to suck people in the most. Why? Well, a lot of it is things mentioned really in the first part of this post, particularly the first and last points: a lot of people have a lot invested in belief systems about their skiing that aren't really accurate, and that makes them poor listeners: they hear feedback, but they don't really hear it.

Having trained people at all these levels and having done all of this myself recently, here's what I see as the biggest underlying belief system that causes the problem:

Everyone in this business thinks they're awesome and attaches a lot of ego to the way they ski. And that's cool, and your god-given right as a ski instructor. But the effect of that is that it makes pros in our industry believe they only have to make a 'few small tweaks' or 'a slight adjustment' to attain success. No. You need to tear out a whole section of your book and rewrite it. You can't tweak your movement pattern, you need to create a brand new one. Build an entirely new initiation to your turn, or an entirely new finish. Start at first principles again.

To paraphrase someone else: it's all about embracing that you suck, and trying to suck at a higher level. That's what elite skiing is built on, imo.

I love this and JB's presentation!

I will resist spewing my whole "Sports Performance Assessment Model" here and now but I'd like to share the concept.

As an elite athlete or competitor in ANY sport, there are four areas that work together to elicit performance. Four areas where the participant can direct their focus to improve and remove impediments to progress in each area to affect an improvement in performance. Top athletes in every sport I can think of continually address each of these four areas to optimize their performance. By identifying your weakest area and addressing the issues, performance will improve. Once impediments in that area are resolved or improved, another of the 4 areas will reveal a weakness that needs focus, and so on it goes. There is a continuous effort by top athletes to work on and optimize each area continually minimizing impediments or weaknesses in each area.

As skiers and students of the sport we can use this model to assess ourselves and identify our weak areas. Then the choice has to be made whether we want to address those impediments to improve performance or not.

The four parameters are, "Technique, Equipment, Physiology, Psychology"

If we only focus on technique, but our equipment alignment is off, no amount of technique instruction will change our performance until the impediment caused by equipment is removed. OR, if a skier has habitual stemming or over pivots turn initiations using braking rather than direction to control their speed, focusing on technique will have little affect until that skier changes their Psychological "intent to turn" from "Don't Go there" to a "GO there" intent.

Look at an elite skier and you will see they continually work on their fitness, agility, strength. They continually work with coaches to affect technique, a boot fitter to optimize the 10 parameters of alignment that affect their movement on the sagittal, frontal and transverse planes of motion. They work with sports psychologist to sharpen their focus. All these things have positive affects on performance.

If you are experiencing a plateau, step back and assess where in this model is your weakest area, then choose to address it. Once you have made progress in that area, move to the next area and focus on removing impediments there and so on. The rest of your skiing career you can go as far as your limitations permit to improve your performance.

Plateaus are often an impediment in one or more of these areas that needs to be resolved in order to take performance to the next level.

 

[Disinterested]

The four parameters are, "Technique, Equipment, Physiology, Psychology"

 

[bud heishman]

The Sports Diamond and Sports Performance Assessment Model are two different focuses. While I enjoyed Weem’s book and approach I believe mine is a bit more tactile and can be applied in any sport from auto racing, bowling, tennis,etc. The largest parameter I believe is ignored in teaching/coaching skiing is equipment. When I watch a skier coming down the hill I am assessing these
four parameters to identify the cause of what I see and many times I see impediments caused by poorly aligned equipment. Get that shit right and you have cleared a big hurdle on the road to higher performance.

 

[Disinterested]

For sure, it's just a fun comparison.

 

[pliny the elder]

I was stuck on a plateau with bad turn mechanics for about 30 years. I was a heel pusher.

That started to change at a JH Steep&Deep camp in 2006 when I was 49 years old. Our instructor, Echo, did an amazing job getting us to see we were doing it all wrong. (Part of the trick was she never put it that way -- she explained it as there is a new way to ski instead. Here key phrase was "tip then turn instead of turn then tip." Obviously there is more to the story, but that's a good way to start with obvious but manageable changes.)

This. And then, this, again.

This, is what differentiates skiers, in one fundamental way more than any other thing.

Except perhaps, for the leaning forward/back thing, but then, they tend to go together don't they?

This separates people who "go skiing " from people who "can ski". At least, in my experience.


pliny the elder

 

[François Pugh]

In addition to being stuck because you can do what you really want to do well enough, and you (you in he general sense) don't care enough to put in the effort to learn other stuff (that you're no good at), a big factor is, "What you don't know can't help you." My bump skiing really sucked for quite a while, but I didn't care enough to do some real research and figure out what I was doing wrong. Now my bump skiing still sucks, but it sucks at a higher level.

 

[Tony S]

I really dislike the “suck at a higher level BS”.

I suspect there is a real and valid gender difference here. (And yes, I mean gender, not sex.)

A major obstacle for men, as any woman will tell you, is an exaggerated pride-driven sense of competence. For us the "suck at a higher level"' shtick emphasizes a prerequisite humility.

Women, by contrast, tend to underestimate their abilities already, so the last thing they need is humility; they need validation.

 

[fatbob]

I'm not sure anyone needs to get too upset by "suck at a higher level". If it is men using it to show a modicum of self awareness and humility about their place in the grand scheme isn't it better than total denial. Not that I particularly like higher level anyway in a leisure activity - the only real higher level is more fun/satisfying.

 

[Philpug]

This is a great topic and it is interesting to read many of individual perspectives. I see this being a comfort zone question. Where is that individual skier in their comfort zone and the plateau is where the desire to change has yet outweigh the need to stay the same? This is the basis for many self help books.

As far as the "sucking at a high level" or "sucking less", I believe that was coined by Jerry Berg, (I could be wrong). It is a bit of an eye rolling statement, I personally read/hear it as either " I'm getting better or I am less worse of a skier, I know I can still improve"

We also need to respect that each skier has their own needs, be it to get better or just go out and have fun. Some people just are content to be on the hill sliding around and are not looking to get better. Sure we cringe when we see some out there in 30 year old skis/boots or skiing jeans and Starter jacket or even skiing in the back seat all the way but at the end of the day, are they having fun and really how does that affect us?

 

[Eric@ict]

For me, it was new boots and skis without a binding system; bindings mounted on flat skis. That was huge for me and then was instruction. I have learned so much and have improved to a level that I didn’t think was possible for me.

 

[Bad Bob]

I was stuck on a plateau for a very long time, but finally fell off the cliff and got back down to my own level.
Hope to heal soon.

 

[slowrider]

The lack of a solid foundation creates imbalance and usually means a lack of control. Which is a personal choice as long as respect to others is practiced. That said, an accomplished skier should not buzz less skilled just because they can. We were all beginners at one time.