IASI Snowsports
Race training and the instructor journey
I’ve been working in snowsports for over 40 years, first as an instructor on a dry slope but I quickly moved into racing and then coaching – working with athletes all the way from grassroots racing to national team and international competitions.
I’ve held a wide variety of posts from club coach to National Team Head Coach, and during this period, I’ve attended numerous international events for both GB and Ireland, such as the Alpine World Championships and the Youth Olympics. I have a particular interest in working with schools and in 2016 co-founded the National Schools Snowsports Association in the UK.
Throughout my career I’ve found that race training is invaluable in honing high level skill within skiing, and I’ve seen it used to make great improvements in all levels of skier.
What is race training?
For those who enjoy skiing gates, and racing, whether it be in Ireland or the UK on plastic, indoor snow, or in the mountains, the feeling of ‘slapping plastic’ in slalom or getting a shoulder to a GS gate on snow can be exhilarating. But for many skiers, the expression ‘ski race training’ conjures up the image of lycra-clad athletes on specialist race skis, skiing steep, icy pistes at high speed through poles or banners. This is the most visible part of race training: the end result, either actual races or higher-level athletes training through gates and, whilst this is one part of race training, it is only a small part, and this image can intimidate and potentially deter skiers from trying this great way of improving their skiing.
Build the Skier to Create the Racer
In my training organisation, we have a tagline ‘Build The Skier – Create The Racer’ and this is key to improvement, as too much time skiing gates will slow progression. When skiing a course, skiers are, in the main, not focussed on their skiing but on such things as completing the course, hitting the gates, or even just staying upright, and this is really not a great way to get better.
Essentially, effective race training is focussed coaching. Training through poles can be part of it, but actually improving skiers takes place outside the poles and mainly on terrain conducive to the trainee/client building confidence and enabling effective movements. Repetition of effective movements is also important to make any positive change permanent.
As we learn or develop in anything, we go through stages of skill acquisition and these need to be understood by the coach in order to effectively develop anything that is movement or skill based. How many of you have been learning something and, as soon as you show success at one stage, you are swiftly moved on to the next stage, perhaps feeling as if you haven’t really mastered the previous movement or skill?
Practice time
Sufficient practice time once a movement is learned, in order to consolidate that movement and develop it to become intrinsic in your skiing, is something that can often be missed in the pursuit of a skiing goal. The same applies across the board with sports. Only when the skier and coach are satisfied that progress is being made and the movements are happening with consistency, do we look at putting this into the course. This can be a great indicator of how the training is developing and if improvements are being consolidated. It can also go the other way, and putting obstacles in the way can cause the newly learned movements to be ‘dropped’ in favour of surviving, but this is just one of the gauges of improvement.
Race training in the ski instructor journey
The IASI Level 1 Race Coach can give you great insight into the coaching side of racing for those coming into it with minimal or no racing or race coaching experience. On this course, we focus on the coaching process, with an introduction to slalom course setting and a minimum skiing level which is similar to the on piste Level 2 Alpine instructor. There is no requirement to have raced or have any racing or coaching experience to take the course. It’s a great course and can be used toward your IASI Alpine Level 3 / ISIA stamp. This 3-day course usually runs in the UK in the Autumn and in Pila during the winter.
Many instructors have ambitions to complete their Alpine Level 4 qualification and, as part of this, need to ensure that they pass the ISIA speed test or, if they are eligible, the Eurotest. For those wishing to do this, I’d advise getting some training done early – DO NOT wait until you have completed the L4 modules, or even the L3. It’s not a question of just doing a bit of training – many skiers train for years to pass these race tests. But aside from passing the test, many of those that I have spoken to say that the training for these tests has been invaluable to their skiing journey as a whole – it’s not just a means to an end, but an end in itself.
