BASI ISIA Level 3 Ski Teaching exam

A few weeks ago I was one of 24 people taking the BASI ISIA ski teaching exam in Verbier.  Having completed two weeks of technical coaching and exams my understanding of skiing and all of the BASI terms felt better than ever.  The real test would be whether I could analyse a much higher level of skier than most of my clients, and whether I could teach.  Unlike the technical exam I felt as though failing would mean that I suck at my job!

The first day was very informal, we went over the course program and each delivered a 10 minute ‘unwatched and unjudged’ lesson to three people in the group.  I did flatland 360’s for a bit of fun, which soon turned into doing this on one ski and then one ski in both directions.  Our trainer, Alex Leaf set a great relaxed atmosphere and I was psyched and a bit apprehensive to see what the rest of the week would bring.

The following four days took the same format, we would each prepare overnight a 15 minute lesson to deliver to the class aiming to achieve the following:

• Keep the class safe at all times
• Develop each individual
• Give specific developmental feedback to each individual
• Make it fun, simple and clear
• Don’t talk too much or too little
• Have a clear aim/goal of the lesson and make sure everyone knows this
• Stick to the ‘TIED’ model – very BASI! Task, Information, Evaluation, Develop… and repeat
• Range of teaching styles
• Acknowledge different learning styles – Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic
• Etc…

We would each observe two peoples lessons, giving them feedback on good and bad points using the above criteria and more.

Tuesday – Piste performance lessons

A huge variety of lessons to improve our short and long turns, with all sorts of new and familiar drills in there, the most novel being Tom’s ‘violin drill’ to help with rotational separation in short turns.  This is where you hold one pole horizontally across the hill and the other goes ontop like the bow in line with the fall line.

I looked at rhythm and co-ordination of pole plants in short turns.  Learning from today’s lessons the best thing to do to help yourself was to choose a simple drill you can develop and link back into ‘normal’ turns, and that is easy to spot mistakes in other’s performances with.

Wednesday – Performance thread lesson excluding the technical thread.

Today was a bit of a challenge for most people to fit in the feedback from yesterday, keep it simple and also deliver a lesson aimed at the right level to develop our group in one of the performance threads from:

Tactical

Physical

Psychological

Equipment

Environment

Pretty much everyone in the group choose Tactical, and mostly in the bumps, looking at different lines and speeds you can take to make it easier or harder for yourself.

Being rubbish at bumps, and a keen steep skier I opted to look at the Psychological aspect of skiing steeps while learning to jump turn.  We covered visualization techniques and went through a ‘chaining’ process of learning a jump turn appropriate to steep terrain.

Thursday – Central theme day at Les Esserts (the nursery slope), in the boiling hot sun

Each of us chose a turning phase of the central theme to teach looking at improving our own performances in snowplough, plough parallel and basic parallel.   Again, there were lots of new drills throughout the day and most of us had improved our demos by the end.

Having seen the group plough parallel the other day and spotted a few things I could work on, I chose this.  Matching the skis at any stage we looked at really standing on the ‘new outside ski’ of each turn and trying to correct our individual faults with a buzzer game.

Friday – ‘Crazy’ lessons day

Today each of us had a lesson with a twist to deliver.  Some people were not allowed to talk, others had a class that couldn’t speak or see, and I got ‘nervous old ladies’.

So, yoga skiing it was then, anything to take their mind off the fact they are actually!  Linking breathing and movements to the various stages of the turn and promises of a coffee break just around the corner!  It was the only bit of role play the whole week, which made a welcome change from the Level 1 and 2 exams.

In our group 7 out of 8 of us passed, including me, much to my relief.  Overall it was a fun, relaxed week, I improved my teaching, got lots of new lesson ideas and came out with some things to develop further.  It is one of the ISIA modules I would definitely recommend to a Level 2 teacher with reasonable skier analysis and understanding of how skiing works.