10 April 2005
CSIA Level 3 !!!
Hi everybody!
I hear the news of the big snowfall in Whistler. Finally all came back to normal and I hope you all have a wonderful ending of the season. How was it in Chamonix, Nig?
Here in Andorra the season couldn’t be better. I ended up working in the nicest resort, with lots of snow and very good off piste. I am learning a lot through my teaching and the local ski improvement clinics. I also took a pre-level 3 course in January with the CSIA –it is great to be able to continue CSIA training in Europe (see www.instructor-academy.com ).
The family is settling quite well, it seems a good place to be for some years (before moving to Canada or Austria hehe).
And the great news is that I just passed my Level 3!!!!
I am delighted to share this new with you all. After that pre-level 3 I was working in the indications for improvement I got from the course conductor (Eric) and got some very valuable help from an Andorran trainer in my resort (Jesus Serrano), a lot of concentration in keeping all parallel from the lower leg down. Then good old Jeff Norris came to visit with Ronnie and we had a few nice sessions together. Another way of learning has been the teaching, quite often suddenly in the middle of a lesson I was realising that something was coming into place in my skiing or my teaching. I got myself slalom skis, a second hand Nordicas 160cm with a nice rising plate, another good move…
So I decided to give it a try. At the inscription I didn’t signed for the exam, only for the course, because I just wanted to learn. The office emailed me back offering me to wave off the exam fees in case I was not going for it at the end of the course and then I signed for it.
I was determined to have fun this time during the course after the stressful previous experiences, and that determination has helped me a lot. Also the fact that getting my Level 3 will get me a small pay rise but no other major differences in my life, not like Level 2 –absolutely necessary for my change of life.
Course conductors were Dough Leeming (former CSIA president), Heather Robinson and Jeff Sinclair, all level 4’s living at East Canada.
My big surprise was when from the very first day I was praised for my skiing (man, my teaching has been good, but my skiing… I was shy about my skiing. The best transition so far was from been compared to Michael Jackson –by Wayne- to be compared with Ray Charles –by Eric- because of my unability to keep my upper body quiet.
Then we had a video session and even bigger surprise: no A-frame whatsoever! Even I liked what I was seen there!
We were 25 participants on the course, all active ski instructors in Andorra, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain and New Zealand. General standard was high, quite good in at least 50% of the participants. Some were taking the course for the second time.
A good few sessions later: dynamic parallel, short radius, bumps, teaching high end, teach to teach, and things were looking better and better. I asked in the one to one session with Jeff S. his opinion about going for the exam. He said to me something like: ‘you don’t own it, but if you carry on the way you are doing, sure you have good chances’.
Then the last day (ski off review), the last run in awful hard made up bumps (not the nice natural ones we were skiing before), you could only ski in the fall line those things. Suddenly I feel something goes wrong in one ski, stop to look at it and poor old Nordicas one had snapped right were the screws go for the front of the plate.
So, the night before the exam and there I am without skis.
I couldn’t find the same skis in rental, didn’t wanted to risk trying new skis, so I ended up with my Canadian K2 Axis I didn’t used for many weeks on the exam day.
Just 17 people shows up for the exam.
First run for ski off was dynamic parallel. A bit of new snow on top of softening spring snow, weather unsettled. I felt bad in that run, nothing of the nice feeling of stretching laterally my legs in fase two of the turn, radius a bit too short, at least my lower legs were parallel and the distance in between my skis was constantly the same. (Later I new, I got a 5 for that one). The few others I saw were looking great. Confidence was down…
Wedge turns and Basic parallel runs felt a lot better. In wedge my goal was to show pivoting while extending, starting the turn with inside leg, balancing on the outside, maintaining good separation through the turn. And in BP a bit of the same but everything parallel this time. Not very good runs for many others as far as I could see. (I got a 6 and a 6.3 in those).
Then a visit to the huge artificial bumps just for evaluation of the terrain. I risked a zip line and it didn’t felt too bad, but there were others way much better than me there…
The course conductors decide then to go for the short radius run into a place we have never skied before, a ridge and a very steep terrain. Thank God I did a good job there (a part from a bit of a downhill ski stemming in fase one), it was not easy and the general skiing of the group was quite poor. (I got a 6.3)
And then they decided to move the bumps run into a free run in a double diamond we had skied just once before the break for lunch. Steeper than the one for short radius, a few bumps, nice spring snow, a few stones. I came down whistling, jumping few bumps in a dolphiny way as I was told and got a quite loud cheer from the people at the bottom. The course conductors told us that they will still evaluate everybody for that run during the teaching sessions in bumps. (I got a 6)
Teaching was going on for the rest of that day, some pedagogy and some high end lessons. I got to teach in the teach to teach session ‘from intro to parallel to liked parallel turns’. Slashy snow, red-black terrain, not the ideal, I managed to go through the progression with reasonable good demos but I didn’t managed to find a lot to assess or developpe in my ‘students’. Fortunately enough I got the same examiner who has praised me for a very good lesson during the course.
Went home feeling very much at the edge. Bed early, wake up at four in the morning with my thoughts spinning about what I forgot to say in my conclusion of the lesson the previous day. Last day I had to teach dynamic parallel and I was done. I happened to teach last, with everybody tired, but thanks to my mates I could give a reasonably good lesson (drills were ski on inside ski in fase two of the turn to help to get the feeling of stretching laterally, and I would have moved to Frankie’s diving exercise to help the lateral cross over at the end of fase 3 but I was stopped after assessing results of the first drill).
We were done at lunch time, came back home (one hour away) because presentations have to take place at 7 pm. One of my mates, retesting for skiing only, told me that the pass rate was 50% last time. If that was to be repeated, I was in. After a nice siesta, and ready for whatever was the result (I knew I was on the very edge), I came back for the presentations
Finally the pass rate this time was 34%, 5 from 17, and I was one of them!!!
Thanks to everybody helping me in this long and short way, just 15th months (8 months skiing) since I landed in Vancouver and since levels 1, 2, retest of 2 for skiing and level 3, lots and lots of changes in my skiing and big learning in teaching and pedagogy.
Thanks to you all mates, special thanks to Lili for helping me to arrive here, and thanks to the CSIA Level three’s and four’s participating in bringing me all the way to this point: François Sauve, Phil Wilson, Wayne Deane, Caroline Heureux, Erin Keam, Richard Potter, Mike Kayl, Tony Mozart, Wade Sutton, Barry Allison, Dough Leeming, Heather Robinson, Jeff Sinclair.
I have still a long way to go in my skiing and my teaching, but I still determined to keep going and having fun learning everyday and, who knows? I would love to take lower coaching levels, adaptative skiing, …
I would love to see you all, sooner than later.
Love,
Miguel
I hear the news of the big snowfall in Whistler. Finally all came back to normal and I hope you all have a wonderful ending of the season. How was it in Chamonix, Nig?
Here in Andorra the season couldn’t be better. I ended up working in the nicest resort, with lots of snow and very good off piste. I am learning a lot through my teaching and the local ski improvement clinics. I also took a pre-level 3 course in January with the CSIA –it is great to be able to continue CSIA training in Europe (see www.instructor-academy.com ).
The family is settling quite well, it seems a good place to be for some years (before moving to Canada or Austria hehe).
And the great news is that I just passed my Level 3!!!!
I am delighted to share this new with you all. After that pre-level 3 I was working in the indications for improvement I got from the course conductor (Eric) and got some very valuable help from an Andorran trainer in my resort (Jesus Serrano), a lot of concentration in keeping all parallel from the lower leg down. Then good old Jeff Norris came to visit with Ronnie and we had a few nice sessions together. Another way of learning has been the teaching, quite often suddenly in the middle of a lesson I was realising that something was coming into place in my skiing or my teaching. I got myself slalom skis, a second hand Nordicas 160cm with a nice rising plate, another good move…
So I decided to give it a try. At the inscription I didn’t signed for the exam, only for the course, because I just wanted to learn. The office emailed me back offering me to wave off the exam fees in case I was not going for it at the end of the course and then I signed for it.
I was determined to have fun this time during the course after the stressful previous experiences, and that determination has helped me a lot. Also the fact that getting my Level 3 will get me a small pay rise but no other major differences in my life, not like Level 2 –absolutely necessary for my change of life.
Course conductors were Dough Leeming (former CSIA president), Heather Robinson and Jeff Sinclair, all level 4’s living at East Canada.
My big surprise was when from the very first day I was praised for my skiing (man, my teaching has been good, but my skiing… I was shy about my skiing. The best transition so far was from been compared to Michael Jackson –by Wayne- to be compared with Ray Charles –by Eric- because of my unability to keep my upper body quiet.
Then we had a video session and even bigger surprise: no A-frame whatsoever! Even I liked what I was seen there!
We were 25 participants on the course, all active ski instructors in Andorra, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain and New Zealand. General standard was high, quite good in at least 50% of the participants. Some were taking the course for the second time.
A good few sessions later: dynamic parallel, short radius, bumps, teaching high end, teach to teach, and things were looking better and better. I asked in the one to one session with Jeff S. his opinion about going for the exam. He said to me something like: ‘you don’t own it, but if you carry on the way you are doing, sure you have good chances’.
Then the last day (ski off review), the last run in awful hard made up bumps (not the nice natural ones we were skiing before), you could only ski in the fall line those things. Suddenly I feel something goes wrong in one ski, stop to look at it and poor old Nordicas one had snapped right were the screws go for the front of the plate.
So, the night before the exam and there I am without skis.
I couldn’t find the same skis in rental, didn’t wanted to risk trying new skis, so I ended up with my Canadian K2 Axis I didn’t used for many weeks on the exam day.
Just 17 people shows up for the exam.
First run for ski off was dynamic parallel. A bit of new snow on top of softening spring snow, weather unsettled. I felt bad in that run, nothing of the nice feeling of stretching laterally my legs in fase two of the turn, radius a bit too short, at least my lower legs were parallel and the distance in between my skis was constantly the same. (Later I new, I got a 5 for that one). The few others I saw were looking great. Confidence was down…
Wedge turns and Basic parallel runs felt a lot better. In wedge my goal was to show pivoting while extending, starting the turn with inside leg, balancing on the outside, maintaining good separation through the turn. And in BP a bit of the same but everything parallel this time. Not very good runs for many others as far as I could see. (I got a 6 and a 6.3 in those).
Then a visit to the huge artificial bumps just for evaluation of the terrain. I risked a zip line and it didn’t felt too bad, but there were others way much better than me there…
The course conductors decide then to go for the short radius run into a place we have never skied before, a ridge and a very steep terrain. Thank God I did a good job there (a part from a bit of a downhill ski stemming in fase one), it was not easy and the general skiing of the group was quite poor. (I got a 6.3)
And then they decided to move the bumps run into a free run in a double diamond we had skied just once before the break for lunch. Steeper than the one for short radius, a few bumps, nice spring snow, a few stones. I came down whistling, jumping few bumps in a dolphiny way as I was told and got a quite loud cheer from the people at the bottom. The course conductors told us that they will still evaluate everybody for that run during the teaching sessions in bumps. (I got a 6)
Teaching was going on for the rest of that day, some pedagogy and some high end lessons. I got to teach in the teach to teach session ‘from intro to parallel to liked parallel turns’. Slashy snow, red-black terrain, not the ideal, I managed to go through the progression with reasonable good demos but I didn’t managed to find a lot to assess or developpe in my ‘students’. Fortunately enough I got the same examiner who has praised me for a very good lesson during the course.
Went home feeling very much at the edge. Bed early, wake up at four in the morning with my thoughts spinning about what I forgot to say in my conclusion of the lesson the previous day. Last day I had to teach dynamic parallel and I was done. I happened to teach last, with everybody tired, but thanks to my mates I could give a reasonably good lesson (drills were ski on inside ski in fase two of the turn to help to get the feeling of stretching laterally, and I would have moved to Frankie’s diving exercise to help the lateral cross over at the end of fase 3 but I was stopped after assessing results of the first drill).
We were done at lunch time, came back home (one hour away) because presentations have to take place at 7 pm. One of my mates, retesting for skiing only, told me that the pass rate was 50% last time. If that was to be repeated, I was in. After a nice siesta, and ready for whatever was the result (I knew I was on the very edge), I came back for the presentations
Finally the pass rate this time was 34%, 5 from 17, and I was one of them!!!
Thanks to everybody helping me in this long and short way, just 15th months (8 months skiing) since I landed in Vancouver and since levels 1, 2, retest of 2 for skiing and level 3, lots and lots of changes in my skiing and big learning in teaching and pedagogy.
Thanks to you all mates, special thanks to Lili for helping me to arrive here, and thanks to the CSIA Level three’s and four’s participating in bringing me all the way to this point: François Sauve, Phil Wilson, Wayne Deane, Caroline Heureux, Erin Keam, Richard Potter, Mike Kayl, Tony Mozart, Wade Sutton, Barry Allison, Dough Leeming, Heather Robinson, Jeff Sinclair.
I have still a long way to go in my skiing and my teaching, but I still determined to keep going and having fun learning everyday and, who knows? I would love to take lower coaching levels, adaptative skiing, …
I would love to see you all, sooner than later.
Love,
Miguel
NIce day to stay at home and catch up with friends (winnds 50 to 100 km/h)
31 January 2005
Powder in January
Just trying this blog thing, it seems nice. After the big storm we got nice powder days, floating is great!!
