what's the most misunderstood coaching tip?

[Ralph Lee]

My son is starting to get serious about the course and I'm attempting coach him. It got me thinking, what's the most commonly misunderstood slalom advice?

[Ralph Lee]

In my opinion its "be more patient in the turn" I've seen a lot of people take this tip and end up 25 feet down course

[Razorskier1]

Any one tip, given without proper context, is a bad tip. Most of what we want to do better in the course comes from something we do right or wrong two steps prior. For example, "where should I turn in for my gate?" Heck if I know, how high are you on the boat? Or "you just need to keep your handle longer". Well, good luck with that if you aren't in the right position on your ski with the correct amount of line tension. I could go on and on and on. Point is, when someone tells me to fix something they see from the boat, I always rewind 2 steps to figure out what I really need to fix to resolve the problem.

[skiep]

Back arm pressure. It's leading arm pressure not trailing arm.

[ScottScott]

Any tip given to someone else.

 

We often take tips that a coach may give someone and try to implement that to ourselves. Or a tip we were given, and give that to someone else. That coach may very well have been making comments based on what 1 person was doing wrong, then the next person that wasn't doing that same thing wrong thinks they need to implement that tip....fixing a problem that didn't exists.

[jhughes]

I just think in general this sport is wildly mis-coached. Why? Too many unknowns to the observer. Rope tension is a big unknown as is a lot of subtle posture stuff. Essentially what a coach "sees" is an incomplete package of information in this sport. As such you almost need to establish an agreed-upon lexicon of "unseeable" items as a baseline that must be achieved before "seeable" items are suggested.

[Than_Bogan]

@jhughes With a slight risk of hijacking this thread, that is a great point and I think I've seen one of the solutions to that: At the Denali Summits, the Adams use a "lecture" format for about 2 hours each day, discussing the underlying theory and things you want to accomplish regardless of what may be noticeable from the boat or video.

[Jordan]

"Pull harder"

I never got anywhere until I focussed on stack and leaning and stopped pulling in with my arms (biceps)

[Than_Bogan]

My vote is: The entire concept of New School.

 

While it was packed with good ideas -- some very forward looking -- it was also widely and impressively misinterpreted, with a lot of people sitting down into horribly inefficient leverage positions and generally dragging their ass everywhere.

 

With the benefit of hindsight, almost everything about it was right -- it just needed to be explained a lot differently to the "typical" skier. That's pretty much the definition of "most misunderstood," so that's my pick.

[Ralph Lee]

I've also noticed when people are told they're pulling too long, they end up letting off, losing their angle and come in to the buoy narrow

[Horton]

"bend your knees"

[The_MS]

Getting wide. Most new skiers would think that means getting wide past the ball

[Wish]

Just about any advice/coaching that starts at ball 1 and beyond. So many things will self correct if you fix, improve and at times completely change your gates... for us mortals.

 

Just about any advice/coaching that focuses solely on the turn phase to fix a problem in the course. Most of that advice will make subtle changes but not substantial.

 

Any advice/coaching that takes place with a poorly set up ski.

 

For me, any advice that does not jive with GUT. For me I see skiers and skiing through completely different lenses. It is significantly easier to weed out bad advice from good advice based on the foundations @AdamCord and @adamhcaldwell have tought both here, through direct coaching and the Denali Summits. Not a cheap plug either..just fact.

[skiep]

DaveLemons Right arm going right and left arm going left is the lead arm. For example: going through the gates to one ball right arm is lead/ back arm.

[RazorRoss3]

I think the most common errors are all related to either coaching a symptom rather than the true error somewhat to @Razorskier1 point or coaching out of order, for example you can't coach handle close or line tension until the skier is in the right body position.

 

@Horton, I always try to coach "flex your front ankle" or "push you front knee forward over your toes" because I agree with you that the phrase "bend your knees" is a sure fire way to send the skiers hips right back off the tail of the ski. I try to explain that the knee bend is a side effect of the ankle flex.

[Boo]

oops @Ralph Lee was cleaning off my monitor screen--did not mean to hit "off topic"

 

[ScottScott]

@Boo Hit it again, and it should go away

[lpskier]

"Try to be light on the line." WTF does that mean?

 

Really, this discussion should be about the best method to give instruction, and in that context there are two approaches: the start from the beginning approach, which takes a ton of time but probably produces the best results, and the weekend clinic or one week at ski school method where there is time only to identify and start to correct one, two or perhaps three things tops. Especially in a clinic setting, a coach may be like a house painter. All four sides of the house need paint, but the side facing the street, or the skier's most obvious flaw, gets the paint. In reality, it's the leaking roof that's causing the paint to peel, but the front of the house looks great with new paint.

[MarcusBrown]

Trailing arm into the wakes....leading arm outbound? Is that what you mean @skiep ?