French ski instructor course week 3 - The last of the dry land training

This season we have five super fit Brits working their way towards becoming a ski instructor in the French system. It's something that will take a lot of dedication, if they hope to get through the "Test Tecnique" by the end of the season. If you need to catch up, check out the blogs from week 1 and week 2.

Soon enough our Serre Chevalier ski instructor trainees will be on the snow, but back in week three there was still a fair amount of fitness training left to be done. The week started with mountain biking, something that had destroyed the guys at the end of the previous week. Adam was starting to get to grips with it though:

“I was happy from the start and i climbed and climbed for a couple hours, which was all on road this time so it was a bit easier... After a quick bite to eat we started heading down! I have to say that i absolutely loved it, i had to get rid of all my fears and just go for it so i wasn't left behind, it was a single narrow, steep rocky track with lots of corners and a pretty steep drop on one side, but we were getting some pretty good speed up and really heating up the brakes trying to slow down!

“I've found a new love for downhill mountain biking and we're off again on thursday for the last time and i'm really looking forward to it!!!”

The next day, it was straight on to honing their other new skill “Ski de Fond”, although it sounds like it was a little more like back-country skiing than cross-country skiing!

“Once we were at the snow line Vincent and GG once again went tearing off and this week we went to another area that would stay in the sun for longer. Both of them lived up to their reputations as excitable kids as they were getting us to go downhill on these impossible skis, going over jumps, basically off-piste skiing over branches and lumps and bumps. It was crazy and crazy fun. Lots of falling over but we soon got the hang of it and started to fall over less often. We headed up a really steep slope so we could practice off-piste turning techniques, but with cross country skis, this is anything but easy, one massive 180 to get the skis round, a quick slide and over onto my back for the rest of the way!”

Unfortunately Adam took a bit of a knock to the shoulder towards the end of the day. It all got checked out by a doctor and thankfully wasn’t too serious. It was a level 1 dislocation, so would be pretty painful for a while, but should come good.

The next few days were filled with the usual games, lots of handball, mountain biking and climbing. Adam struggled a little with his shoulder. Climbing up slippery screed slopes was made particularly difficult when he was only able to hold one pole.

There wouldn’t normally be training on the weekends, but an exception was made on Saturday 3rd because the snow finally came, and the crew went skiing!

“Now I personally haven't done much off-piste skiing and Adam hasn't for a few years so this was certainly a challenge. And we were thrown down it first so the instructors could see what standard we were at. It was great and we went down pretty well, being guided by another instructor we don't know the name of yet. Once we'd finished it was straight back up and down again but this time steeper and i mean steep, there were mini avalanches going off, nothing to worry about just little slides of about half a foot sliding off the ice underneath. I loved every second of it and i felt like I’d challenged myself more today skiing than i ever have before. It’s the sort of thing that you wouldn’t do on your own on holiday because of the fear of hurting yourself or getting lost, just sticking to the safe parts, but we are here to become ski instructors eventually and there is no holding back, whatever they want you to do you have to give it a go, or be left behind. “

“I have to say that today was one of the best days skiing i have ever done and i can’t wait for tomorrow when we do it all again. This season is going to be amazing and we will be pretty good skiers by the end of it!!!!!”

Sunday was a day of rest, as the snow carried on falling.

“After this we headed to the old town where we found a nice little cafe where we had some hot chocolate, coffee and a few little treats whilst watching the snow come falling down. Then headed home to decorate the Christmas tree whilst listening to a little bit of Michael Buble, Starting to feel a lot like Christmas! We are both getting very excited, think we are climbing another mountain tomorrow but not too sure yet and are both so excited to hit the slopes again!!!”

Week 4 will be on its way soon, stay tuned!