More Slalom training on French ski instructor course

It’s been really interesting keeping track of our French ski instructor trainees over the last couple of weeks, being such a different training experience to any other course. The focus on slalom and speed is really taking the forefront. All of the trainees were very competent skiers when they headed out to Serre Chevalier, but their technique now is being fine-tuned to perfection. When they come to take their “Test Technique”, an essential part of becoming a French ski instructor, they will need to shave every possible second off of their slalom time. There really isn’t any room for error!

Although the trainees spend a lot of time exploring the expanse of Serre Chevalier’s off-piste terrain, they spend a good chunk of their training days working on their gate training. Here are a few exerts from Adam and Ryan’s blog:

“Standing at that first gate there are still quite a few nerves, I think it’s because you know how hard it is going to be. However as each day goes on and you get that little bit better it gets even more fun. “

Of course, it all boils down to times, and last week the coaches added to the already challenging slalom training by doubling the length of the course and by getting the stopwatch out.

“Valentine (slalom racer and one of our coaches) set the time first before we all went down at 30 secondish intervals. The worst thing was that I hadn’t even seen the course yet, it went over the edge of the slope after 5 turns, then you just had to react to whatever you came across. This however wasn’t a problem for me as I thought I was better than I actually am and skied off as fast as I could and started doing as the pros do, looking at the next pole before you hit the one you’re skiing round, I’m sure this would have helped me get a fast time if I had been concentrating on where my skis were and didn’t hit the pole and sent off the course on the fifth turn.

“Adam had managed to finish both his runs with times of 44 seconds and 43. This was about 10-11 seconds behind the time set by the instructor but not an unrespectable time considering it’s our first week at this sport. I decided to ski the third time a bit slower, concentrate on where my skis were going and just make sure I finished the thing. And I did in a time of 44 seconds, with Basil (the best slalom skier of the students) cheering me over the finish line. Adam went down in 42 seconds, so he was progressing every time.”

After a weekend break they moved on to a new slalom course in Chantemerle, which was even longer and tougher than the previous course and technique really started to come together:

“We started to get the hang of it a bit more. Then the most amazing thing happened. Vincent had been trying to get Ryan to get his lower body to move more like a pendulum so he went down one set of gates and Vincent watched him and then at the bottom it happened. Vincent said to Ryan “C’est bien, bien” Basically it is good, good. I immediately asked Ryan how that felt and he said “pretty amazing”.

And things got even better with the arrival of Ryan and Adam’s new Slalom skis.

They felt incredible! Compared to what we have been skiing on and trying to carve and turn short sharp turns, finally we had a pair of skis on that responded to how we were trying to ski. Ice and hard snow were now not a problem and we were all loving it as we went down our first run.

The fun was short lived though, before long the instructors decided that they should try skiing with only one ski...

“We thought they were joking but Joe said no “he’s not joking”. So up we went and it was a very strange feeling getting on the chairlift with just one ski. Off we got which was also weird and we got started. I can carve on my right ski quite well and I’m not too bad on my left but trying to make short little turns was hard and throughout the afternoon everybody was falling over and so many funny things happened.

Of course, while training it’s really important to start improving French language skills, partly because it’s a mixed culture group but also because French fluency will be necessary by the time our trainees become fully qualified instructors.

“Today we both made an effort to learn more French by making sure that we did not get a chairlift together which really helped, Luca speaks quite good English and taught me a few things and he said that he liked rap so I taught him a few raps and rapped Rappers delight and fresh prince theme tune. Was all hilarious we both just laughed all afternoon.

“Was the best day that we have had on piste for sure, and hardily stopped all day. Learnt a lot and progressed a lot in just one day and became a lot better friends with all the French guys. Was a seriously amazing day!!!”

Of course, it’s not all about slalom training, the next afternoon they kitted up with their off-pist skis and ARVA packs before hiking up to Tete de la Balme:

“Looking over the edge and seeing the first of the guys go down was pretty daunting and probably the steepest thing I’ve ever skied down but by now we’ve come to realise that we’re both a lot more capable skiers than we ever thought and have progressed massively since starting this course. So over the edge we popped and skied down, pretty much jumping from left to right so as not to pick up too much speed on the icy STEEP slope. We carried on skiing hard off piste until we finished at 4pm absolutely shattered, dripping with sweat and too tired to even talk, not that we could show to the instructors we were feeling it, Christian already told us to make it look as if you’re feeling great and ready for anything even if inside your legs are burning, and you’re screaming in pain.

Looking forward to the next update guys!