Snow Skills

An earlier post discussed the four basic styles of learning: doing, thinking, seeing, and feeling. This post explores the feeling learning style. and does so by explaining the same improvement focus as the previous post; isolate your upper body from your lower body.

To learn this concept from a feeling learning style, the skiing tip could be “A turn with good upper and lower body separation will feel like your feet are moving a lot while your body moves a little. These two efforts are separated at your hips, where you’re going to feel twisting along the sides of your torso and down the back of your buns. The sensation is like your two halves are moving independently with the pelvis representing their connection point.” This is a good example of a suggestion for someone who learns mostly by feeling; it’s based on how different parts of the body will feel when it’s making the desired motions.

The riding improvement focus is also to isolate your upper body from your lower body. The feeling tip could be “You know you’re separating your upper and lower body when it feels like your feet are traveling from side to side under your body, while the body seems to be staying in one place. This will be supported by the sense that your legs are actively moving while your torso is moving gently. The hips are going to feel like the average of these two sensations, moving just enough to maintain good balance and staying quiet just enough to keep the two halves of your body separated.”

Feelers are typically passive learners; they like to be foretold how the desired movement is going to feel and be able to internally sense if they’re achieved it or not. A successful approach to learning by feeling is to develop degrees of feedback by experiencing the sensations of both doing it right and incorrectly. Feelers learn partly by thinking as well, but usually don’t learn as well from watching someone else or just getting out there and doing it. Feelers are good candidates to take private lessons; they generally learn methodically through personalized attention with immediate feedback and reinforcement. For an instructor, the mantra for coaching a Feeler is to foreshadow how a specific motion will feel and then put them in several situations to experience a range of sensations associated those movements. Make them really feel it!