Snow Skills

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

Seeing learners rely mostly on a visual image to understand the desired movements and then translate what they see into their movements. To learn this concept from a seeing learning style, the skiing tip could be (said by the coach) “Through the course of a turn, watch how the body from the hips up is aligned differently from the legs. You’ll see my legs turning more than my torso. When I do shorter turns, notice that this separation is more obvious.” (followed by a demonstration)

The riding improvement focus is also isolate your upper body from your lower body. The seeing tip could be (said by the coach) “As I turn, notice how active my legs are in relation to my shoulders. The less my shoulders twist, the steadier my balance is. Ride so that your chest stays mostly pointed toward gravity while your feet move across gravity.” (followed by a demonstration)

Seers are typically passive to active learners; they evauate what movements are best through observation and then explore those motions through reinforcement of the visual image. Advanced learning by seeing can include mental visualization of how one would look making thoses movements, a technique racers use extensively. A successful approach to learning by seeing is to have a talented demonstrator who can provide both a positive and negative image with consistency. Seers learn partly by doing and thinking as well, but usually are not focusing on the physical sensations of their movements. Seers are good candidates to take group lessons as they rely on others for reinforcement. For an instructor, the mantra for coaching a Seer is to give an excellent demo which clearly shows the desired movement and then give the seer plenty of practice without the distractions of additional coaching. Keep it simple by foreshadowing it, demoing it, and letting less be more!