A great majority of skiers consider that participating in lessons is beneficial, but they do not do it for monetary reasons, because they do not have enough time, because of Ego issues, because they believe they do not need it, or because they do not think they can change or improve their technique. They adopt negative attitudes towards the fact of hiring a professional to help them improve or solve a technical or psychological conflict in their skiing. One of the worst feelings is to give up doing what we would like to do but did not have the courage to.
Many skiers take lessons saying what is happening to them and that they don’t know how to fix it. The psycho-affective ‘symptoms’, in addition to the motor ones, are reiterative: generalized emotional tension, anxiety due to imbalances, or fear generated by poor speed control, among others. The instructor cannot address all the causes of what happens to the learner’s skiing in a single lesson. Simply ‘prescribing‘ necessary technical or tactical corrections will only go so far.
Supplementary ‘why’ and ‘what for’ indications serve the learners to have a very basic knowledge to help themselves. Many have consulted other professionals and have experienced superficial temporary corrections that did not solve the underlying problem, sometimes because the explanations received were not adequate or because the learners themselves did not take them into account and incurred in the same faults. On the one hand, they tend to attend the lesson with an emotional overload and, in this state, they are prone not to pay too much attention to the instructor’s explanations. On the other hand, they are prone to present themselves in such a state of near distress that all they want is to be heard and understood.
The essence of the lesson taken as therapy is to see the skier as a totality that includes his thoughts, his emotions, as well as his technical actions. It can be considered therapeutic because it helps to restrict the extreme judgments made by the skier by orienting him towards more reasonable ones. In today’s society where the demand to obtain immediate results, to succeed, and perform well is the ultimate goal or the social mandate, the ski lesson allows the creation of a space in which these demands are mitigated so that the learner can express himself freely. It is an environment contained by the instructor where the skier can apply the spontaneity that he did not dare before.
The ski lesson, as a therapeutic space, functions as an encounter between the instructor as ‘therapist’ and the skier as ‘patient’. An encounter that generates a means to be able to face, in a better way, personal skiing, recovering the pleasure of sliding and being able to decide one’s own way of skiing, instead of having to implement an imposed skiing.
It is the place where the skier gathers all the fragments of various disappointments that constituted his emotional blockage. A space to reconstitute his skier Self from those disturbing situations coming from the initial stage and to meet with his own desire to decide what kind of skier he wants to be. This is what it means to attend this type of lessons: to find oneself with the desire to ski pleasantly without demands.
Interpreted as a therapeutic session, the ski lesson generates an individual setting between the skier, with his strengths and weaknesses, and the ability to conduct himself in the environment assisted by a ski professional. In this space the skier can test what he has learned before applying it on other slopes, that is, the lesson works as a kind of rough draft before passing on what has been learned.
Testing the technique, using a particular method for each person instead of a single formula for all, allows the skier to adapt it to his own skiing reality. Although it could happen that a novice instructor applies a single method due to his own inexperience, in general, the facilitator is prepared and available to use the technical-methodical-psychological modality that best suits the needs of each learner. Each skier should take his own responsibility in learning by deciding to take advantage of the lesson and adopting a proactive attitude. Letting the ski pro know how we learn best or what our own preferences are contributes greatly.
Traditional methods deal with the present, that is, they focus on the correction of errors (re-education). The therapeutic lesson focuses on the past based on preconceptions and lived experiences. Although it is necessary to analyze the previous learning stage since it is this that hinders the present, not all teaching should be anchored around it. For many skiers, the beginner’s stage is still present because it did not end up becoming the past as soon as the repetition of mental and emotional attitudes that hinder current performance is observed.
An extreme situation can bring about a change. The traumatic experience of an accident or injury triggers the motivation that generates the volitional effort needed to be more attentive. Exploring past experiences reveals how the skier transfers the conflicts that give rise to his present. These experiences are repeated in his mind, hindering his progress because they condition him. For this reason, the ski lesson as therapy allows the traumatized skier to recover the protagonism he lost and to be the owner of his own present, freeing himself from his past negative experiences. In this way he finds new ways to face circumstances in which he feels intimidated.
Reliving the past and re-educating it allows for genuine growth in the present. Although elements of the skiing past are analyzed, the objective is to consolidate present behavior with a processed past, discovering one’s potential, resolving mental blocks, and relieving disproportionate emotionality.
For many, learning to ski means that the first stages are of physical, mental and, above all, emotional suffering. To the skier disturbed by psycho-affective issues, the traditional teaching approach based solely on technique is not always appropriate. The learner and athlete also need psychological relief provided by the instructor and coach. In ‘therapy’ one comes to ‘work’, being the therapeutic space in which both (learner-instructor or athlete-coach) put the best of themselves to recover what they had, or what they momentarily stopped using and need to recover and, mainly, to reestablish self-confidence.
It was said that current teaching methods are oriented to the learner’s incorporation of an efficient technique with almost no incursion into his psycho-affective state. The mental obstacles that emerge are not dealt with as they should be and the skier remains powerless to produce significant changes in his skiing. In general, traditional ski lessons tend to improve body technique, not mental technique. So why not develop the therapeutic lesson to include both physical and mental re-education? Skiers who have been taking lessons for years have acquired a lot of technical information and a certain understanding of their own mental condition, but their psychological and, especially, affective limitations remain.
