"Monique Y. Mudama" wrote:

On 2004-12-21, MattB penned:

It's funny, I forget all of these tips after not being coached for the
last decade. I'd like to think I just do them all naturally now, but the
truth is probably more like I just do most of them naturally and learn
to compensate for other bad habits that creep back in without someone
shouting at me while I ski.
It is nice to ski without being shouted at. Unless it's shouting like
"Woo-hoo! Yeah! Nice!". But that makes my helmet tighter.

Have you thought about taking the occasional lesson? In addition to the fact
that I still have a lot to learn, I like lessons because they keep me honest.
I can't deal with it when my husband makes suggestions, but I take it very
well from an instructor.

It's way easier to take advice from strangers than from a significant
other, but I don't deal well with lectures -- my natural inclination is
to say (or at least think) "Oh yeah?" more often than not, and that's a
nuisance.

The better you are, the fewer people are in your lesson. For you, it would
probably be an effectively private guided tour through the gnarliest stuff on
the mountain, with suggestions thrown in. On the flip side, if your
personality can take it, maybe you could ask some experienced friends to watch
you and comment on what they see.

Excellent, especially if you have enough friends that you don't bug any
one of them too frequently. Works for computers too.

Also, unlike coaches, instructors don't yell at you =P

On a mostly unrelated note, the goalie for my ice hockey team recently went
skiing for the first time. She explained that she's not the type of person to
take lessons. A few of us, some much better skiers than I, looked at each
other and one said, "Well, not taking lessons is a good way to get yourself
killed, if you're skiing."

Not really, some people just have to work it out for themselves. Read,
think, experiment, succeed (or not). Asking somebody who knows "What am
I doing wrong?" and getting a useful answer isn't the same as a lesson.
Whenever I've taken ANY class in anything I already have some experience
in I've had to wait impatiently through the stuff I already know before
getting to a useful nugget of info.

So how did she do?

I'm a huge fan of lessons; I'll take a lesson in
just about anything I want to learn. I love benefitting from the experience
of those who've come before me. Really hard for me to understand the "lessons
bad" mentality.

Lessons bad, books good.

--
Cheers,
Bev
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"Once you've provoked a few people into publicly swearing they are going
to hunt you down and kill you, the thrill wears off." -Elric of Imrryr