Technical Skills for Alpine Skiing

Technical Skills for Alpine Skiing is an instructional book written to educate and excite parents, coaches and school-age athletes about skiing. Unique among books of this type, Technical Skills for Alpine Skiing provides readily applicable exercises and drills to enhance the performance of young skiers. Young skiers are highly motivated by their desire to free ski; ski anywhere on a mountain. They also respond eagerly to challenge and the opportunity for personal achievement. Through "directed free skiing," skiers can work toward a goal, develop a routine to encourage optimum performance, and add constructive focus to each run down the mountain. These themes provide the basis for Technical Skills for Alpine Skiing.

Technical Skills for Alpine Skiing contains numerous exercises that teach and refine skiing skills in a very progressive manner beginning with wedge turns and building to expert skiing. Hundreds of photographs, including multiple-image composites, enhance a clear and descriptive text that is concise and easy to understand. The photographs of talented young demonstrators and of the author, combined with the text, make this book as accessible to skiers of all ages and levels of expertise.

The book covers in depth: technique, "directed free-skiing", wedge turns, beginning parallel turns, dynamic parallel turns and step turns. Specific areas of development include balancing exercises, skill development, ski pole action, turn shape, terrain/snow conditions and perceptual skills.

A detailed table of contents allows the reader to assess skiers' strengths and weaknesses and to derive a listing of exercises to meet individual needs efficiently. The glossary makes sense of the words common to the language of skiing. An appendix provides pertinent information concerning appropriate ski equipment for young skiers. It discusses, among other things, the correct sizing of ski boots, skis and poles.

True narratives precede each chapter. They relate experiences that had a deep effect on the author's development as a teacher and as a person. There were two major influences on her work: an extraordinary wealth of personal experience, and her ability to listen to children and to visualize skiing through their eyes.

Technical Skills for Alpine Skiing is a favored book among ski instructors and coaches nationwide.