A Family Adventure


Tyson, Emilie & Isaac

Cross country skiing lessons

January 10, 2010
Emilie Phillips

One of the things the AMC does is teach classes. However, to teach classes, there need to be competent instructors. The best of our cross country instructors agreed to spend some time today with the rest of us. It ended up only Tyson, Bill, and myself signed up.

Once we got over running late and basically throwing all the same stuff back in the car from yesterday, including the food, the day went well.

Ted ran the day as he would a normal lesson, but then we would step back and learn why he was teaching the various exercises. We started with simple static balance excersises. We then progressed to dynamic balance. Gliding technique is not necessary in the back country, but we covered that too since it would sure make some trips faster. The last bit before lunch was up and downhill technique. I find it hard to remember how painfully flat of a «hill» beginners need to start on.

After lunch we did a general tour and touched on more miscellaneous points as they came up. Overall I think I learned as much about how to teach as ways to improve my own technique. Definitely time well spent.

A lot of what the NH AMC does is trudging up and down hills. It might be good to broaden that out into more distance covering tours. I think we would all be more well rounded skiers.

As it was, only 4 hours trying to keep up with Ted was enough to get me some very sore muscles this evening.