This morning was kind of cool.After St Patricks day things were a little slower paced for a lot of the teams. With some of the riders taking some well earned rest from the stresses of the previous day.
Not us CASI folks though we were tucked up in bed nice and relatively early as we knew we had a big day today.
So back to how cool the day was, on the 8.15 shuttle to the resort we arrived to see a few people milling around and all the snowboarders congregated in the middle of the village below the demo slope. Not having a specific plan we all decided to go for a ride together , so a few groomer laps and then some in the park with riders from all over the world just doing their thing , it was awesome to see and none of us were focused on doing perfect demos just ripping some turns with like minded people.
At 10:30 we split into 2 groups and went on sessions presented by Poland and Slovakia.
Yuki, Luc and I went with the Polish guys and Jeff and Adam went with Slovenia.
The Session idea was about using methods of contrast in order to get development from students. They took us to extremes with our equipment to help our understanding of our movement patterns. The first thing was to limit the help we get from our bindings and concentrate on using our joints to be able to turn our boards so loosening off our bindings to the point that our ankle straps were only a click or two connected and then riding switch – It made me think a whole lot about where I was stood and how I moved on the board to be able to change edge.
The next task they asked us to try was to take a lack of vision and see how it affected our balance. So we put bubble wrap( you know the stuff that you pack boxes with ) in our goggles and tried riding down the slope, it wasn’t overly challenging try thinking of driving just before you turn your windshield wipers on, you can kind of see people and where the slope edge was but not the smaller details. The next thing was total blackout we upped the ante and put a dense sponge in front of our eyes and it was like trying to ride in a power outage. Trust in the people guiding me was needed as i felt like I’d never been on a board before,for most people our body tensed and lateral movement almost came to a screeching halt with the majority prefering to rush the edge changes in their turns at the last minute. The idea was good and they got us thinking about how our students feel when they are riding in whiteout or stormy conditions as once the visability goes we get into survival mode.
They showed how even limiting one sense in varying amounts can develop9 understanding for students in how they stand and balance on their boards and that we can create extremes aimed at riders from beginner to advanced and use them as development tools in our lessons