SKATE SESSION #1

For any of you who have looked at the weather for Stowe this week... we have our work cut out for us to find gaps and breaks in the rain to get our sessions in.  This morning we awoke to wet pavement, but high hopes that everything would dry up enough for us to hit the skates and work on our athletic stances.  While the ground never quite dried, we found our way to the mountain and accomplished what we set out to do anyways. 

The camp started in sneakers, focusing on perfecting our stances, and we hopefully hit home the importance of having a solid, centralized stance.  An athletic stance is important in every sport, and specifically in skiing when we are flying through the transition ready to pressure into our next turn.  Being balanced at that point is critical, as it allows you earlier edge angle and the ability to press the hip forward at the top of the turn.  Being out of balance at that point often leads to delayed pressure, mistakes that require major recoveries, and too much lateral movement. 

Mastering Basic Athletic Stance is not something we can accomplish in one day, so we will return to this as the week goes on, but we put ourselves in a lot of different positions jumping and hopping to reinforce the ability to get in the correct position when you need to. 

Transitioning to skates, we did more of the same:  finding the balance point, solidifying a good stance, and working into hops.  Naturally kids need us to take it a step further, so we threw down bamboo poles (they wont roll as much as plastic gate shafts), and low and high hurdles to "elevate" the challenge. 

Most of the camp found a new level of challenge and a new level of accomplishment today.  We aim to keep that theme consistent for the entire week!