Beginner conversion is what we do in the Midwest. If we don’t work hard at beginner conversion, we won’t survive. And when it comes to teaching people how to ski at Welch Village, we have a new driver for the beginner conversion vehicle: PMTS (Primary Movements Teaching System) Direct Parallel.

This past season, Welch Village became the only ski area in the world to have a licensed PMTS ski school. All ski lessons taught at Welch Village were based on PMTS. And we found that when it comes to teaching kids, adults, and yes, even racers how to ski, the PMTS system delivers impressive results.

PMTS stands for Primary Movements Teaching System. It’s a complete teaching system that does not use the wedge or snowplow to teach beginners. Instead, PMTS teaches guests expert ski movements on their very first day on the mountain. Guests are never taught something in PMTS that they have to unlearn later in their development.

PMTS is based upon skiing techniques used by World Cup racers, but it’s de-engineered all the way down to the beginner level. All the teaching in the system is movement-based. The movements are designed to help skiers get their skis on edge, to allow the skis’ sidecut to carve and turn the skis and to control speed. PMTS-trained instructors and coaches teach and demonstrate specific movements to the skier that will have a specific affect on their ski equipment in relation to the slope. They do not teach ideas, concepts, positions, or maneuvers.

This system suits our commitment to converting beginners. Welch Village defines “beginner conversion” as converting non-skiers to skiers for life. The resort’s business model focuses heavily on membership through aggressively-priced and attractive season pass options. We have always had a strong commitment to beginner conversion through ski school programs. And it works: a lot of the beginners who take ski lessons at Welch Village become members.

The challenge has been to stay focused on teaching beginners, but at the same time to build additional ski school business by convincing season pass holders to take lessons as well. Traditionally, selling intermediate to advanced lessons has been difficult. But PMTS has helped us with this audience, too.

There are instructors and race coaches all across the country who use PMTS methods in some form. What makes Welch Village’s approach unique, though, is our full commitment across the board by management. In fact, the decision to make the move to PMTS was initiated by ownership and management. In this case, getting that buy-in came easily: I am not only a company VP, but an instructor and head of the snow­sports school, and the grandson of Welch owner Leigh Nelson. It’s essential to have support at the top; big change does not happen without it.


MAKING THE LEAP
We did not make our decision to go “all in” with PMTS lightly. It was the result of several years of integrating elements of the system, and after a couple years of developing a relationship with PMTS founder Harald Harb himself. Instructors at Welch have read his books and watched his DVDs. But after we started attending the Harb ski camps in Colorado, the idea of using the full PMTS system at the ski area really gathered steam.

In April 2012, four Welch instructors, including me, earned our green level accreditation (the second of four levels). During that week, we also pondered how to adopt the PMTS approach. Should we phase it in? Make it a special program? Eventually, we decided to go all in. The PMTS accreditation process was so deeply meaningful and educational that we felt confident this would work. We knew that the PMTS system of teaching would be much more effective than traditional methods, and felt we owed it to our guests to give them the best teaching product possible as quickly as possible.

Business differentiation was a part of the decision, too. We thought it would be easier to communicate to our market that all ski lessons would be taught with PMTS, not just some.

Implementation of the change was swift. Last November, a collection of instructors and race coaches began their season training in Colorado at the Harb Ski Systems Tech Camp, and in December, Harb and his V.P., Diana Rogers, held a two-day training event for all race coaches at Welch Village.

The biggest challenge was how to train all instructors and coaches while at the same time teaching paying guests. With just four PMTS accredited instructors/trainers, training resources were spread thin.

The four accredited instructors began the training process by doing indoor, dryland training with about a dozen instructors in October. We were able to take this core group of staff through most of the beginner lesson sequence in our carpeted main chalet building. As soon as we had snow on the ground and one trail open, we completed the rest of the beginner progression.

Days later, the ski area opened for the season and guests were asking for lessons. We were forced to “triage” our training resources as best we could. The instructors who picked up the new technique fastest started teaching immediately. When we could, we had an accredited instructor teach the lesson with others shadowing, or the accredited instructor would observe others’ teaching and give feedback. It wasn’t perfect, but it was exciting, rewarding, terrifying, and educational all at the same time.

The training challenge with the PMTS system is that the primary movements approach is sometimes in direct contrast to the methods with which most (if not all) instructors and coaches were taught to ski themselves, and also in contrast to how they have been coaching and instructing skiing for many years. It took about two to three weekends of training before a core group of instructors and coaches were trained to a degree where they could teach lessons. We then chipped away at the rest of the staff.

There has been very little resistance within the ski school staff, a bit more from seasoned race coaches. It takes time for even the most experienced coaches and instructors to admit that this system is truly different. However, once they experience the changes in their own skiing, they’re hooked. That experience in feeling and seeing changes in their own skiing creates a hunger to see those same changes in their students.


HOW PMTS WORKS
With PMTS, more time in a beginner lesson is spent at the start of the lesson on flat and gentle terrain, as guests get comfortable tipping onto their edges, and stepping from ski to ski while maintaining their balance. Beginners are taught to tip their feet, even before they put skis on; once clipped in, this tipping movement causes the skis to tip onto their edges.

Instructors then slowly introduce the fallline to the student. Speed is not controlled through gliding or breaking wedge movements, but by tipping and stepping movements across the fall line and away from the fall line. When the guest is ready, the instructor introduces steps through the fall line and, eventually, linked direction changes in the fall line, based on the movement of tipping the feet, and the skis, on edge.

All movements are taught to achieve or create balance. Students gain a better awareness of how to use their skis as tools, instead of resisting what the side-cut of a shaped ski is intended to do.

Beginners of all ages use poles right from the start, which aids in balance and helps decrease the level of anxiety in the guest. Yes, even 4-year-olds in children’s programs are given ski poles!

Beginners begin turning through stepping in about an hour and a half, on average. Kids are typically making parallel turns after two hours. Some students begin turning without stepping in less time. Students who have never seen a wedge usually progress faster because they don’t have that “crutch” to fall back on. Students that come to lessons already in a wedge are taken through a similar series of movements; their wedge eventually disappears.

Because PMTS involves a series of tipping and balancing movements that take some time to master, we extended our standard one-hour beginner lesson to 1.5 hours; next season, the standard time will be 2 hours for all beginners.

The rate of progression by a beginner student depends on your perspective. I don’t know if showing someone how to wedge down the hill in an hour can be considered “skiing.” What will they do next? My guess is that they will wedge down a steeper hill. With PMTS, beginners are making parallel turns in one day, and they have the basic balance skills to progress to higher levels quickly.


DIFFERENT IS BETTER
By teaching specific movements to my students based upon their motivations for learning, the PMTS system allows me to make significant changes in my student’s skiing every lesson. That’s how I measure success in this first year. I know that with every lesson group I take, no matter what type of movements I see from my students during the first run and no matter what my student’s motivations are, I am going to change their skiing that day.

The learning experience with PMTS in all types of lessons is unmatched compared to traditional ski instruction. For the properly trained PMTS instructor, there is a method to help any guest with any ski movement at all times. A PMTS instructor also has the ability to teach multiple ability levels at once. That alone ensures a better learning experience for all guests in the group.

There is also a commitment from supervising instructors and training staff to implement and maintain the same consistent teaching system across all ski school and race programs. At Welch, many guests begin their ski life at the kid’s ski school and progress through a variety of programs, ending up in developmental race programs and sometimes USSA-level alpine racing programs. With a fully committed staff and consistent teaching system at all levels, PMTS provides a common language and curriculum for Welch Village guests from one year to the next, and from one program to the next.


THE RESULTS ARE IN
After just one year, we don’t have a lot of quantifiable data to prove a rapid increase in beginner conversion. But it’s obvious to us that we are seeing more repeat lesson business, and we are getting a wider range of lesson guests.

My biggest goal is to be the ski area that can teach kids to ski parallel faster than any other ski area. This was and still is a lofty goal. However, we have seen countless examples that this is possible, and will soon be a reality.

We are getting reactions from parents that we have not seen before. Their reaction when they see parallel turns in two hours looks and sounds different.

As we gained experience with PMTS, we began to use brushy gates from the race program in teaching kids. I can see this feeding our junior race program. The kids love it, and it helps them pick up the movements they use to ski. This is also pretty popular with parents when they see their kid’s “racing” on the first day.

We are seeing guests who take multiple lessons from multiple lesson programs. We are getting more requests for higher-yielding private lessons, to the point where we can’t keep up with demand. We are getting requests from people who have read Harb’s books and watched his DVDs. Most never had the chance to go to one of his camps in Colorado but deeply want to see PMTS content brought to life on snow.

Intermediate to advanced students learn to make carved turns much faster than through traditional methods. The same is true in racing. With proper PMTS coaching, racers progress faster than with traditional teaching. PMTS allows racers to carve higher in the arc. Carving is faster than skidding in the top of the turn, and racers like that!

The biggest successes in this first year came through the three-week session and Mountain Clinic learning programs. Both programs enable the instructors to see their students for more than one day, and for several hours at a time.

The Mountain Clinic program is aimed at intermediate to advanced level skiers. During the four-hour weekend clinic, guests choose the focus of the lesson based on their motivations and goals. The clinic is taught with the PMTS Essentials, and video analysis is incorporated as well.

These types of lesson programs give the PMTS system a larger framework of time, which produces significant changes in the guest’s skiing. These changes are starting to produce more repeat business in the ski school, and starting a trend of seeing familiar faces across several lesson programs.

Meeting demand proved to be one of the biggest challenges. Most of our staff was trained fairly well at teaching beginners and low intermediates with PMTS movements. However, we had to constantly turn down higher-level lessons because we just didn’t have the qualified bodies. We’ll correct that for next season.


THE TRAIL AHEAD
Heading into the 2013-14 season, we are planning more extensive training for all our instructors and coaches. Some are already making plans to start their season at Harb Tech Camp in Colorado in November. We are planning to arrange annual accreditation events, race camps, and instructor training events. In fact, we hope to offer PMTS training to non-Welch Village instructors and coaches from across the Midwest in the near future.

In all sports, especially skiing with the advancements in equipment technology, the willingness and ability to learn are vital. Learning never stops. Through the PMTS system, Welch Village instructors and coaches, already accomplished skiers themselves, have learned (some would say they have been forced) to re-invent their own skiing and coaching through learning. This commitment to learning on the part of the teacher is carrying through to a bigger commitment to learning on the part of the students. The simple goal is to turn every student into a skier for life.