It can be done easily. It doesn’t take magical students or instructors. All it takes is PMTS.
The direct-parallel Primary Movements Teaching System (PMTS) teaches carved turns from the moment skiers hit the snow. The key primary movement is tipping the inside foot to the little-toe side. This movement forces a series of balancing movements that sweep up from the feet, through the knees, waist, torso and shoulders, to create angulation. This helps beginners make edged, carved turns right from the start.
“The best thing is, since beginners are already skiing parallel, they don’t have to unlearn the wedge to make parallel turns,” SolVista ski school supervisor John Raney told me. “Once they learn the PMTS technique, they can use it right through bumps.”
SolVista was one of the first areas to adopt PMTS, so I visited in early February to see the program in action. I joined a group of four beginners: Colorado locals Dwayne Graves, 20, his wife Jenelle, 19, his sister Bethany, 18, and Sharon Robinson, a 62-year-old from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For Sharon and Jenelle, this was their first day ever on skis. For Dwayne and Bethany, this was their second day ever—both had had terrible experiences with friends on their first (and only) day a few years ago. All four were taking two-day lessons.
Day One: Green Talent
We met instructor Uwe Bahlen at 9:40 a.m. He briefly explained the tipping idea, and promised to have us skiing from the top before day’s end if the weather held. Then, before we put on our skis, he instructed us to shuffle along behind him, taking small steps and tipping our boots onto the little-toe edge, leading with the inside foot. After a few minutes, we put on one ski and trudged around some more. Next, Uwe delivered a three-minute explanation of how skis, boots, and bindings work. We clicked in and practiced tipping to the little-toe edge as we stood stationary on level ground. Then we walked around on our skis to get a feel for them.
Finally, after sidestepping about 15 feet up the slightest of inclines, we made one turn, moving at a slow walk, by stepping around the turn—leading with the inside foot. After a few of these turns, we started down the fall line and made stepping garlands out of the fall line—a half-turn. Next, we stepped into the garland, then completed it by tipping. Gradually, we did less and less stepping, and more tipping/edging/carving.
All of this took place on a “hill” 50 feet long, with perhaps a three-foot vertical drop. The slope was served by a carpet lift perhaps 30 feet long.
Shortly before noon, we graduated to the big learning hill, which is about 300 feet long, about twice as wide, and served by a double chair. The group was a little nervous about riding the chair, but Uwe told them what to expect as they loaded and unloaded, and he made it all sound simple. “How do we get out of the way of the chair at the top?” one skier asked, voicing the concern the others share. Uwe explained the unloading ramp, and told them not to worry—he would coach them individually at the top. By the second run, everybody had it down.
Then we began to really ski. Uwe led us through the same movements we did earlier, starting with step garlands. The group quickly progressed to complete turns. Because the slope was so gentle and so wide, speed never became an issue. None of the beginners hesitated as they turned into and eventually across the fall line; they all maintained their tipped, edged posture with skis parallel (mostly, anyway). With every run, the beginners grew more confident. On her second run, Bethany began making linked, parallel carved turns. The others were just about there, too.
After lunch, practice continued on the big hill. Uwe worked with Dwayne, Bethany, and Jenelle to remove a slight wedge from their repertoire by having them lift the inside ski as they tipped it, and tap it back to the snow.
Sharon, one of the two true beginners and the most cautious of the group, was making pure carved, parallel turns.
She never slipped into a wedge because she didn’t know how.
Sharon quit for the day at 2 p.m.; her boots were hurting her. By three, the others were confidently skiing laps as Uwe took turns working one-on-one with them. They were technically ready to make the descent from the top, just as Uwe had said they would be.
But the sky had clouded over, and the light had gone flat. Uwe told his skiers that, since they were all coming back the next day, they wouldn’t go to the top. In these conditions, he said, it might be more than they could comfortably handle, and he didn’t want to end the day on a downer. He promised that they would ski from the top before noon the next day.
How the Beginners Felt
How did they feel about the first day?
“I was dreading this,” Bethany admitted. “But now I’m really glad I came. This was much more fun than my first time on skis. I enjoyed the feeling of control. This kind of experience makes me want to come back.”
“It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be,” said Jenelle. “I thought it would be harder.”
All agreed that it was easy to feel the cause and effect relationship between tipping and carving. “I really liked the idea of turning over the little toe,” Bethany said.
Second Day Blues
I was back in my SAM office the next day, but talked to each member of the group a few days later.
All except Sharon had gone to the top of SolVista’s East Mountain in the morning. (Sharon was in a different class the next day, and went to the top in the afternoon.) “The first time down was really fun,” said Jenelle. “Now, I just need practice. It was steeper, but you just have to do more turns and control your speed more. But nothing was really different.”
“I felt more confident,” Dwayne said. “It was pretty easy once we got back into the flow of what we were doing the first day. We were taught how to make wider and shorter paths, and it became easier.
“The cool thing was that, after two days, I was tired physically, but I wasn’t sore at all,” he added. After his first experience a few years ago, he had ached all over. “I think it was due to the way they were teaching us [direct parallel, rather than the wedge].”
No Blues on the Blues
“The first time I went down the blue run it sort of freaked me out,” said Jenelle. “It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to handle it, I just had to calm myself down. As I kept going down I felt better and better. You get up a lot of speed even if you do a lot of turns, the trees come up really fast.”
“I had no problem making the transition to steeper slopes,” said Dwayne. “Stu [the instructor] showed us how to make short turns; then we saw it wasn’t such a big deal, and that you had to dig your edges in more. Being able to ski [parallel] was so much easier. There is no comparison to skiing in a wedge.”
Bethany was even more jazzed. “Going to the top, I was really excited,” she said. “It’s a lot steeper than what we were used to, but I didn’t find it difficult at all. You’re going faster but you still use everything you learned at the bottom. It wasn’t difficult to control your speed. I felt very confident, and that was an amazing feeling.
“My goal was to ski the black diamond, but Stu said I should just practice on the blues first.”
And what about 62-year-old Sharon? “I made a lot more progress on the second day,” she said. “I learned to ski and stop, but I can’t hockey-stop very well yet. I did all the greens and some of the blues. I had a great time.”
Sharon skied for two more days with her significant other and then a third day by herself, mostly on the greens. Would she go again? “We bought a timeshare, and we’ll be back next February,” she said.
The Graves returned much sooner—they were back for another weekend in February.
Inside SolVista’s PMTS Program
SolVista adopted the direct-parallel Primary Movements Teaching System (PMTS) about five years ago. “It’s very easy to teach with this system,” said ski school director Mike Gaddy, a PSIA member who has also used traditional teaching methods, “especially for instructors who have experience with more traditional teaching systems.” Veteran instructors need only add a few new movement patterns to their repertoire, Gaddy said, and focus on teaching movements, not theories that have to be translated into movements.
Even rookie instructors adopt PMTS quickly. SolVista hires a lot of older, retired folks as instructors—”we don’t have the hot rod ski school image,” Gaddy said—and they are a perfect fit. “They are able to create a rapid progression and a great experience for the guest,” he said. After two days of training and two days of shadowing a veteran instructor, newcomers get their own classes.
“You just have to believe in the skis. They’ll do the job every time if you just tip your foot,” added ski school supervisor John Raney.
SolVista uses the PMTS method with everyone except the youngest kids, and offered two beginner’s packages this year. The one-day Guaranteed Start to Ski (GSTS) package, $90 for lifts/lesson/rental, has been the area’s long-time offer. The all-day lesson promises that a beginner will be able to ski down from the summit, a 1,000-foot vertical, on a green trail.
Their newest program didn’t have an official name; the staff referred to it as AFFA (Almost Free For Anyone). From January 6 through February 14, it offered a two-day lift/lesson/rental package for $89—and a free season’s pass at the program’s conclusion. The area sold about 350 of these packages. “We’re confident that we can hook ’em in two days and that they will tell other people,” said Gaddy.
Success with both programs is very high. Gaddy said that complaints about the quality of the lessons “have almost disappeared.”
To learn more about PMTS, call Mike or John at (970) 887-5128, or turn to www.pmts.org.
