On August 16, 2022, Bernard “Dadou” Mayer, the other Taos ski legend, passed away at age 82. He was preceded in his death by his other brother Jean aged 85, on October 16, 2020. Both were iconic characters at Taos Ski Valley, known as the New Mexico ski resort’s legendary instructors and innkeepers.
It’s mostly intangible and it deals with intensity, speed, pressure and feelings that often are uncommon, very difficult to precisely translate into words, and even more to be understood by the recipient. If the teacher doesn’t put him or herself inside their students ski boots, and won’t experiment with analogies, metaphors or other forms of simple, easy-to-relate examples, the instruction simply won’t go through.
The big challenge is that ski teaching technique is written and transmitted in cryptic, technical jargon that sounds often meaningless to the instructor and even more so to the student.
At the same time, the person learning how to ski has to deal with fear, a sensation of total lack of control and of finding themselves in a harsh, unfriendly environment, where it’s cold, other skiers are zooming from all directions, sometime looking as they will collide into them, while they’re prisoner of clumsy, hard to maneuver and heavy gear.
I would also suggest that ski instructors get their entire “spiel” or curriculum video-recorded, then sit down with potential students, communication experts and highly experienced instructors that can differentiate poor communication from excellent and develop a communication protocol from there that’s comfortable for the teacher to use.
What’s your take on using words that work for skiing?
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