As a ski instructor who loves to teach kids, I think ski lessons are a great place for kids to learn to ski or improve their skills.

But perhaps lessons aren’t accessible to your family, or maybe you’re wondering what to do when you ski with your child outside of lessons.

That’s the point of this post. If you’ve read my other posts aimed at adults, you’ll find that what I talk about here is very different, and that’s because kids – especially young kids – are very different in how they learn than adults. Spending time on anything beyond basic verbal descriptions is largely a waste of time.

I’ll state up front that there are different philosophies on ski instruction. I largely align with the current approach used by PSIA, but other instructors feel differently, and there are different ways to reach the same goal.

Safety –> Fun –> Learning

My three priorities when teaching anybody are safety first, then fun, and finally learning.

The fun part is especially important – the last thing that skiing parents want is a kid who can ski but hates to do it.

And some days, fun means taking 20 minutes to stop by the side of a run and play in the snow.

Slope selection

What we are looking for is a slope that keeps the child interested at their current level of skill *and* allows them to ski with appropriate technique.

The number 1 issue I see with parents and their kids is improper terrain selection, and it is virtually always slopes that are too steep. This has two different results:

In some skiers, it results in high levels of anxiety, and the child melts down and/or skis very slowly. They are not having fun.

In other skiers, they develop a “super-wedge” technique that I’ll talk about later. It gets them down the hill – though often too fast and with little control – but it’s a dead-end when it comes to technique, and it’s challenging to get that skier back on a progression to parallel skiing.

Drills, coaching, and mileage

When I learned to ski as an adult, we did a lot of drills in our lessons. And as a ski instructor, we do a lot of drills in our training.

Specific drills definitely have their place, but they are boring (not fun) and kids don’t want to spend much time standing around listen to adults tell them what to do. They get a bunch of that already.

And until you get to older kids – say 9 years and older – they aren’t great at translating instruction into doing specific things with their bodies, so you can spend a lot of time talking without much benefit. This is also true with older kids and adults.

I definitely do drills in my classes, but I spend very little time talking. My agreement with my classes is that if they pay attention when I am talking we will spend most of our time skiing.

I spend a fair bit of time coaching, which is 1:1 feedback with a specific skier about what I would like to do. Proper coaching is *one thing* that I want them to keep in mind – “Steve, your skiing looks nice. Can you make wider turns that take longer instead of the short ones you are doing?”. And there might be a demo to show what I’m looking for.

Coaching does *not* consist of a list of things that I want them to do better on. I may see 5 things, but nobody can focus on 5 things, so I give them the one thing I think is most important.

If we are working on a drill, my comments focus only on what we are trying to do on the drill. It’s common for students to regress in some other area of their skiing when they are focusing on something new, and me commenting on that is not constructive.

Finally, mileage is just skiing. Everybody needs repetition to impress new ways of moving into their neuromuscular pathways, and that is what mileage does. If you do nothing else, just skiing with your kids on terrain that is appropriate and comfortable for them will yield large improvements in performance over time. And it’s fun.

Philosophically, my goal is to put students in a situation where they can try different things and have the chance to experience success in the form of more efficient movements. Drills let them try new things, coaching helps guide them in the proper direction, and mileage cements the new movements into their bodies.

Let the mountain do the teaching

In the ski instructor world there’s a term known as “terrain-based learning”, which means letting the mountain do the teaching.

Some ski areas have beginner areas that are specifically designed for this – their beginner areas have sections with banked turns that curve back and forth. Or they have sections with small bumps.  Anything like this is great as they will move beginners towards the movements we want to see naturally, and its fun to ski on. Win/Win.

Trails

Most ski areas also have a variety of short little trails of varying difficulty. These are great assuming they are appropriate in difficulty for the skier. I can do a lot of drills working on balance with my kids, or I can let them ski short trails and they will quickly learn that a) leaning back does not work and b) balance is dynamic and constantly changing.

A few tips on trails:

1. The difficulty of trails varies drastically depending on snow quality. A trail that is fine for a experienced beginner with fresh snow may be difficult for a good intermediate with hard snow.
2. The majority of trails are never groomed.
3. Coach your kids to “pick a slow speed”, especially if it’s their first time on a trail.
4. If you ski trails with your kids – and it’s good for your skiing as well – note that most trails are made by kids with 3 foot skis and your longer skis may not fit well. Pick a good speed, and use the sides to scrub off speed.
5. Coach your kids to move off to the side if they need to stop, as following skiers may not be able to see ahead.
6. It is vitally important that kids yell “Whee!” when they are going through sections like this.

Bumps

It’s unlikely that your kids are ready for runs that are fully bumped out. But unless you tell them, kids don’t know that bumps are supposed to be hard, and you can often find short areas next to groomed runs with small bumps that you can play on. These, like trails, are great, and if they aren’t, it’s easy to ski back to the groomed run.

Adventures off the groomed

My classes spend a lot of times on “adventures”. For beginners, it might just be the terrain-based learning that my ski area builds or very short trails, but once they’re intermediates we will be spending time off the groomed if the snow is good enough. It’s important to ramp these up slowly – kids absolutely love to be off in the snow away from the groomers even if they have to work hard and fall down more, but they take a lot of effort physically, especially for less skilled skiers and they may get tired out. Choose paths that allow an early exit if it’s too hard for them for any reason, and you may need to ration the number of adventures you go on.

Pay real attention to where you are and what the options are. You will often have the opportunity to traverse back and forth and keep the slope low, much lower than it would be if you went straight down the hill.

Also note that sometimes you are going to make poor choices. If it turns into a big slog, apologize to the kids for taking them on it.

Gliding wedge versus braking wedge

Look this instructor training video:

This is a gliding wedge turn, and this is what we teach beginners. The big points are:

1. The skier is standing up tall
2. The skis are almost flat on the snow; there is very little edge angle
3. The skis are mostly turned by twisting the feet.
4. The turns are slow and progressive
5. The wedge – or “pizza” – is small. I’m looking for what we call a “functional wedge” – it’s big enough that the skier is able to effectively make turns but not bigger.
6. The wedge is initiated by turning the feet.

Here’s what we used to teach in the old days. It’s what I would call a “snow plow” or “braking wedge”.

In this wedge, the heels are pushed far apart and this shifts the skier’s weight backwards. Note that the skis are not flat; they have significant edge angle.

The problem with this approach is that when we try to move towards parallel skiing, we run into a problem. On a turn, we can’t get the inside ski parallel with the outside ski because it’s on the opposite edge. This is especially pronounced on steeper slopes, and exactly what we see on skiers that have been skiing wedge turns on slopes that are too hard for them.

This is a great diagnostic to determine whether the terrain is okay for your child. If they are in a gliding wedge and their wedge is small, they are fine; they will naturally progress toward a more parallel turn over time.

If you take them somewhere harder and they flip over to a braking wedge, that means you should move back to an easier slope.

If your kids are skiing trails or other adventure terrain, you may see a braking wedge pop up now and then. That’s okay if they’re using it to slow down, but if it persists and especially if it shows up back on the groomed, head for easier terrain. You also might see it pop up in lift lines, and that’s okay as well.

If we don’t use a braking wedge to slow down, we need another technique, and that is “turn to stop”. It will generally take a bit of reinforcement to get that to always happen.

Turn shape

Our goal is for skiers to develop nice big “S shaped” turns, but many young kids will ski partial turns – just into and out of the fall line. The bigger slower turns will really help with technique.

The best way to do this is to ask them to ski in your tracks – do “follow the leader” – as you ski the kinds of turns you want to see.

A sample beginning progression

There is no one single progression that people use to learn to ski, but this is a common one:

1. Walk around a flat area in ski boots
2. Walk around a flat area with one ski on. Circles are good, figure 8s are good.
3. The same with the other ski on.
4. The same with both skis on.

Make sure to spend enough time on this; skipping ahead to a later step before the child is ready for it will just slow down their overall progression.

1. Straight run on skis on the flattest slope that allows them to slide, preferably one with an upslope or flat part so they can just come to a stop. Walk back up to the starting point.
2. Maybe introduce a small gliding wedge and see if they can turn.

After this, most kids are usually ready for the magic carpet if your ski area has one. Have them watch other people riding, tell them they will just need to shuffle forward, stand still while it’s taking them up, and then shuffle off at the top and wait for you.

For the first time, pick the absolutely easiest way down. This is typically off to the side to a flatter slope and then that flatter slope down.

This is where we start working on turning; the coaching that I like is to twist their feet and point them in the direction they want to turn. Some kids like the idea of having flashlights on their knees (or lasers) that point where they want to go, some kids respond well to you being on the snow and coaching them to come to you. You will not get linked turns at the beginning – at this point, *any* turns are great, and turns to a stop are extra great.

Note that those first runs are new and different and can produce a fair bit of apprehension, so don’t expect much performance until they get used to doing it.

It’s hard to spend too much time in this environment; your endpoint is looking for linked turns in control.

Pro tip: take off your skis and just walk around in your ski boots. Some instructors just wear their snow boots during this phase as they’re more comfortable than ski boots.

Other sports & skiing

Sports in general are good training for skiing. The one sport that transfers the best to skiing is skating with either inline skates or ice skates, as the turning technique is similar.

Clothing

Good clothes really help, but choose something appropriate for the weather of the day. My students are much more likely to be too hot than too cold, so stuff that can unzip is good. And no hats under their helmets.

Leashes

Leashes are a way for parents to take their children to places that they don’t have the skills to ski on by themselves. I do not recommend them. I also don’t recommend skiing with children between your skis; it’s not good from a skills perspective and it’s easy to get hurt if one of you falls.

Online Resources

Deb Armstrong

SKNG Ski School