Team Gravity is a fast paced fun program rooted in skiing all terrain and building skiing fundamentals. The philosophy of Team Gravity is to create a community of young athletes who love everything about skiing – the snow, the glide, the adventure, the camaraderie, the mountain, the weather. By basing our developmental program on having fun, being creative and teaching good fundamental skills, we hope to insure a healthy ski culture for all athletes and inspire some future top competitors. Our coaches are chosen for there strength in working with young athletes and for their infectious enthusiasm of winter sports.

 

Technical Goals   At the end of the program we hope that all kids have worked on the following technical focuses:

 

 

 

 

Balance:  Kids should have a balanced stance over the middle of their foot with light pressure on the front of the boot.  They should understand how skiing on the heel and the ball of the foot affects there turns and their body and know when to use these parts of the foot when necessary.

 

 

 

Ankle flex should be consistently emphasized in every session.  Skating on the way in to runs, uphill skating drills, flexing off of the side hill should always be encouraged. Skiing with straight, locked legs is a sign of fear or boots that are too big.

 

 

 

Parallel turns should develop spontaneously through fast skiing on easy terrain, skiing up and down side hills, and skiing in the forests. Games and drills should encourage physically matching the skis. The more fun and spontaneous this teaching is the more it will stay with the kids when they are free skiing.

 

 

 

Edging: Riding on a clean edge is one of the most exciting, fun feelings for kids and adults!  Kids should learn to ride the edge, not push it away to slow down. Long runs on easy terrain are great for finding the edge.

 

 

 

Edge control and Rotary: Learning how to tip up the edge for carved turns and release the edge for short pivot turns is critical.  In the moguls kids should learn to take off some edge and smear their turns. Too much edge in the moguls leads to defensive skiing and wedge turns. Traverses with edge release, hockey stops, and hockey slides are all fun exercises to develop edge control.

 

 

 

Teaching/Coaching Approach   The teaching of Gravity groups should be a blend of coaching style and  ski school style. This in essence is the key to the success of the program. The elementary school age kids are too young to have total freedom on the hill but experienced enough to not have to be controlled in a line all of the time.  The kids have been in school all week and on Saturday they want to have lots of fun and learn in the process. Verbal explanations and slower technical drills should be short and to the point.  Early in the lesson after a free ski warm up is usually when they are most receptive to technical discussion.  After this they should have time to practice on their own, have adventures and play games with lots of individual feed back.  At the end of a session the kid’s skiing should show that they have learned a lot. But in their mind they should think they have just been playing and having fun.

 

 

 

 

 

Terrain    Kids should ski on terrain that promotes fast, in control, offensive skiing. The most detrimental thing to a child developing good fundamental skiing is to consistently take them on difficult terrain or put them in a group where they are always trying to catch up. Adventures in to steep terrain should be short and ego building not long and arduous. The terrain in Telluride is very suitable for these kinds of adventures. Many parts of steep runs can be accessed from roads that let you sneak out of the hardest parts of the run.