Jonathan Ballou Interview

Hello and welcome to the Global Skiing Podcast. Today I'm chatting with Jonathan Ballou from the PSIA. So Jonathan Ballou has 33 seasons of ski instruction under his belt, including working at various resorts in the USA and New Zealand. He is the training manager for the Ski and Snowboard Schools of Aspen and Snowmass, is an examiner and Alpine Committee member for the PSIA and is also a PSIA demo team member. Jonathan also works for the Rookie Academy training new instructors in New Zealand. So lots of experience, lots of certifications. Have I missed anything there, Jonathan?

Oh, this last season my title moved from training manager to training director.

Training director.

And I think I'm probably closer to 40 seasons right now.

Okay, pretty— I think some of the documentation on the PSI website's a few years old.

Yeah, that's—

it's pretty close.

Lots of seasons, a whole bunch. Yeah, excellent. Well, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me here.

So Jonathan, I want to start out, um, as with everyone else, and just get a bit of a background on you. Um, where did it all begin? Where did skiing and ski instruction begin for you?

Oh, I was about 5, skiing that is. My family clipped a coupon out of the local newspaper in Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, out of the Ann Arbor News that was a learn to ski as a family special. And so none of us had ever, we'd all cross-country skied. My parents were avid cross-country skiers and we went to this tiny little hill, which is all of 70 meters vertical with all man-made snow. In fact, it was called the snowmaking capital of the Midwest, Mount Brighton, Michigan, made famous by Aspen Extreme. It's the place that they start out there. Right. So we went skiing there and we went there every Saturday and Sunday and took lessons. I was an ice skater and a hockey player, as is your birthright in Michigan, and skiing was just way more fun. From there, I was always in ski school, always took lessons, raced a little bit, but wasn't particularly fast. Instruction, on the other hand, that came when I was 14— no, I'm sorry, 13. I was in my health and human studies class in middle school, my last year of middle school before high school, and I had a very influential teacher in my life, a gentleman named Al Anstead. Who has just stopped in his late 80s, just stopped teaching in the last 5 years, stopped teaching at Vail and Beaver Creek. But at the time, he was the race director at Mount Brighton. I remember very vividly one day in health class, he starts talking about skiing and teaching skiing. And I was not a very good but very avid skier, just absolutely loved it as an adolescent. Male, and I sat after class and talked to him about it. We spent a fair amount of time talking about it, and then I'd go up with the middle school, um, ski club and ski with him. And he got me my first job when I was 14 teaching skiing, and that changed my life, or set me on the path that I'm on.

Okay, so did you come from Any other sort of background? Were you studying to be a scientist or anything else?

My formal education is in music. I went to a high school where I could specialize in various things. It was kind of tied to— it was an open school where you could work with the university or various other community outreach things, and I ended up going into music from that. I went to University of Michigan School of Music for a few years.

Okay. But now, full-time ski instructing, training?

That's all I do. All year round? That is my year-round income, my job, my passion, my life. I dabbled with a few other things. I was a hotel manager for a while. I was a food and beverage person. I'm a certified sommelier. Aspiring but not very successful chef. But every time I've walked away from skiing to do something else, I have— something's missing, so I come back.

Good message, I guess, to send out to some people, you know, that you can actually make it as a ski instructor.

You can.

It's not easy.

I think with anything in life, if you're going to choose to do only what it is that you wish to do for a living, you have to do a tremendous amount of it, which is okay because that's what you want to do. Hence all the various associations I'm tied to and different groups I'm tied to. Yep.

And so, uh, so now how much of your time would you say is spent training instructors, so on that side of things, as opposed to skiing with the public?

90/10.

90/10, yeah.

At this point in my life.

Yeah.

Between, I mean, in Aspen, we're a very large school. We're 1,340 with admin staff in that range, between 1,300 and 1,340 instructors. And my job as director of training is to run the curriculum. And then I have a staff of 14 admins, they're lead trainers, I should say, admin would be an insulting title. I apologize to any of you who are listening to that. Um, uh, very talented lead trainers who are current or ex-demo team members, senior examiners, or highly qualified trainers who run another staff of about 85 trainers who train the rest of our staff. And then similarly with PSIA, I do that. And then in New Zealand, with between the Rookie Academy and the NZSIA as the ed coordinator, It's definitely training instructors is my, uh, is my passion and my, my, uh, and what I, what I spend most of my time doing. As most ski school managers, when it gets busy over Christmas and the holidays, I can either go back to managing or I can go back to teaching. With my current role, it makes more sense to go back to teaching, and I have some clients that I love dearly that I would never want to part with.

Right.

So I I noticed, did a bit of research, so you were involved in Glenn Plake's training as becoming a PSIA member, is this right?

Where did you find that? Oh my God. Is it true? Yeah, I did a little bit of work with him.

He and his wife Kimberly are just amazing people.

Yeah, we met them very briefly in San Anton and he was, you know, for such a you know, well-renowned guy. He had all the time in the world to chat with us and, you know, talked about Australia a little bit. So yeah, really cool guy.

That man has been, uh, I would put him up as, as from, from the, from the, the ski legends or icons out there. He's definitely the most influential person in my life as far as skiing goes. He's somebody I, I always had to have when I was a kid. I had to have the equipment that he was on, which I couldn't afford, but I tried to find it, right?

It was, uh, just watching him ski was just his freedom, his accuracy was just inspirational.

Yeah, I attribute a lot of my abilities to a series of articles that he did, um, in Ski Magazine in the early '90s called, uh, uh, Plake Tricks. It was a whole bunch of ballet things and Royal Christie's and different kind of mogul tricks that he had. And every time would come out, I would spend— this is my first year instructing first few years instructing, I would spend my, my evening training sessions for myself learning these things. And just outstanding. Yeah, but yeah, I did have the opportunity in, uh, his Level 1. Him and his wife Kimberly, uh, they did a Level 1 in PSIA Rocky Mountain, and I had the great pleasure of working with both of them on their indoor session. And we've talked a number of times since then. Then I was working with Glenn more so in his skiing examination in the East Coast, and then a bit of training with both of them before he went through his teaching examination. And then I was one of Kimberly's trainers and examiners for her Level 3 teaching certification last year, and they're just a wonderful couple.

Excellent. And so was— do you know what his motivation was to go through the certification pathway?

He'd be the best person to ask about that.

He was enjoying the process though?

From what I can tell, absolutely. I mean, Glen is a consummate professional.

Yeah.

Professional and a rebel, wonderful combination for— especially for our industry and teaching other people about the sport that he loves so much seems to be— is something that really motivates him. So being involved as a spokesperson for teaching skiing— how he put it to me was, uh, he became a spokesperson for the ski industry as far as the educational side of things go. He was nominated to be that at one point. And what he said to me— and I might be misquoting this a little bit— but what he said to me is, if he's going to be that, then he has to be qualified.

Yep.

So, that's just the mark of a professional.

Yep. Excellent. So, with all the instructor training you do, what skills do you find keep kind of cropping up, popping up, and seem to be the most difficult to, I guess, coach and teach, or people to comprehend, or are there a couple?

Oh, darn good question. What are the most difficult skills to coach and teach?

Um, like what's something, you know, you do, you're out, you're out in a training session, probably done a few this week, and you know, you're like, yep, it's still these people haven't got the idea of, you know, where to stand or how to edge or whatever it is. What do you think is the one that really you found just personally just keeps cropping up?

How to learn.

Aha, excellent. Do you want to explain that a little further?

Not really, it's really difficult. I have no desire to explain that at all. No, how to learn, you know, the basic— I say this a lot to my people, people I work with, that skiing should be exceptionally simple. And like most things in life that are really simple, really freaking difficult. And I firmly believe that it— skiing is— it doesn't take that much. You put yourself in an athletic position that has strong core and neutral, you'll get your body to be able to move in 3 planes so you can balance against the outside ski and manage it through an arc while you go down a hill. It's not that hard. Yeah, there's a lot of complexities there. But it's not that— it doesn't have to be that complicated. But to actually execute all those, to develop the neuromuscular pathways, to get things to fire appropriately, to get the experience to see the line that we need to take and the clarity of what our outcome is, it takes a lot of work. And I also firmly believe it's not something that a teacher can give you. It's something that you have to experience. It's heuristics, right? You have to develop it through time, trial, and error. And you got to make a lot of mistakes. And a lot of people have a very hard— well, not a lot of people. Everybody has a really hard time dealing with that idea of, I have to experience and make mistakes to create a learning environment. And how to learn is consistently the hardest thing. I gave a session earlier this week. Or I helped somebody. A great friend of mine, Rick Vettermeyer, one of my mentors, he was giving a session for Level 2 instructors, and we met up and spoke with them for a while. And one of the things that I said— asked them is— we were— it was a Level 2 session specifically on skiing bumps, and I asked the group how much time they spent skiing bumps. It was mixed answers as to how much time it was. One of the answers—

one of the statements that I put back was, there is one thing that all great bump skiers have in common: they all ski a lot of bumps. You have to spend time doing that.

And the message behind that, what we'd get—

I got into further, was that these training sessions that we go to, these sessions aren't, aren't where we learn to ski better. It's where we take away ideas that we're going to go develop.

On our own so we can learn to ski better. The improvement doesn't happen while we're being taught.

The improvement happens while we practice what we're being taught and while we trial and error.

And that, to me, understanding that is the most difficult thing for most people.

Yeah. Have you got like a personal example of something over the 40-odd seasons you've, um, been teaching of where you personally can testify to that? You know, perhaps there was an element of seeing, you know, bumps. Maybe it might have been bumps, maybe it was or was it just some other skill you just found really, really difficult and it was this long process or whatever it was that actually got you there?

I can't say that I ever got there, but I can say there's plenty of things that have been difficult. I'll say this, that an example is I've been wrong about most things most of my career, and I'm still wrong about them. I'm more right than I used to be, but I'm only more right because of how wrong I was.

Yep, yep, very good answer.

I can apply that to absolutely every single thing that I think about in skiing. A lot of people think that would come to me and say that my understanding biomechanics of skiing is pretty strong.

Yeah, it's only pretty strong because of how wrong I was in my exploration process.

I made enough mistakes and had to correct the mistakes, trial and error, you know, basic scientific method. I'm gonna take this as an assumption, I'm gonna try it, yep, weigh the data. Okay, that worked, that didn't work. Sometimes things that work, they— you try them for a little longer and then eventually they don't work. But during the time that they are working, they're your belief system.

Yep.

I remember one time, I, uh, I mean, I was in my early 20s and I went to a presentation and somebody started talking to me about the virtues of an upright stance and skeletal alignment versus muscular alignment, which obviously it's a balance, right? We work on a combination of soft tissue and hard tissue.

So, I took that idea in my early 20s and said, "Well, then I'm going to straighten my boots out." So, I pulled the rivets out, straightened my boots out.

This lasted a few months before I realized, "Well, that's a really bad idea." Straightened everything out, stood over the heel, certain things worked really well. It was incredibly strong, but I couldn't move. I couldn't move the front, make the front of the ski work. But it took months of playing with that to realize how bad an idea that actually was. This is also pre-shaped skis, so I didn't have the benefits of instant response of a carved turn.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

But going through that, if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't understand how important it actually is to ski with the tib anterior as engaged as it needs to be and with the, the amount of ankle flexion that's really required for great skiing. If I hadn't gone through that other end of the spectrum, it'd be a very superficial understanding.

Yep, yep.

I would have only gotten that from somebody else, whereas my experience, I can tell you exactly why that— why, why we need that.

Absolutely. Yeah, that just reminds me Chatting with Paul Lorenz the other week, he— I guess a trait I see in him is he's always experimenting with the edges of, you know, a concept or the edge of ability in terms of, you know, maybe lots of inclination in a turn with very little angulation and lots of angulation, no inclination. And we'll do that for months until, you know, like you said, like research, you gather the data and go, right, well, it works for these kind of reasons and it doesn't work for this reason. And you take what works and move on and go to your next experiment.

It's testing the edge of it, right? It's, uh, you find, you find if I was in a similar place a number of years ago where all I wanted to do was incline as much as I could, like we, like many of us were a number of years ago.

Yep.

And, um, you hit your inside arm against the ground enough times and you, or lose the outside ski and find out how important it is to stand on the outside one. But there is the, the balance of, uh, there's a positive with that negative. That's one of the things I like about Paul's skiing so much. I mean, he's a beautiful skier, and you can see that he's explored— he's so accurate with how he gets to his outside foot, how he manages an arc, that he's obviously experimented with a lot of different ways to do it.

Yeah, absolutely. And so I guess, um, so the most difficult skill to acquire, you're saying, is the learning. Do you use any— are there any tools, things you use to be a better learner, such as video, a training partner, that sort of like— do you think there's really a lot of value in that?

Yes to all of it. Learning is not formulaic. It's something that the teacher doesn't really have that much control over. You can set up your environment and you can insert people in it, but learning is something that happens in the student, right? So if you and I are going to go out and work on something and you're going to teach me something that you know and I'm going to learn it as well as you know it, I have to go through a pretty similar set of experiences, but they're going to be my experiences and not your experiences, similar to the ones you gained for that, for example. But they're going to be my experiences. You can't really have much control over that, so I don't really have a formulaic way of doing this. Education on expectation of what, what a learner is going to go through in the sense of that it's your experience, that everybody's going to have a different prep path in this, is probably the most important tool that we can have. Make sure that your student, whatever it is they want to learn, Be it your trainee or your guest, understand what it takes to, what their commitment to learning is going to take to be successful is the most important tool. Now video is great. I use video for very specific things. Let's take a simple model like, are you familiar with Fitz and Posner's theory of motor skill acquisition?

I am not, no.

Okay, so it's a really cool, pretty simple model. It's a couple pages long, it's not huge.

There's a few books that have been written on it that are very deep, but one of the simplest synopsises that I've seen on it is on humankinetics.com looking up Fits and Posner.

The model has 3 stages that basically everybody goes through when learning a motor skill. You have the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage. The cognitive stage is things are mental, right? You're trying to come up with— there's two goals of the cognitive stage.

You're trying to come up with a clear mental image of what you're trying to learn, what the desired outcome is, and you're trying to come up with an understanding of your current performance.

So, you could define that stage as knowledge of end outcome, knowledge of current performance. From that point when you have both of those, you can go through an associative process of a trial and error of experimenting with positive and negative—

trying to associate positive and negative outcomes with your various tactics for practice. The autonomous stage is when you have this kind of mental short loop where things happen automatically.

There's not much cognitive thought. Another way to look at this is like you're going from extreme cognitive thought to make nothing happen to very little cognitive thought to make everything happen. So, in that early stage, I use video a lot, but I don't use video of the skier, the cognitive stage. I'll use video of the ideal image, be it an image of you or an image of Richie Berger or Marcel Hirscher, whoever we're going to look at depending on what kind of terrain or tactics we're going to look for. We're going to look at of that newer performer trying to ski a short turn, say. We're going to look at the high-end short turn. Yeah, we're not going to look at their short turn. Yeah, all we want to do is figure out what the end goal is.

Yep.

As they start getting clear on what those are, then I'm going to start using things like split screen and more data, give them more— they've— they're— all of their mental bandwidth is being used at that point to figure out what the, um, what the end outcome is. Once they have that understanding and they can make statements along the lines of, "This is what I'm trying to do and this is what I am doing," we can start moving into things like a video of their current performance compared to a more ideal performance.

Yeah.

Right? Once we get into a more autonomous stage where it's just them but they still have a clear image of what they're looking for, I'm going to use much more image of just them and ask them what they want to change.

So I guess my point on all that is that— because it was kind of a tangent there and I apologize for that.

No, no, it's good.

Is that there are these tools like video coaching. You could look at it the same way. What kinds of feedback do you give to somebody who doesn't quite know what they're trying to do yet? What kind of feedback do you give to somebody who knows what they're trying to do and what they are doing?

And what kind of feedback do you give to somebody who's working pretty automatically to do something pretty good?

It's quite different, right?

Yeah.

Same with a paired learning environment. All of these tools are great as long as we target them to the audience very specifically to their level of development.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, that was good. I just liked your— And that, like, use of stages of learning and, you know, and then how you're using video with those stages of learning, I think that's really important. So, now moving on to more your skiing, not other people's skiing, what are you, like, what are you working on in your own skiing at the moment?

In a word, simplifying. Because any more words than that would be less simple. I've gone from, in my career, being very complex to how I think about skiing. Just ask anybody at the Rookie Academy, they'll tell you how complex I used to be. Pain in the ass is probably how they describe it, or use more harsh words than that, and they're right. My main goal right now is to get simpler. And look at fundamentally what's really important in skiing. I can only come up with a few things that are really important, and I'm trying to tie all my skiing to something that's more simple at any given time, more simple and more consistent across all the kind of places and ways we can ski.

Yeah.

When I watch video of myself skiing and don't like it, which is most of the time, and try to figure out Familiar with that problem?

Yep.

I think we all are students of the sport, right?

Yep.

I'm looking at it from trying to look at what the performance of the tool, the ski, is in the snow, trying to figure out what I'd like to change, and then moving up the body to make that happen. The really basic stuff I'm looking at right now is I'm trying to get less to happen with the upper body, so stabilize from the pelvis to the head more ski with a stronger core, more neutral spine to give myself more ability to manipulate the ski in the snow to create primarily more redirection through the arc from the legs. I want more deflection to use JF's words, good friend who he's my roommate this summer. I love skiing with him to get more deflection or more impulse through the, uh, what we call in the US the shaping phase or the control phase or the apex, however you want to look at that, right? Yeah, that arc-to-arc kind of feel. Um, somebody asked me yesterday how I think about bump skiing. This wasn't any different than I think about a short turn or medium turn.

Yep.

I'm kind of looking at, from my output, my what I'm trying to achieve, two things at any given time. I'm looking at that, um, skiing from arc to arc, right? So think of like an arc that starts above the fall line and then ends just below the fall line. It could be a longer arc if it's a longer turn, it could be a shorter arc if it's a more of a slalom turn. But I'm looking at that arc and then I'm thinking about the exit angle the ski has to be at to meet the next arc.

Yep.

And that's the two main things I'm looking to achieve. So get the ski to engage above the fall line and exit below the fall line, and the angle that it has to be relative to the fall line to meet the next arc.

Yep.

And then how, how simply can I move my body on top of that? How little can I possibly move to get those achieved, to get those, to get that outcome?

Yep. Yeah, it's, um, something, uh, just that came to mind, um, you know, in terms of ski ski racing and other competitions, you know, they have, I guess, tools to measure their success by. So, you're either fast down a racecourse or you're not. And as a, you know, just a technical skier, it sort of can be a little bit ambiguous as to how to measure your success. So, that's why I guess it can be really frustrating, can't it, you know, looking at your skiing and going, well, you know, yeah, I just don't like the look of that. And, you know, because we're almost looking, looking at performance on snow but also a picture. So yeah, I just think it's interesting how a lot of skiers at this sort of higher end still are frustrated with the way they're skiing. It's a constant. Process of getting better.

How cool is that though?

Isn't that like the definition of mastery?

Yeah.

Mastery is something that you put your heart and soul into work for but you know you'll never achieve.

Yep.

And true professionals really seek mastery. And in this sort of somewhat judged performance, not somewhat, completely judged performance, we have to make value statements and we try to base them on accurate biomechanics, accurate physics, But we have a science to skiing and we have an art, and we can't ever lose that art piece no matter how deep we go into the science. You'll watch— I watch your YouTube channel, you watch mine, we all watch Riley's, we watch Richie Berger's, Paul's, whoever's, right?

Yeah.

JF's.

And there's something different about it that we can all like. Yep. And there's stuff about it that we don't want to take with us. But that's the art piece, right? I had a wonderful conversation with Riley McGlashan, who I've had the pleasure to work with for, oh, I don't know, close to a decade now, maybe not quite, 8 years, in Aspen. And I look forward to skiing with him as soon as I get back from China. But we were tuning skis one day and he was talking about a skier and some things they liked about the skier and some things he didn't like about the skier. And then it We had the same conversation. It was a pretty iconic, world-class skier, phenomenal skier. It was really fascinating to hear the different value statements he made from the ones I made. They're no more or less valid. They're all about good mechanics, but there were certain images that he appreciated more than I did and certain images that I appreciated more than he did. They're very reflective in the way that, uh, that we would choose to ski if we're not following each other. Now, we skied for years on a demo team together, so we can follow each other. So it's not a—

it's not a better or worse, it's just a value statement.

Yeah, that's, that's one of the beauties of our sport.

Yeah, absolutely.

And not having a clock.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you're right, there is some artistic element to it. Um, so on that I've asked sort of some of the other guys on this podcast what they believe is good skiing. So in your eye, what is— what are these— some of these, you know, differences you see? What do you really pick out in a skier and try and emulate, or see as good skiing?

Well, personally, this is where I go, and this is not a, um, uh, I value I value the performance of the equipment and the timing of the performance of the equipment over the over-discipline of the body. I really value the ability to be truly loose and achieve extreme performance with equipment. I also believe that you can't get that without having— it's really not can't, but it's very hard to get that without having a tremendous amount of discipline. That discipline's our road to looseness. But I look for freedom. I look for freedom and body alignment while still achieving the kind of outcome that we're looking for on the ski. Um, I mean, I watch Bode Miller come flying down, uh, in a downhill with his left foot up by his ear and his right arm doing whatever, looking straight ahead, and he's still gaining time.

Yep.

It's like, okay, that's it. Extreme example of incredible ability to get the equipment to do what it needs to do with extreme looseness. But you can only do that with that, with, with, with meticulous— with the ability to have meticulous technique.

Yep, yep, absolutely.

So complete body control and complete equipment control, that's what I, I value most. And the way it represents itself to me in great demonstrators like many of the people that you have in this group, is in extreme versatility. I really appreciate when somebody doesn't look the same all the time. They may have their style, but when you ask them to do something else, they can. And they show you a different image in the bumps, to a different image in the short turns, to a different image in the in the on-piste when they can emulate each other. It's just, it's an outstanding— it's one of the reasons actually, as weird as it is, I really like synchro skiing. Not so much as a sport to watch because I, I, I don't really enjoy watching super nice skiing. It's kind of strange. But as a sport to do, to be able to, to try to play with other people's mechanics and see if you can do it and have other people do that with you is it shows an amazing level of skillfulness.

Yeah, you've just reiterated something Paul sort of said that he sees in every great skier, and that is the ability to just almost switch and emulate any style, any technique out there. So their adaptability is just huge, and so yeah, you just reiterated that that same thought that he has about good skiing and good skiers. So it's cool.

I couldn't agree with him more. Yeah.

So then, who are a couple of people you look at for inspiration at the moment? So you've, you know, where are some people, you know, images you're watching to go, yep, that's what I'm gonna try and look like?

Different people for different things. One of the people you have on your list in this podcast group, iconic gentleman, Richie Berger. He's as good as a bump skier as I've ever seen. My assumption is he's also as good of a skier in almost everything else because when you look at him do different things, I have yet to see him not do something incredibly well. I haven't ever skied with the gentleman, so my exposure to him is limited to to what other people publish, but that is somebody I look to for some pretty extreme ability to demonstrate a lot of different things and say, that's an incredible level of skillfulness that you couldn't get to without some pretty diverse and random practice.

Yep.

I look at Paul a lot. Very disciplined, very accurate. JF, incredibly clear in his intent. And what he's trying to do at all times. He can tell you what he's trying to do. He's got an amazing ability to— and this is what I think is his— he's got a lot of strengths, but his greatest strength as a demonstrator is he tells you what he's going to do and then he does exactly that. Absolutely phenomenal. Riley is very similar in that. A lot of the people that I— because of my bias towards towards really high-end ski performance, um, there I tend to look a lot at World Cup racers, usually not in a course, mainly when they're freeskiing.

Yep.

But my favorites out there right now are Feniger.

Yep.

She's just beautiful technique. It's loose, it's free, but it's disciplined at the same time, and it's incredibly efficient. It has an element of just incredible performance and incredible athleticism while looking relaxed. It's like watching Michael Jordan play, play basketball. He just didn't look like he was working that hard, but it was amazing athleticism. Yeah, like, how did a person with just a little bit of toe-off fly that much through the air? It's just extreme efficiency, right?

Yeah.

Um, Shiffrin, similarly, a little less mature, but will—

is, is on a road, on the road to that kind of skiing. Um, obviously Ligeti is doing some amazing things in his skiing. I mean, 3-time world champion GS, that being my favorite turn radius, that's about as good as it gets to me. Alexi Ponterot, I think, is doing wonderful things in skiing, and he's an image of mine that I look to a lot. Hirscher for ski performance. Yeah.

I was thinking in terms of ligety, what are you— like, what is it? What's sort of one thing that really you think sets him apart when you watch him ski? What are you, what are you drawn to?

His ability to start the arc early.

Yeah.

And, and keep on the arc for a length of time. Um, it's very graceful, it's effortless, it, uh, um, it's— there's nothing harsh or violent about it. The ski comes onto edge early but not harshly. It doesn't dig a big trough in the snow. To get that much speed on a ski that's engaged for that long of a period of time, you have to be incredibly light on it. Still obviously 100% dominant to the outside, all that stuff, right? Yeah. But there's nothing pushed or braced about it. He is generating speed through an engaged ski for a very long period of time where a lot of the other guys are floating a lot more through the period, through the, through the top of the turn.

Yep.

And they're getting their deflection or their arc over a much shorter period of time. So, uh, there's something incredibly graceful and incredibly difficult and skillful to, to gain that much speed on an engaged ski that long. That's just phenomenally accurate.

Yeah, cool. Um, I was going to ask you about equipment and, you know, how important you think equipment is in terms of boots, boot setup, skis, that sort of stuff. So personally for you, are there any— do you have any thoughts on that?

Absolutely.

Let's start with skis. I think you got to find a ski that does what you want it to do, and it's got to be appropriate to the terrain and conditions you want to ski in. I think that many people in the US right now ski in skis that are too fat. For what they're trying to do. I've got a quiver. I've got everything from 118 to 65, and I ski— Safe travel. I ski— we've had a low snow year until this week. We were dumped on a lot, thankfully. It was beautiful bump and powder skiing yesterday where I skied on 100 underfoot. And if I was there next week when we get another couple feet, I'd be on 118. But up until that point I've been skiing kind of in the high 60s to mid 70s.

Yep.

Um, because if your ski can't penetrate the snow very far, you should be on a ski with an edge that's closer to your foot.

Yep, simple as that.

Yeah, that's— it doesn't have to be any more complicated.

Yep.

Um, equipment maintenance, exceptionally important if you want to perform well. Just like we go to the gym, we take care of our bodies, we try to stay as flexible, as mobile, as strong, as responsive, as agile as we can be. Our equipment has to be able to handle those kind of impulses they're going to have in the skiing. I tune my skis every day, and if you want to perform at your best, your equipment needs to be ready to take that performance and give it back to you.

Amazing how quickly you realize when you're, when you ski on a well-tuned ski how much an ill-tuned ski, you know, just after hitting a couple little nicks, rocks, whatever, can affect your ability to balance and feel confident.

Absolutely. And how much more in tune with your equipment you become if you tune it yourself.

Yep.

After a little bit of time.

First, the first bit of time, you're gonna mess up a few pairs of skis. You're gonna ski like shit because you've been skiing on something you've tuned that you don't know how to do, right? I know that from my personal experience. Maybe other people haven't made as many mistakes as I've had, but it was a long path to become a reasonable tuner for me. I'm still working on it, but, uh, um, makes a big difference. I, I've known a number of people who are, um, who are, uh, uh, motorcycle racers, uh, bicycle racers And I don't know very many, but I've known a couple people who are really into like rally car racing. And the guys who are good at it seem to know how to operate and maintain their equipment. Yeah, there's something about— we're in a sport where we— it's a relationship between not just us and the environment, but us and the equipment in the environment. And there's something to be said about how we— how we— our relationship with our equipment and our maintenance, how we maintain that equipment to train.

To truly understand it.

It's a very intangible, untangible statement, but there seems to be a correlation there.

Yeah.

And then boots?

Boots.

Okay. First and foremost, they have to fit. Let's just start there.

Yep.

I generally, my personal preference is to go to the smallest boot I can possibly fit in so I have the most direct contact with the plastic.

Yep.

And then grind my foot out. Like, I wear a size 9.5 shoe and I ski in a size 6 boot. And I grind the plastic out until it fits my foot. That might be because of some asinine ideal that I have, but so far it seems to be working. Works for most World Cup racers, so I'm going to go with it. As far as alignment goes, there are a lot of schools of thought. There's this kind of— there's the general Witherall ideas and basic alignment stuff that works, seems to work for about 80% of people. And then there's the more witch-doctor-ish and voodoo ideas that work for about 20% of the people.

Yep.

And you know, there's so many different things. You can get them all, you can get the skeleton aligned, but then you also have the soft tissue to deal with and the neuromuscular responses. You put a wedge under my foot, it's gonna have a different neuromuscular response than you put a wedge, the same wedge under your foot, even if we line up the same way, because we've trained our bodies differently. We fire muscles. I mean, you're a body worker. Yeah. I can't wait to hear what you have to say about this in a second. But, um, I think that it's really important to get aligned to the place where you can move the most.

Yep.

In all directions with the most strength and the most accuracy.

Yep.

And I don't think that How we go about it is important that we do go about it in a way that works for us.

Yep, absolutely. Yeah, I totally agree with that, and I think that's a really nice simple way of putting it. Just, you know, the equipment has got to allow you to move as freely and easily in all directions as possible, because I mean, let's face it, we're putting ourselves in a rigid plastic boot, right? So it can really influence that ability to move in all these directions. So you want it to kind of as positively influence and allow you to move in all these directions. Because I know, um, certain boots, you know, without work, I can't ski on, you know. They push, push my knees in to begin with, and I can't engage certain muscles. And, and then so I'm over-edging or under-edging the ski and, and just using a heap of energy just to, to stay upright. So yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

You've got to, I guess, go—

if you don't know, go see a really good boot fitter that, that understands it, and then, and then get out and, you know, test all these ranges of movement and see if it allows you to do it.

I think everybody should go to a boot fitter, and more than one. I think everybody should try a few different ways to find out As you just stated, Tom, you're very aware of how your body interacts with the plastic piece of equipment you're putting on you and what works and doesn't. I've gone through, similarly, a lot of different versions of canting, and I'm not as responsive to canting. Unless it's really extreme, it doesn't seem to bother me too much. My knees line up pretty straight over my feet. I test normal. But when I've tried wedges under, I kind of figure it out. Certain things feel better than others, but my general feeling is that the flattest, least valgus, least varus, least ramp angle, most forward lean. I have a lot of dorsiflexion range in my ankles.

Yeah.

So I'm pretty strong tibialis anterior.

Yeah.

So the flatter my foot is, both fore-aft and laterally, and the more flexed my ankle is, the better the boot works for me.

Yep.

But I only found that out by doing what you just described and having everything from the most scientific to the most voodoo versions of boot fitting done to me.

Yeah, exactly.

And basically, um, it— yeah, I, I'm less responsive than some people are to it.

Yep. Like, it has just reminded me of a couple of seasons ago I had to travel to another resort with an athlete that I was coaching, and on arrival at the resort an hour away, I went to pull my boots out of their car and the boots weren't there. So, I had to hire rental boots for the day. Luckily, I wasn't racing, it was just the kid was racing, but I had to ski around with him. And straight away, like, it was horrible. To begin with, and straight away the two kids, they were 11 and 9 years old, said, "What's wrong with your skiing, Tom?" So, you know, they could see it. They're like, "You look really awkward." And I think it's perhaps maybe a good experiment, you know, for people out there. You know, you've got a lot more info than your guests on how your boots feel. Go and borrow a pair of rental boots and try and ski. And see what it's like, and maybe you might understand why, you know, some of your guests are struggling with certain movements. Even some of the other instructors perhaps you're skiing with or training with, you know, if they're in the wrong boot, it can really mess with your skiing.

I completely agree.

We have a clinic we run with a gentleman named Jim Lindsay who runs a company called Boot Tech here in Aspen. A lot of the instructors go to. That clinic consists of skiing with different wedges inside of the boot and outside of the boot and watching it, feeling it, seeing what the differences are. It's really interesting to see people overcome the problem challenges that you give to them by making them 3 degrees out of whack one way or the other.

Yep.

I remember one time, similar story to what you had, I showed up for— oh, this is my third or fourth Level 1 that I ever led about 10 years ago.

I showed up with a pair of race stock 188 GS skis and no boots. You know, powder day, I had to get some rental boots that had no power straps. It was a 3-buckle boot for the first day. It was like, oh my God, this is terrible. Thankfully it was knee-deep powder so nobody could see how whacked out my alignment was.

Yeah, it's funny, I mean, over the years I've done some experimenting with, you know, boots with cant alignment and cuff alignment, so tipping the ankle and knee in and out from center. And recently, more recently, getting into bodywork, I've been very interested in how you can perhaps influence these things, not in the equipment, but in your own body. And yeah, this recent trip to Japan, I realized straight away because of all the, I guess, muscular kind of work and balancing, stretching work I've done, I got in my boots and my right boot regularly has a 2.5-degree cant and my left boot has only 1.5 because of this difference. And straight away, getting in my boots for for the first time in maybe 4 or 5 months, I could feel it. It wasn't something that was actually helping me, this difference in the cant, where previously it had, it made me feel level, it actually put me out. So, yeah, I guess I just have gone through some stages of thinking, right, you have to, you know, it's too difficult to change the body, so just change the equipment. Experiment with the equipment, and that, that worked, and that gave me some good results. But it's kind of nice to move on and realize that I can kind of come back and alter it in a different way. So I guess there are a few different options now, I believe, in, in terms of getting that, that, that, the body to work well with your equipment.

I think you're touching on something that's incredibly important when we talk about alignment, which is that thing we started out with, that we have some mixtures of hard tissue and soft tissue we work with, right? And The body replaces itself regularly, right? We break it down, we build it up, stuff dies off, new stuff grows in its place. We're not the same person we were last year or the year before that, particularly if we're like we all are and we go to the gym and we stretch and we do various whatever routine our physical training routine is and we target our deficiency areas and move on to develop them. We're a different person from year to year. Therefore, our alignment's gonna change. Maybe our bones haven't changed, but the way they're gonna line up because of how things pull are going to change.

Yep.

JF and I had this conversation all last summer, all last August. So I guess it was winter for you. But all last August, we were in the same house, same room together, and we were talking about alignment. The first thing he says to me when I get into the house, he asked me about what I thought about alignment. And he's playing with different shims and wedges because he had seen something in skiing. So we went out skiing and I was working on something on my right leg and he was working on something in his right leg. So they were pretty similar issues. And my suggestion to him was that it wasn't so much on how he was built, but how he was moving.

Mm-hmm.

And the more he played with it, the more he said, I think that's probably actually accurate. And as he put more wedges in, it was really, it was awesome to watch him experiment 'cause he was able to wedge the ski, the boot to the point of where his knee didn't do the negative thing that he didn't want it to do. And this is an amazing skier, right? And he still working with this and he wedged the boot to a point and he said, but my knee hurts. So he could get the equipment to move his body. And I can't wait to talk to him about, 'cause I saw his video recently and the thing he was talking about isn't there. There anymore.

Yep.

So he's obviously corrected it, and I'm assuming he didn't do it— he's not doing it with pain. So I'm curious as to what his answer would be if we, if we ask him the same question, how he's corrected that issue. Yeah, his right leg. I think it was his right leg, might have been his left one, but no, I think it is.

Yeah, or maybe it is, but it shows up on the right when he stands on his right leg.

Yeah.

And whatever was in this last video, video number 21, um, which I think is his best video to date, is, um, uh, much more symmetrical, isn't it?

Much more symmetrical.

Totally.

It's beautiful skiing. Yeah. So I'm curious as to what his method was. You know, he's canted more if he's, if he's moving differently.

Yeah. It's, you know, the curious thing is it's, it's my right leg, or I, I assume it's my right leg. It's, um, your right leg. It's JF's right leg. It's Riley's right leg. I don't know about Paul, but Yeah, there's something out there.

My right leg is because of an intratibial rod that I have on my right leg. So, my kneecap tracks in a funny place. If I don't work my hip out well, it collapses to the inside. TFL doesn't fire right and glute med and all that stuff. But, there's a rod that sticks up into my patella. One of these days I might actually have it removed.

But you know, that had to have started somewhere down the line, whatever it is in society that kind of, I mean there's a lot of things, driving a car, all that sort of stuff where you're dominant with one leg. But yeah, that could be a whole other conversation, just funny that it's the right leg.

Something about us.

and these are all people that I think are right-handed. I don't know, are you right-handed or left-handed?

Right-handed, yep.

I think all those people are. I know JF— well, I could be wrong. I'm speaking out of my ass right now.

Yeah, who knows.

But there's a better than average chance that we're accurate on that.

Yeah, yep. Right, so I was thinking to— getting close to the end here. You— I'm speaking to you right now from Los Angeles. Is that right? No.

Yeah, it's worked well.

That's where I am.

That's where you are right now and you're actually laying over waiting to catch a flight to China. So, can you tell us why are you off to China when you've just had a bunch of snow in Aspen?

Well, duh, for the epic skiing in mainland northern China and Inner Mongolia. No, I'm doing a couple of things. This trip is— My first week is I'm going over for Aspen. I'm doing some marketing thing for Aspen. We're working with Wanlong Ski Area and creating a stronger relationship between the emerging Chinese skiing culture that exists around the Wanlong area with Aspen. The second week is something that my friend Charlie MacArthur, who is a member of the PSI Nordic team and also as a telemark specialist and also a member of the PSI Alpine team, from 2000 to 2004, um, is coming with me. And what we're doing is we're running, uh, ski instructor exams, so Level 1, Level 2-ish type stuff, through PSIA for them in Chinese. And we're helping, we're helping to create, um, or I'm helping to create a, um, uh, the curriculum for some emerging, uh, Chinese instructor training programs and possibly some, some national organization stuff. That's undetermined where this will go yet, but we're looking at— I'll be there for the next several years helping them, helping this group develop a form of instructor training, formalized Chinese instructor training. Yeah, it's a really cool emerging culture there. When I went over there in December, I went there from my friend David Oliver, who's one of our 3 freestyle specialists on the PSI Alpine team right now. He and I went over in the first week of December, last week of November in 2014, and I was expecting a very rudimentary Chinese ski culture or non-existent culture from what I'd heard about from 6, 7 years ago. Now, other people on the team, Robin Barnes and Jeb Boyd, have been there the last few years. And so I hadn't, I haven't been there, but my, My understanding was from a number of years ago. And I was really impressed to see how far they'd come from what I'd heard about 6, 7 years ago. I mean, the town I was in, Chongli, had, I don't know, 10 or 12, 15 ski and snowboard shops with modern, good equipment and knowledgeable staff. The 25-odd people that we worked with for their Level 1 were good skiers. Super passionate, young people ready to take this on as a career.

Yeah, cool.

The people who are building the schools, passionate professionals who are just doing this for the same reasons you and I do. And hey, these guys are putting in a bid for the 2022 Olympics, right? And it's looking pretty good.

And the hills are good, the grooming is good, the snowmaking is phenomenal.

They have good good facilities. The area that I'm going to this week, Wanlong, the owner, Mr.— I'm going to mispronounce his name, but Mr. Luo is one of the most passionate skiers I've ever met.

That's awesome. Yeah, cool. So you— yeah, that's exciting to be able to help sort of develop ski instructing globally. So, very cool.

Well, we are part of a global industry, so it's fun to see more people joining in.

Absolutely. So, I guess any final things you wanted to say on this podcast, Jonathan?

Just thank you. One, thank you for— first of all, thank you for doing this. This is, I think, getting groups of dedicated— getting dedicated professionals together to talk about, uh, where they are in the industry from an instructional standpoint and a learning standpoint and their own training is something that's been missing in the— as a resource to the— to our global industry. So, uh, Tom, thank you so much for, for, for taking the initiative and putting this together, and thank you for including me.

My pleasure, absolutely. And I look forward to actually formally meeting you in Argentina.

Likewise.

Yeah.

Maybe before, you never know. I might get to Australia on my trip over to— one of those two trips over to New Zealand this year.

Yeah, excellent. All right, well, thanks very much for the time, Jonathan, and yeah, enjoy your trip to China, and I hope the rest of the season goes really well for you.

Likewise.

Enjoy the beach, and I look forward to seeing you at some point in the next 6 months.

Thanks.

This episode is brought to you by Carv, the digital ski coach. Now, one of the features I've had the most fun with all time is simply the fact that Carv tracks every single turn you make. I treat it a bit like Strava, so at the end of the day it tells me exactly how many turns I've done, and those numbers keep adding up across the season. So last season in Australia, I had a few days where I was doing nearly 2,500 turns, and my legs were tired, but it was really cool to try and have that number there motivating me, and I'm quietly working my way towards my 1 millionth turn with Carv. So the other metrics I've been diving into lately, and these are new for this season, are very unique, and these are Turn Corridor and Turn Radius. And I don't see many skiers using them, but they tell you a lot about the shape and flow of your skiing. So the Turn Corridor shows you how far you're traveling across the hill, or the time almost between apex to apex, and how long you're taking to transition. While the turn radius measures the actual arc you create once you start the turn. So these can be different, you can have like a very wide corridor, say 18 meters, but a lower turn radius, or the other way around. So when you compare the two, it opens up a whole world of experimentation, and it would be a bit like a race coach will set different types of race courses to influence a racer or skier to change the timing and mix it up. So I encourage you to look into this if you've got Carv and play with it and see if you can manipulate it, because it's only going to improve your versatility. So I keep my Carv on my boots every single day because you never know quite know when like a change in technique or a new ski resort or skis will show up in the numbers, and it's great at the end of the day being able to check that, or even after the fact. And I'm really looking forward to the day I open the app and I see turn number 1 million So if you want to explore your skiing in a completely different way, check out Carv, the digital ski coach. And thank you, team, for sponsoring this episode.