Year after year, before coming to us, our pupils have enjoyed their skiing, but somehow they got home vaguely feeling that something was missing. Their skiing had been "OK" but nothing more than that. Their hoped-for breakthrough had again not occurred. They still found themselves feeling a bit, well, "flat" really.

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Most ski instruction has given you the impression that once you are past a certain above-beginner level, then provided you "get the miles in" your skiing will metamorphose you into a better skier. In fact, it doesn't. We get good at what we actually do. Practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent. In NLP we say, "If you always do what you've always done, you will always get what you always got. If it isn't working, do something else - anything else."

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Some years back "Bobski" recognized that:-

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• Advanced, expert skiers did not get that way by going to ski school

• They did not get that way by just skiing around

• How they did it, was through ski coaching, not "ski instruction". Advanced skiing is not harder than intermediate skiing. It's a slightly different game, requiring slightly different thinking. When you have the understandings it's even more fun than intermediacy.

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The first difference with ASL™

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In the ski instruction model of ski teaching, the instructor is always better than the pupil. As a ski instructor I would dictate the next task and then demonstrate it, clearly showing you how much better I can ski than you can ski (This in itself can be demoralizing). It would be your job to watch me. Then, after your attempt to emulate my performance, I would tell you where you went wrong.

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I believe this to be a counterproductive process. It is based on exposing failures. It only addresses the negatives. It does not assist you to understand your own skiing and to take responsibility for it. In the ASL™ model, which is essentially a ski coaching model, we jointly agree to the next developmental task. You have a go at it. The difference is that I watch you. At the end of the task, we jointly compare the feedback on results that we both experienced, and we agree on what to do next. Our job is to jointly establish what went right and build on it.

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This is a highly productive, psychologically supportive, and growth expanding process. We find that successes breed successes. You have a happier time. You learn hugely more quickly, and your learning is more permanent and meaningful. It is the function of a good coach to try as quickly as possible to help you get much better than he/she is. You still need us - after all Pete Sampras' coach can't play tennis as well as Pete, but he is still a permanently essential part of the team.

The second difference

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The second difference:

 

The employment of Accelerated Learning principles. Fifteen years of remarkable neurological and psychological research has resulted in simple yet powerful ways of learning how to learn, both more effectively and faster. We use a powerful six-step learning model. It's not magic, (there are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going), and you still have to "pay your dues" and put in the work, sorry, play required! Nevertheless, by materially assisting you to focus your mind and direct your thinking, the simple structure of accelerated learning easily engenders more rapid understanding, learning, and change.

 

The third difference:

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Neuro-Linguistic Programming, (NLP) and Mental Game Planning. The underlying belief in NLP is that you already have within you, all the resources you need to achieve anything you want. Some of them may well be being blocked. On ASL™ courses we help you unblock them. NLP has come of age. It is a set of simple practical psychological techniques specifically developed to facilitate the modeling of excellence. Some people excel. By studying what they do - how their beliefs and thinking govern their behaviour patterns NLP has established those repeating patterns. We can all use those patterns. They are no longer experimental, they are being successfully used in top-level sport, top-level business, and in personal development. The techniques are simple. All that will stop them from working is not using them. The art lies in the way they are incorporated into your own inherent ways of learning. That's what makes it personal, and what makes it yours.

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The fourth difference:

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Galileo Galilei said "You cannot teach anybody anything. All you can do is to help them find that it is already within themselves".

With ASL™ you can achieve mastery over your own mind. You can discover that something inside you knew all along that you could do it. This is learning beyond the ski school. It particularly helps people whose self-expectation is lower than is realistic, or who are apprehensive in some skiing situations.

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