GAP SKI INSTRUCTOR PROGRAM 2007 GAP Ski Instructor Course Review
Helen Burridge, 32
Senior Manager in Audit DivisionI am 32, live in London and took a career break to completed the 2007 Warren Smith Gap course. The main reason I wanted to do the course was to improve my level of skiing and gain a qualification that I could potentially use in the future. I had been on one of Warrens courses in the past, from this I could see that the coaches were outstanding and the style of teaching was far and above anything that I had ever received before. This was combined with the coaches being very encouraging and great fun.
While I had done a large number of weeks skiing in the past and a ski season about 6 years ago, I was a fairly nervous skiier at the start of the course. The people who attended the course had a large range of abilities from extremely good skiiers to people who had only started to ski in the last couple of years.
The course covered a wide range of areas there were approximately 4 weeks of coaching. On a typical days coaching we would free ski for an hour before the lesson, we would then start with a stretch and warm up routine before splitting into groups of approximately 7 people and working on specific areas for the basi exam such as short turns or carving. During the day we would have exercises to work on personal weaknesses and would receive a lot of one to one feedback.
Twice a week there would be a video analysis session which we would go through in the evening and give us points to work on the following day. In addition to the coaching there were also evening and weekend sessions on off-piste mountain safety; first aid course; ski maintenance and ski fitness talks and exercise sessions.
In addition to the ski performance there was also a large focus on the teaching side. We performed practice teaching sessions and prepared a number of lesson plans for different level skiers which were reviewed by the coaches and comments fed back to us to ensure that we had an excellent range of exercises before we started the BASI 3 exam.
We also spent a lot of time doing demonstrations and gained practical experience of teaching in the shadowing we did with the Adrenaline ski school.
There was a wide range of people on the 2007 gap course, in terms of ages it varied from 16 to 53. People were at all stages of their lives from a gap year before or after university, career breaks, changes in careers to retirement. Everyone on the course bonded instantly as they were all passionate about skiing with a huge desire for improvement in their skiing ability. There are already plenty of reunions planned for the summer.
In addition to all the skiing and coaching a benefit of the course is living in Verbier for the season, a large number of the people on the course stayed on after the course to continue to ski together and make the most out of living in one if the best resorts in the Alps. Verbier is also well located for day trips to other resorts such as Chamonix and Saas Fee. The night life is excellent from apres ski through to the very late nights in Casbah. The entertaining night life led to tons of gappie drunken stories, which will be repeated for years to come!! Well with the little time that was left over from the course there was time to chill out a little and enjoy the resort for what it was. A great place to be with venues for every type of evening to be found… Lots of people dressing up for Mardi Gras night, and the following day as they hadn't made it home…
Yes, full on tuition. If you think you've got something sussed, you will just be taken on to more difficult terrain to ensure that you know what to do.
Loads of off piste, doing loads of things I would never normally do or not covered by your bog standard insurance coverage :o)
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