Ski Lessons
What do you do in Ski Lessons?
Ski lessons will introduce you to the equipment used in skiing, take you to the correct places to learn to ski, and teach you to ski in safety. Ski lessons use lots of different exercises and practices to get you to put your body in the correct positions, and make the correct movements. This website shows you how to ski, but cannot make you ski how a manoeuvre is shown. The kind of exercises done in ski lessons are not shown on this website as they need to be performed with an instructor who can show you the mistakes you are making.
How Long are Ski Lessons?
Ski lessons are generally between 2 and 4 hours long (although not always), 2 hours being a half day and 4 hours being a full day. This may not sound like much, but 4 hours of learning to ski for someone who does not ski often, or has never skied before will normally leave them pretty tired. It is often found that if people do more than 4 hours they just don't have the energy to ski properly any more and their technique suffers.
Types of Ski Lessons
There are generally 2 types of ski lessons, Group Ski Lessons and Private Ski Lessons.
Group Ski Lessons
Group lessons are where you are put into a group of people that are all roughly the same standard, and the instructor will take you through exercises on different slopes to improve everyone's skiing. As you can be in a large group of people with group lessons, the instructor will only be able to pay so much attention to you, and the exercises done will generally have to suit the overall needs of the group. Group lessons can be very good fun though, as being in a group of people can have a very sociable side to it.
Private Ski Lessons
Private lessons are where you have an instructor to yourself (or with the other people you have booked the lesson with). This is the quickest way to learn as you will have all the attention, and all exercise can be suited to exactly what you are doing. Private lessons will work on mistakes as soon as you start to make them, so that it is harder to get into any bad habits.
Between the 2 types of lessons though there can be a large price difference, so although private lessons might be what you would like to have, a lot of people go for group lessons because it fits their budget better.
One last thing to say about ski lessons is that it is always nice to give your instructor a tip at the end, especially if you have learnt a lot. Although your ski lessons may have been quite expensive, it is very unlikely that your instructor will see much of that money, and a tip can often make a big difference to how they get by.
On to the Common Mistakes page.