Become a ski instructor this winter
BASI Ski instructor coursE - Portes du Soleil - Switzerland
In the winter of 2020 we successfully ran a BASI level 1 ski instructor course on weekends during the ski season in Portes du Soleil.
In what was a first of its kind, it allowed our group to train towards and take the British Association of Ski Instructors (BASI) Level 1 qualification over a number of weekends during the winter. The group was a mix of students and adults from our region, mainly expats living along the riviera. The youngest was 16 and the oldest was 40 and professions ranged from students, teachers, traders and hotel managers.
The training part of the program started in January and February on 6 Saturdays and the group spent days alternating between training sessions designed to improve their own personal skiing performance and teaching sessions, delivering sessions to each other.
The performance skiing element of the training is ideal for those who have reached a plateau in their own personal skiing or have had extensive personal skiing lessons and are looking for that next level of skiing performance and more polished look to their skiing.
For the teaching part of the training, the group focussed on what it takes to take an absolute beginner on the snow for the first time and then all the way up to skiing parallel turns.
From an instructor trainer point of view, this is a tricky group to teach because many of the students were coming to us with inbuilt movement patterns in their skiing that in some instances, needed to be changed in order to make their skiing as efficient as possible. When faced with some of these ingrained habits, 6 days of intensive training is not actually a great deal of time!
The group were magnificent in their mock teaching sessions and were always helpful and encouraging of each other. It is always really interesting to see the personality of people come out when they teach in front of a group of their peers. It was fun for us as trainers also to be able to pass on the tips and tricks that we’ve learnt over the years.
The exam part of the course was cut short by the covid shutdown but we will be finishing the final 3 days this December and I’m expecting a 100% pass rate from this amazing group.
We are running our course again this winter and it will be an amazing program for anyone who is interested in learning something new, putting something extra on their CV or just wants to take their skiing to the next level. We will certainly be recruiting instructors out of our program in years to come.
