Why winter is not the best time to get better at skiing

Glacier training in the sun

If you are serious about getting better at skiing - for its own sake, to pass instructor exams or to do better at competitions of any sort, then doing some training over the summer period is vital. For those readers that only manage a week or two of skiing each year then I am not going to suggest that you spend those in the summer. Winter is undoubtedly the most fun time to go skiing, with the best snow conditions.

I am really speaking here to the people who live in ski resorts all winter, or who take extensive winter holidays. Working and living in a ski area is a fantastic lifestyle, lots of fun and will improve your skiing to an extent just by doing it. But ask yourself how much do you really work on your skiing in a winter? Be honest with yourself. There will be some people who are really dedicated to their skiing but most find it hard to train when there is so much else to do. Cruising around the mountains with friends, fun skiing, mountain lunches, and nights out drinking - it's easy to have a great time on the slopes. Then there is work - daytime work gets in the way of skiing and night-time work makes it hard to get up early and perform. Ski jobs (instructor, ski patrol, ski host, video-cameraman, photographer) keep you on your skis all day but you are rarely going to be pushing yourself. The only people who will make really significant improvements over a winter are those who are super motivated or those in an ongoing training programme several days per week. Perhaps a third exception is those who are beginners, or doing their first few full winters, so that they are getting far more practice time on the skis than they have ever had before.

The other problem in winter is that most resorts are not focussed on developing skiers so much as delivering a fun time to holidaymakers. This is natural as holidaymakers bring in the money but it can be frustrating for those trying to train. The spaces to set gates are limited, the pistes may be crowded and the park will be full. In the other three seasons of the year the ski areas that are open know that they are catering mainly to competitors, instructors and others who are serious about developing their performance. The main business for resorts in this period comes from training camps of various types: race camps, freestyle camps, performance courses or instructor training. Because of this, large parts of the skiable terrain are set aside for race courses and snowparks, and these areas are well maintained. There can often be the added bonus of training alongside national teams from all the Alpine nations which is pretty inspiring.

To relate my personal experience; in 2012 I spent three weeks taking instructor courses in Hintertux April/May after my resort had closed, two weeks race training in Les 2 Alpes in June, a weekend in July, six weeks  autumn race training in Tignes in November/December and a final week of Race training in Alpe D'Huez. After all that I finally passed the Eurotest, but not by much. In those twelve weeks of training, even though some of the days were quite short, I made far bigger improvements to my skiing that I could have done in several seasons of teaching every day.

It is possible to practise alpine ski racing, piste skiing, bumps and nordic skiing on glaciers in spring, summer and autumn in Europe. Off-piste skiing is harder to work on in summer, although the spring is the best time to do many descents and I have done some great ski touring in August in France such as my ascent of Mont Blanc in this post.

The other side of summer training is dryland training - gym and fitness sessions - which are essential if you want to achieve your winter potential. More on that in the next post

Carnival (looking silly)

I'll try and take the promised look at ski school race tactics tomorrow, but for now here is a photo courtesy of Fotoski Arinsal from the Carnival day. This is me skiing in a borrowed dinner jacket for the day, and regretting the lack of thermals underneath. It's a pity the hat ruins the effect, and can you tell how many years it has been since I tied a bow tie?

We will put a few pictures of other instructors dressed up on the Arinsal-Andorra website over the next couple of days.

Off to the Eurotest

Just a quick note today, as I am off to Alp D'Huez early in the moring for the Eurotest. I have spent the afternoon servicing and tuning my skis, so am as ready as I can be for my first attempt.

For those who are wondering what the test entails, it is a Giant Slalom (GS) race run to F.I.S. rules. The pass time is equivalent to a zero F.I.S. points time (i.e. World Cup winning time) plus 15 percent. In practice the actual time is arrived at by taking the times of a series of openers, and adjusting them downwards to arrive at the theoretical zero F.I.S. time. The fasted adjusted time of all the openers is the one used.

I'll be back Thursday, so I will report how I got on.

Parking Ticket in Tignes

I thought I would post this warning notice I recieved whilst in Tignes. I was struck by how politlely it was written, albeit with the picture of a car being towed away, just in case anyone didn't get the message. I was also quite impressed that I was given a warning, rather than just being towed and fined (as happened to me last year in Andorra, despite being parked legally at the time but that's another story).



The text reads:

You are committing an offence

We are most pleased that you have decided to visit Tignes ond we hope that you will enjoy your stay in our resort. However, we draw your attention on the fact that you are committing an offence. Your car is going to be towed away as stipulated in the municipal by-law of 20/11/2000 and article 417-10 of the highway code. For your comfort and pleasure, we ask you to go back to one of the 2700 indoor parking places or one of the 750 outdoor parking places that the resort puts at your disposal. Thank you for your co-operation.

It amused me somwhat to be thanked for my visit in a parking ticket - I cannot see that happening back in England somehow.

Don't let your water bottle freeze

Here are a couple of photos of my water bottle that I took to Tignes. I have posted them to demonstrate what happens when you leave a full bottle of water in the car overnight and the temperature drops to -20 degrees centigrade. In the close up, you can just see the ice coming out through the crack. This is a metal Sigg bottle by the way - the sort I thought was virtually indestructible.





Back in Arinsal, conditions on the mountain are already better than most of last season. We have been skiing powder all day, and despite a bit of wind last night, most of the snow has stuck and we seem to have a pretty good base for the time of year.

I'm Back

Well, after three weeks of wi-fi hotspots I now have a steady internet connection again. In a remarkable example of Andorran efficiency, I ordered a phone and ADSL connection on Wednesday morning and had it switched on by Thursday afternoon. I even had a phone call from the phone company today, just to ask if everything was working. If only BT could match that when I'm back in England.

I am about half way through the immigration process here now - I have visited EFPEM (the governing body for all sports and mountain instructors here) twice, the ski school, the Vallnord office, immigration (twice) and the hospital for a blood test and chest X-ray. I just have two more trips to imigration now, once to see a doctor and once to hopefully pick up my green card. So it is all pretty straightforward really. The non-EU residents working here have even more hoops to jump through.

I am still lacking a USB lead for my phone, so no new photos until I can get one sent over. In the meantime here is an picture of the bar where I have been spending most of my evenings recently, since it is about 30 seconds' walk from my front door. There is not much to see here today anyway - it is grey and rainy, but hopefully snowing higher up. The slopes are crowded as only a few runs have opened so far and it is a bank holiday weekend in Spain. However things are better than this time last year, and snow is forecast so things should be looking good by the Christmas holidays.

Exercise for Skiing

The exercise illustrated to the left is often cited as the way to prepare for a skiing holiday. You adopt a sitting position (minus the seat) against a wall and hold it until your thighs cannot take any more. And this achieves? Well, not a lot really. It will make your quads burn a bit and possibly give some small strength boost. However the quadriceps are not the only muscles used in skiing, nor even the most important.

Skiing requires aerobic fitness, flexibility and physical strength. Improving these can help improve your skiing. Concentrating on one muscle will not.

If you want to be able to ski all day then regular aerobic exercise such as running, cycling or swimming is the best plan. Doing one of these three times a week is probably all the training most people need to get the most out of their skiing holiday.

If you want to do more to help your skiing you need to plan a program including both strength and flexibility straining. The strength training should concentrate on core strength and stability as well as all the leg muscles. Squats are ideal for this and should form a significant part of any weights programme for skiing. A programme of stretching should accompany the weight training, but static stretches should not be done before a weights session. The programme can also include plyometrics, interval training etc.

You can obviously take your training as far as you like - it depends what you want to get out of your skiing. World Cup racers train full time whilst one week a year skiers just need a basic level aerobic fitness.

Can you buy an all-round ski?

My last post about how many skis I seem to cart about these days got me thinking, can you buy a real all-round ski these days? What would I use if I could only take one pair of skis with me? I'll leave anything race related out of the equation for the moment, since you would only really want race skis for racing.

That leaves piste, off piste and the park, for me at least. So the ideal ski for the piste, something stiff and shaped like a slalom or skiercross ski. The ideal off-piste ski would be fatter and usually softer, while for freestyle you want a twintip ski with not too much shape or width.

If you have no interest in jumps and tricks then a narrower freeride ski makes a good compromise between on and off piste. Some have a slightly raised tail allowing some switch manouvres as well. This type of ski has a bit of everything without really specialising in anything. Examples include the Salomon X-Wing Tornado and the Rossignol B74 (I'm not particularly endorsing those companies over all the rest, I just happen to have their catalogues to hand).

Until a year or so ago, my use-everyday-go-anywhere-skis were Dynastar Troublemakers; Twintips that were stiff enough to be fun on piste, soft enough to be good off it and my favourite ski that I've tried in the park. My other skis stayed in the ski rack most days and I thought for a while they were the perfect all-round ski. The downside was that while I was having fun, I lost out on the piste performance of a stiffer, more shaped ski. Like most twintips, they are all too easy to ski on with your hands in your pockets. Of course, twintip skis come in all kinds of width and stiffness, some better for powder, some for piste and some purely for the park. Most people with an interest in freestyle can find a twintip that will suit them out of the park as well.

I suppose my conclusion is that most people can find a reasonable all-round compromise ski to suit most aspects of their skiing. However, if you want to keep progressing you really need to spend some time on a high performance piste ski now and again. If you don't own a pair, rent some for a day on your next trip.

The Skiing Postmen

I have just been researching an article on the history of skiing in Andorra for the Arinsal-Andorra website and I made the surprising discovery that the first skiers in the principality were neither tourists, nor ancient hunter gatherers as in other parts of the world. In fact, the first skier in Andorra was a Soldeu postman by the name of Miquel Farré.

Miquel and his colleagues originally used snowshoes to make their deliveries during the winter months. Once a week, he collected some mail from the French village of Porto, where the local inhabitants used long pieces of wood to travel over the snow. One day during the winter of 1924, Miquel returned to Soldeu on a pair of these contraptions. His collegues were duly impressed and adopted the idea. The Andorra Ski Club was founded in 1932 and the rest is history.

The only downside to this research is the discovery that Soldeu, and not Arinsal, was the birthplace of Andorran skiing. Oh well, we can't have everything.

The Importance of Play

This summer I have been working on high ropes courses as an instructor, whilst waiting for the winter to come back. There are places on the courses where people with shorter arms or legs need to swing a hanging element (a platform or a trapeze) in order to reach the next one. One thing I have noticed is that many children simply do not know how to swing - they pull on the ropes and flail their legs but never make the rhythmical movements needed to go a little further with each swing. It seems as if they have never learnt to use a simple playground swing.

When children play on swings and climbing frames - or climb trees, do cartwheels or kick a ball about - they learn a variety of movement skills that are invaluable in later life. Such activities give one an intuitive understanding of the mechanics of movement. Without this it takes Newton's equations for motion and gravity to predict the result of a given action. Suddenly a simple swing becomes a complicated problem - as illustrated by the inability of an apparently intelligent child to swing a platform suspended from ropes. If children lose the opportunity for physical play it affects not only their health, but also their kinaesthetic awareness and a part of their problem solving ability.

So, how is this relevant to winter sports? Well it is all too easy when skiing or snowboarding to focus on improving technique, or doing it the right way, to the exclusion of all else. For example, when making a snowplough turn you may try to follow a sequence: apply weight to both skis equally; start to stand up, stretching the legs; look where you want to go; steer the skis towards the fall line; feel for pressure building up under the outside ski; flex down keeping the pressure on the outside ski; continue to steer the skis and finish the turn across the slope (always keeping the shoulders and hips square to the skis, the knees apart and the ski tails pushed out into a wedge shape). This is all well and good, and will lead you to making a good solid snowplough turn, but as you progress you can become robotic and inflexible in your skiing if you only ever do things the 'right' way.

Good skiers are usually playful skiers - they mix up the turns they do, they try new things and most importantly they have fun with their skiing. Training for technique is important of course, but it is also important for your development to try things out and see what happens. For example, have a free run and see how many ways you can make the skis turn. Look for interesting terrain - bumps and jumps. On easy slopes try something different, always challenge yourself. In this way you will develop your skiing intuition as to what will happen when you use a particular movement. Above all though - keep it fun.

Eurotest Training

Well, it's somehow taken me over two months to write a post, so maybe the spring wasn't the best time to start a winter sports blog. Having said that, one of the reasons I've been less than productive is that I've been away skiing. A fortnight on the glacier in Les Deux Alpes helped to satisfy the snow addiction for the moment. As I've said elsewhere, summer skiing is a really nice way to spend time in the mountains, and the fact that the skiing finishes at one leaves the afternoons free for other activities or just chilling out.

Not that this was a holiday - it was all training towards the Eurotest, which is part of the ISTD - the top European ski instructor qualification. To pass the Eurotest a candidate has to ski a GS race within 18% of a zero FIS points time (equivalent to being within 18% of the World number one). The test is required by French, Austrian, Italian and British instructors to gain the highest qualification in those countries. To gain the right to teach in France (even temporarily), an instructor has to pass either the Eurotest or a similar slalom test - the Test Technique .

The result of this is a lot of hard work for British instructors wanting to work in France, but it has also led to quite a lot of tension between the various governing bodies of skiing in Europe, particularly as the rules for working in different countries change regularly. Also, until recently, the only way to teach snowboarding or any other snowsport legally in France was to pass the Eurotest - on skis. This is a result of the French refusing to recognise 'Snowboard Instructor' as a separate profession to 'Ski Instructor'.

It is for these reasons that many (non-French) ski instructors loudly criticise the French system as elitist, nationalistic and with an inordinate bias towards racing (particularly as few customers of a typical ski school want to learn to race). However, it is their country and if we as foreigners wish to work there, it is only natural that we are expected to follow the local rules. So, I'll be in the gates doing GS training at every opportunity until I get through it.

The photo at the top right shows Steve W enjoying some summer powder after the day's race training had been abandoned due to too much snow.

Thoughts on spring skiing

Following on from my last post where I mused about the advantages of booking a skiing holiday later rather than earlier in the season, another advantage recently occured to me. Skiing later in the season, after the clocks have gone forward, doesn't just mean that the sun goes down an hour later at night. It also means that the snow warms up an hour later as well. Meaning that you have an extra hour of good snow before it turns to slush in the mid afternoon, and also meaning that you don't have to be quite such an early bird to catch the best conditions.


The picture was taken from the Portella de Rialb near the Ordino-Arcalis Valley in Andorra the week after all the Andorran resorts had shut. As you can see, there is plenty of snow around still, and we enjoyed a fine day out ski touring with good spring conditions. I guess my main point is that April skiing can be just as good as February, so don't write off the end of the season and head for a cold wet beach. Looking at the weather reports its snowing in Andorra even as I write...

Another one done

Well, that's about it for this winter. All the ski areas in Andorra have now closed for the season, in spite of the fact that there is still plenty of snow about. If you are lucky you might well be skiing in the Alps or North America where lots of areas are still open. It always seems strange to me that resorts shut up shop well before the snow goes - the deciding factor is the number of people I think; it seems that as soon as we hit April everbody forgets about skiing and heads to the beach. Even if it's raining there. So the resorts close simply because there aren't enough visitors to make it viable to open.

I'ts been a strange winter, the snow came later than it has in years and there were lots of dark mutterings about climate change and the end of skiing as we know it. Of course the snow did come, as it always does, and for the last four weeks of the season it snowed almost every day. The resort had the chance to demonstrate how good they are at making snow when they have to, and despite the many rumours bouncing around there was never any iminent danger of an early closure. In truth there have always been occasional late snow years, just as other years have seen monster snowfalls in early November - Mother Nature is ever fickle. To my mind if you want the best chance of the best snow then February and March are much more reliable than Christmas or January. If you want a week when the sun shines, the slopes are empty and the snow is still generally good look at early April.

So, is climate change really affecting the skiing? That's a pretty difficult one to answer, as each year is different from the last. There have been good and bad winters recently all over the world, and snow has fallen in some pretty unusual places. January here was cold in spite of the sunshine, April has been relatively warm in spite of the snow - as expected. Certainly people will speak of a golden age when snow fell by the bucketful year after year, and as a child I remember driving to Cairngorm (well my dad was doing the driving) with snow piled a couple of metres deep on each side of the road. However I also remember getting horribly sunburnt one roasting hot weekend skiing in Scotland as well. I think people always like to reminisce about better days when they were younger, but in truth the same amount of snow seems to be falling on the globe as always, although perhaps the patterns of where and when are a little more erratic. Left unchecked, of course a warmer planet cannot be good for the ski industry, nor for the world in general. For the moment, however, the skiing is still good, the snow is lasting well into April and beyond - so lets make the most of it while we can. And of course switch the lights off, walk instead of driving, put on an extra jumper and turn the heating down.

Welcome to the Winter Wonderings Blog

Well, winter has almost finished so it might not seem like the best time to start a brand new blog about winter sports and winter life. However the Alps and the Pyrenees have both had what seems like a winter's worth of snow in the space of a couple of weeks, and that's after a season of blue skies and sunshine. And when winter does finally come to a close here, it's only a couple of months until the southern hemisphere winter kicks off. You've got a wide choice of resorts and ski fields across Australasia and South America, the fun is never over.



So, since it's my first post I'd better introduce myself; I am a ski instructor based in Arinsal, Andorra for the (Northern hemisphere) winter and planning to head south to New Zealand for the other winter. I am reaching the end of my second season here (fourth as an instructor, sixth altogether). The nickname Swedish Jan was coined last year when a couple of instructors decided to see how many people they could convice I was from Sweden. For the record, I was born in Manchester, England. Anyone wanting to know more can check out my website at http://www.ianhuyton.com. I'll throw in a picture here so you can see what I look like in the oh so fetching ski school uniform...


Well enough about me, future posts will probably talk about ski instructing and the various qualifications, courses and organisations involved, travel around the world, my attempts to learn Spanish, global warming and its consequences for the ski industry, random rumours, the history of skiing and anything else I can think of. The way I see it a Blog site is just an outlet for all my musings - be prepared. For the rest of this post, I just want to say a little about where I am - the town of Arinsal.


Arinsal is one of the ski resorts in the Principality of Andorra - a small country perched in the Pyrenees on the border between France and Spain - population about 70 000, size - well it fits onto a single 1:25 000 scale map so its about 20 miles from one side to the other. The country is not part of the EU, so is an attractive duty free shopping destination for both the French and the Spanish. Tourism and banking are the main industries. The skiing is not huge in comparison to the Alps but is friendly and accessible. The Arinsal ski school makes a point of employing English speaking instructors (as well as speakers of French, Spanish, Catalan, Czech, Russian, Danish, Portugese, Hebrew, Dutch, Afrikaans etc.) and ensuring that people are taught in their own language. This is frequently not the case in local ski schools accross the Pyrenees and the Alps. Arinsal itself is the friendliest town I have ever lived in, and this is probably the reason so many people keep coming back year after year, either to holiday or to work. The town is small enough to feel homely but big enough to throw a damn good party. For me it ticks all the boxes as a great destination, and I know I'll be back next year. For more info about the town see our new website, http://www.arinsal-andorra.com and leave us a message in the forum ;-)


Hasta Luego