Ski Instructor Academy – Our ISIA Training Team 2017/18

Ski Instructor Academy – The ISIA Team is game on!

Our ski instructor academy this winter sees two training groups running parallel to each others, during the full length of the season: the ISIA Team and the Level 4 Team! Both groups follow tailored training schedules, created around everyone’s needs. Every year the programme changes, as the participants change! This does mean some extra work for the coaches but that’s why we are here for!
Interested in becoming a ski instructor? You first need to gain your Level 1 and Level 2 qualifications! Follow the link to our Ski Instructor Courses home page to find out how!

The ISIA Training

The ISIA Team is composed by instructors holding level 2 qualifications.  Together they train towards the ISIA Stamp, for a super busy season with us!

December for our ISIA Ski Instructor Academy

The first block of training for the ISIA Team started on the very first week of December and kept on going all the way to Cristmas week. After a week of orientation and teaching refreshing with the director of Matterhorn Diamonds Ski School, Rowena Phillips, the ISIA team focused on personal skills development.
Our head coach, Federico Sollini, aimed this part of training at movement pattern and skills development. Starting so early in the season makes possible to dedicate a good chunk of time to the improvement of skills like balance, coordination and body awareness. Fundamental skills in skiing and essential elements required to develop further every technical movement.

During these weeks we also started posture and stretching training. This is part of our fitness programme for all instructors. Just like any other part of our training programme, this changes every season, following the needs of the members of the team.
Through our Postural Educator, each member of the team had the chance to have a posture check during this first part of the season. This enable us to have a first check up of each team member then monitor each one through out the season. Just like in professional sport teams, we follow each individual with exercises and advices tailored around personal needs. The hope is to avoid injuries in the season; as well as creating knowledge and awareness of the body that will stay with the instructor for the rest of his/her career.

Christmas and Teaching

Teaching hours started to come in nice and early. Towards the end of the last training week in December, even before Christmas week.
Of course we took the chance to celebrate in big style! Everyone gathered around for a nice evening together with cheesy Christmas songs and plenty (by far) food and drinks!

After two and half solid weeks of work, training started again in January. Despite the weather playing everything it had against us with blizzards, heavy snowfalls and avalanche risks higher than ever, training kept on going!

January for our ISIA Ski Instructor Academy

During the second week of January, following two days of hard snowfall, Zermatt got cut out from the rest of the world. The road down to the valley was shut, along with the railway and, of course, the ski area. Not even the helicopters could take off! Town went in lock down, with orders from the authories to avoid using certain roads and stay off the public areas after 9.30am.
Everything was playing against us, and many others actually gave up on training.
But we had plan B (there is always a plan B!).

Everyone gathered at the Head Coach’s chalet, where a big private garden, covered in 2 meters of snow, was waiting to be used for some great transcever research training!
The Mountain Safety course was just “round the corner” at the beginning of February. We were eiger to put as much training as possible towards this module, without penalizing the technical training!
Even though the weather didn’t play ball for what concerned skiing, we still managed to run all the training hours we needed!
In the space of a few days we also covered map reading, snow reading; a series of lectures on ski equipment, biomechanics and fitness for skiing!

 

Find out more about what is included in the ISIA Training by following the link to the second part!
To find out more about the ISIA requirements visit the ISIA official page.

The Subzero Coaching Coaching Team

 

ISIA Ski Instructor Academy Switzerland – Subzero Coaching

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