AUSTRALIA

On-Snow Presentation

By Jason Clauscen

With Levi being my third Interski and with a selection process that was very different from those in the past, it was quite the experience.

The on-snow prestation was probably the one piece I felt least prepared for.

With only a few days on snow focusing on the demonstration runs, webisodes and the in-door presentation, the on-snow took a back seat.

 

We did, however, discuss a few key fundamentals during the process.

  1. Being stable by “Moving with Purpose”
  2. Transition – How we predominately move though turn throughout levels in the APSI.
  3. Alignment

These three areas we felt should stand out with APSI snowboarding.

 

Nobody had been to Levi and the conditions were rumoured to be variable. Fortunately, Levi produced the goods! The terrain was epic. The groomers were perfect, with hero snow and the weather was just as good, with several blue bird days.

With two days of scoping the terrain and fine tuning the indoor presentation we started to connect the dots with the terrain and plan.

The Levi organisers produced an APP that informed us on how many attendees we had in each session, Am and PM, both of which ran for 2 hours. We had 31 attend the AM session and 19 attend the PM session.

We ended up splitting into two groups – Kylie and Jon taking the intermediate group and myself taking a higher group based on riding switch in varied terrain. The First run we were to ride as a group though varied terrain – discussing how we moved.

The focuses were:

  • Rotation – was this full body to aid alignment or lower or upper body to initiate turn.
  • Up- un weighting or down un-weighting the transition.

 At the bottom we then split into the two groups and discussed that in varied terrain we probably used a mix of full body and lower body rotation to adjust to the changes in terrain and snow – And also a mix of up-unweighting and down un-weighting depending on the changes on terrain.

From there we started to be quite clear around the APSI system and the main characteristics that candidates and guests see.

The APSI focuses on;

  • Full body rotation with refined lower body movements for better alignment throughout phases.
  • Primarily up un-weighted turns throughout the certification level due to Australian conditions – but introduce down unweighting at level 3 and 4 for the variable terrain.

We ran the countries through several drills to challenge their riding and open discussion.

A mixture of;

  • Up un-weighted and down un-weighted turned on a ridge line to discuss transition. This also challenged their timing of when the transition occurred.
  • Bowtie turns for transition
  • Toe to Toes and heel to heel turns to discuss rotation and alignment.
  • Switch riding on variable terrain.

Near the end we finished with some higher-end Level 4 turns for my group to clearly demonstrate the standard, and Kylie and Jon’s group the level 2 and 3 level short turns for clarity. As we were one of the first groups of the week, we really wanted to get the attendees snowboarding. With only 2-hours and -20 degrees it worked well.

Some discussions with nations also help understand their system which was insightful and lead to better clarity though the week. More to come on this in the next article.

Hope you enjoyed the snapshot of the Australian on-snow. See you out there!