As our attention turns toward winter each fall, it’s normal to start wondering what the buzz word will be- what will everyone be talking about this winter? “Center Line” and the “Common Threads” are those buzzwords. For those of you wondering if you just travelled back to an era of stretch pants and long skis, hold tight. There are many members who’ve never heard of these buzzwords, and that’s exactly why we want to lean into them.
At the PSIA-AASI Spring Conference in May 2024, the Alpine Task Force* decided to reintegrate aspects of the Center Line concept in our Alpine Skiing Assessments starting the 24-25 season. We identified it as the part of our Technical Understanding story that is not commonly utilized these days, and still plays a critical role in PSIA-AASI. Knowing the Center Line and Common Threads adds context to the idea of “task variations,” and deepens our understanding of the Skiing and Teaching Fundamentals.
The Center Line concept was born in the 1980’s to support and clarify aspects of the Skills Concept. It identified the Common Threads, which are common movements or mechanics that are the same in Wedge Turns, Wedge Christies, Basic Parallel, and Dynamic Parallel Turns performed on groomed terrain. For demonstration purposes, each of these tasks are performed in a medium radius corridor, with a turn shape that is symmetrical above and below the fall line, to maintain a consistent speed. The Common Threads include:
- Both skis stay on the snow
- The ankles move in unison creating matching forward angles
- The skis are simultaneously guided/steered toward the fall line to begin the turn
- A countered relationship is maintained through the finish of the turn
- The legs flex and extend independent of each other to move the Center of Mass laterally from one turn to the next
- Pole use and position supports the stability and alignment of the torso
With the Center Line intact, we can vary the skill blends and application of fundamentals to meet the needs of different environments, speeds, and situations. For example, pressure control skills take a very prominent role in fall line mogul skiing. Or, when you are doing an outside ski turn or a javelin turn, both skis don’t stay on the snow all of the time anymore. Other examples include how rotational control becomes so important for pivot slips, or how edge control takes center stage in railroad track turns and carved large radius turns.
Center Line is more than skiing with a narrow application of the fundamentals. Variations of skill blends and application of the Fundamentals make up an important part of Center Line. The variations from the Center Line are just another way to express Lateral Learning; a key tool in skill development. By exploring different skill blends and applications of fundamentals, we advance from one milestone of Center Line to the next. Each variation challenges our skillfulness; we learn the limits of things like how far we can turn the skis, tip them on edge, or how to finesse the edge angle.
Armed with the Center Line chapter of PSIA-AASI’s skiing story, we can see how later models, like Stepping Stones and the Fundamentals, work together to tell us a more complete story of skiing. Together, all of them inform us about skiing and how to structure our lessons to create learning experiences. Armed with technical content that has a theme and is flexible in nature, we can guide a student’s reflection to transfer the learning in to long-term memory much easier. Without the whole picture of our technical story, lessons become muddled with thin reflections, lacking any really memorable moments.
As we look forward to this coming season, take some time to explore how Wedge, Wedge Christies, Basic Parallel, and Dynamic Parallel turns are linked to each other. Along the way, explore how all of the other activities on the Skiing IDP are variations from this Center Line. The experience will make you a better skier and teacher. Here’s to the coming winter, cheers!
*The Alpine Task Force is made up of regional representatives (I am the current Rocky Mountain representative) who are working on our national alignment initiative. We meet several times each year working to surface best practices in our assessments to reach PSIA-AASI’s alignment goals for the 25-26 season.