Val d'Isere, Tignes, Meribel & Courchevel

Ski Club Seasons Start Up – Day 1

Ski Club of Great Britain under tdc guidance

I spend every autumn looking forward to the Ski Club week, it’s a bit like an official start to the season for me, I get to spend six days with some old friends and get royally spoilt by the Mark Warner staff in the ‘Perce Neige’ in Tignes le Lac. Full English breakfast, tea and cake, evening dinner, jacuzzi and the opportunity to ski with two groups of Ski Club members 6 hours a day for 3 days each.

The lesson format is great from a coaching point of view because we have plenty of time to make changes to people’s performance, so I took my time today warming the guys up. I could tell they were all itching to get going as they all beat me on the walk from the hotel to the lifts, but after a warmer to make sure we all knew each others names and a quick physical warm up we headed towards the Gratalu Chair into the sun to sample some of the awesome piste skiing on offer in Tignes. The snow was cold and grippy and perfectly groomed and the team soon found their ski legs.

We started with some balance drills to get everyone over their outside ski and then I filmed the team to use as a benchmark to compare their progress over the three days. We quickly outlined some common threads to iron out, starting with the vertical ‘pop’ to reduce the amount of wasted muscular effort while at the same time improve the skis’ grip at the start of the turn. The session progressed by focussing on active leg stretching and rotating with some free practice before finishing off with another filmed run to assess the changes the guys had made over the course of the day.

I’ve decided to follow the advice of Louise Alison of Bonne Sante Physio and start incorporating a warm down when time permits – after the warm down we returned to the hotel for some video feedback where a few technical hitches caused me a touch of stress as I couldn’t get the t.v. to work. Fortunately for me the Perce Neige bar manager- ‘lovely Lily’ saved my bacon by dropping everything to fix the problem, and we spent probably too long analysing the days skiing, without a doubt this improved everyone’s understanding of the movements we’re making and the changes we need to make.

Tommorrow’s another day and I can’t wait to show off the awesome skiing in Val d’Isere, in the mean time, I must dash, the Jacuzzi is calling before a three course dinner with wine – I feel like I’m on holiday!

Ben L

tdc coaches on the Val d’Isere World Cup

tdc coaches working on the World Cup Super G today in Val d’Isere.
The Face de Bellevarde provided an awesome spectacle as over 30 racers crashed out on one of the hardest courses on the circuit.
Flat light and snowfall all day made conditions even harder for the competitors but this didn’t deter Lena (tdc‘s new coach for 09/10), who managed to get photos with Bode Miller, Ted Ligety (2nd Place) and Andreas Walchhofer (1st place), not to mention getting on the podium and bagging a bottle of champagne in the process!

SSL21622

Fresh powder and blue skies

The second day of the VIP ski host training saw the groups run by tdc‘s Phil, Paul and Josh ripping up the powder all over the Espace Killy. a special mention goes to 63 year old Roger who was on fire in the off piste over in Tignes and has a few tricks to show the youngsters. For some these were their first turns in the deep stuff, so there were plenty of face plants…not a bad way to clear the head after a few beers the night before! The sky was a perfect blue and everyone made great progress. For the 3 tdc coaches it has been a pleasure to ski with such a personable group of people, we look forward to seeing some of you back again next year. Have a great season, cheers Paul, Phil and Josh.

VIP Training

tdc coaches were out on the hill in force today. With 4 Early Season Clinics running and 3 groups of VIP/Snowline ski hosts on a tdc training course, there are plenty of black jackets on show this week. The VIP ski hosts will be working in resorts across the Alps this season and are honing their technique and their leadership skills under the guidance of tdc coaches. Conditions were tricky today and there were a few sets of tired legs when we finally made it to the aprÃ¨s-ski! More of the same tomorrow, hopefully with some fresh snow during the night.

tdc launch day

The whole tdc team was on the mountain today to launch our ski school’s season. We are really pleased to have Josh back with us for the winter and we are over the moon to have Lena joining our team. We are as strong as ever and hope to ski with you this winter in Val or Tignes. Here are a few photos of some of the tam on the hill today, the whole lot can be seen at http://picasaweb.google.com/tdcski

From TDC training day

Powder snow in Val d’isere and Tignes

Gav or Gi Ski powder in Tignes and Val d\’isere

The Espace Killy is Open!

The Espace Killy is open!

The resort of Val dâ€™Isere opened today on the 28 November and put on a great show. The snow is not massively deep but the runs above the mid stations of Solaise and the Bellevarde are open offering a large area to explore in beautiful sunshine. It is possible to ski down to La Daille and the link to Tignes is open which means that the excellent snow of the Grande Motte is available.

There is a party atmosphere at the bottom of the ski lifts with everyone amazed at the quality of the snow. The artificial snow making facilities are on whenever possible and with the snow forecast for the end of the weekend it should not be long before even more of the area opens up ready to welcome the World Cup. The development centre started our season with a special lesson for my boy Oscar who loved having skis on for the first ever time. I think we are going back tomorrow.

Call us on 0033 6 15 55 31 56 or email [email protected] or [email protected] to book a session

View form the Bottom of Val d'Isere today

Season about to kick off

It has been a bit of a road trip around Europe for Gi recently. Firstly ten days in Hintertux attending and delivering to the BASI conference, followed by a few days running a selection of new trainers for BASI.

Coming back to the Tarentaise and both Tignes and Val d’isere make Zermatt look pretty bare for snow cover. We have had some warm weather here but we had 25cm of snow last night and Val d’Isere will be opening this weekend as planned. Tignes is already open and there is good skiing to be had on the pistes.

The picture is my group on the L1 in Zermatt. The mountain in the background interests me because it reminds me of the Belvarde a bit, or at least a pale imitation.

See you out here.

Brilliant snow conditions in Val d’Isere and Tignes

Things are looking great for the start of the season.

Thanks to YSE for this great photo looking at the Solaise 11th Nov 2009.

Looking good…

And thanks to John for the text as well – “This is extraordinary! It snowed again yesterday, hit -10? overnight, and the snow cannons were running this morning. Apart from the fact that there are still orange needles on the larches, it could be January.Â This is how winters used to be before global warming, Gordon Brown and the decline of religion”

Check out the Webcams – www.tdcski.com/webcams.shtml

tdc coach Ben Langridge on the dry slopes

First turns of the season..â€¦ on Dendex.

I’m whiling away the rest of the autumn with a bit of coaching at the local dry ski slope.

I haven’t skied on the ‘mat’ for probably 5 years now – and I’d honestly forgotten how much fun it is.
I even managed to squeeze out 2 sets of 50 old school short swings in 100 meters!
Don’t ask me to carve though – I left all my kit in Val – so I’m donning some old rear entry hire boots and some health and safety conscious – you won’t cut your fingers on these edges – hire skis.

I’ve been asked to coach some slalom racing which is always a pleasure, starting with Portsmouth Uni who are training for the British Universities Champs – I took some photos of them through the gates which are now posted on the tdc photo gallery http://picasaweb.google.com/tdcski/
Unfortunately since we were skiing under the floodlights and the guys were so fast – I struggled to get really clear shots but some of them are ok, even when blurred however – you can still pick out good and bad technique, hopefully the team will find them useful.

I also set a slalom course for a Southern Region race – which had to start on a big 35 degree ramp. I was worried the kids would pick up too much speed so I set 4 big ‘Tomba turns’ at the top, unfortunately it was a touch too tight so I had to whittle it down to make it more manageable.
It was interesting for me to see that the kids were super comfortable and fast edge to edge – when the gates were more or less straight! But only a few could handle the bigger turns at the top which showed they didn’t have enough leg rotation. Often when ‘mat skiers’ get onto the snow they find it hard to maintain a constant speed because they’re not used to finishing their turns, the dry slopes being so much slower means that leg rotation is less important.

Anyway I hope I get the chance to work with these kids again, I’ve been scheming some drills and exercises just in case. In the meantime I’m getting ready for the winter – although I’m not looking forward to having to force on a pair of front entry boots – I can’t wait to get back on the snow, gonna try to beat 100 old school short swings on the ‘Village’! Enough rambling – I’m heading into Christchurch for a coffeeâ€¦ my round today then boys!

Cheers – Ben Langridge
tdc coach – www.tdcski.com