Skiing Guide: Lessons

Skiing lessons are the focus of this installment of our learn to ski guide.

By taking lessons at a ski school, a professional ski instructor will be able to show you how to ski correctly within a week. After that time, your skills and confidence will be at a level that will enable you to safely make the most of what your chosen resort has to offer. It is important, however, to make sure you look into any ski school's reputation for quality, the cost of its services, and what purpose it hopes to serve, all of which can vary considerably. You should enquire about at least the following

Ask them if they offer private lessons and group lessons, or just one or the other. Private lessons are much more expensive than group ones but all of the ski instructors attention is concentrated on you and you'll make quicker progress. Group lessons, however, can offer the fun of meeting new people and can give you an added benefit of hearing the experiences of your classmates. First timers, in particular seem to prefer class instruction.

If you elect to start with group lessons, it is important to find out the number of students are in a typical class. While it is dependent on how the school manages the students, an ideal class size should be no larger than seven or eight students. Try to avoid schools that claim they can teach larger class sizes, because quality instruction will not be the school's goal, but rather its focus will be to make money.

In addition to class size, the experience level the school focuses on is also important; do they cater to beginners, intermediate or expert levels, or maybe all levels? Skiers with more or less the same skiing abilities should all be assigned to the same class. In order to assess your abilities before placing you in a class, a school might ask you to participate in an instructor-supervised test of sorts where you will be asked to ski down a couple of slopes and show them how well you are able to turn. If you're unsure of your ability, it's better to start off in a lower ability class and ask to be moved up into another if you find it too easy.

Also, do they divide classes by age or sex? Some will be targeting specific groups, whereas others will have an 'everyone welcome' policy. Generally, the more specific a ski school is in its purpose (for example, children only or women only) the higher quality they'll be as they'll be tailoring their instructions to a specific set of needs.