A tech talk webinar series for ski and ride instructors featuring experts from around the Vail Resorts and PSIA-AASI network.
Next Talk: Tuesday, April 8th @ 7:00 PM EST
Interactive Coaching
Featuring: Christa Ross
(PSIA-E Alpine Examiner)
Cross-Discipline
How do we create collaborative, student-centered lessons that make our lessons more effective and fun? Join Christa as she explores how to take two-way communication beyond the dreaded “how’d that feel?” and create a better learning environment for your students.
Join Us on Zoom
Meeting ID: 899 6456 5969
Passcode: snowsports
Mailing List
Upcoming Schedule
April 8th is the final tech talk of the Winter 2025 season. While we do not have a return date set yet, stay tuned for updates on the return of the monthly Okemo Tech Talks Summer Series! Sign up for the mailing list to be among the first to know.
Past WebinarS & Recordings
#18: Visual Cues for MA: What to Look For
Featuring: Brandon Bock
Alpine-Focused
Movement analysis, one of the most fundamental skills in snowsports instruction, requires discerning between effective and ineffective movement patterns. But where do I start? What do I look for? Join Brandon as he walks you through a variety of cues you can look for in your own MA, visually presented with crystal-clear, slow-motion footage. (Originally broadcast on March 25th, 2025)
#17: Control the feedback avalanche
Featuring: Katie Brinton
Cross-Discipline
Giving feedback got you frozen? Buried under an avalanche of advice? Join us for an interactive tech talk on using the PSIA-AASI’s People and Teaching Skills to fine-tune your feedback game—and keep your teaching (and learning) on track! (Originally broadcast on March 11th, 2025)
#16: The Challenge of Picking an Activity
Featuring: Quinn Ferguson
Alpine-Focused
Have you ever struggled to pick the “right” activity when teaching a lesson? In this tech talk, Quinn explores how to build trust with students, collaborate with them, and highlight particular fundamentals in a way that allows the ideal activity to practically pick itself. (Originally broadcast February 25th, 2025)
#15: Fun(damental)-Based Bag of Tricks
Featuring: Mark Aiken
Alpine-Focused
Add tools to your teaching bag of tricks! Join Teaching Children Snowsports co-author Mark Aiken as he walks us through tasks rooted in the fundamentals. Practice your movement analysis skills while discussing situations where we can apply our new tricks. (Originally broadcast February 11th, 2025)
#14: Teaching (Almost) Everyone
Featuring: Brandon Bock
Cross-Discipline
While traditionally associated with children, the CAP model can be a powerful tool that can also help us better cater to adults, seniors, and even adaptive students. Join Brandon as he explores a new perspective on this model to help snowsports instructors adapt to students’ individual and changing needs. (Originally broadcast January 14, 2025)
#13: Group Movement Analysis
Featuring: Brandon Bock
Alpine-Focused
Addressing the multitude of student goals and needs that can come with a group lesson can be a daunting challenge. In this tech talk, Brandon Bock dives into the technical aspects of this scenario and shares insights on his movement analysis process when handling group lessons, instructor clinics, or teaching assessments. (Originally broadcast November 19, 2024)
#12: Skiing Through Transition
Featuring: Dave Raybould
Alpine-Focused
Dave Raybould (PSIA-E Alpine Examiner and Stowe Manager) joins us to break down different types of turn transitions in skiing, including cross-over, cross-under, and everything in between. Learn how these different transitions affect ski performance and gain insights into when and where each type might benefit you or your students the most. (Originally broadcast October 29, 2024)
#11: Finding Your True North: Why Your “Why” Matters
Featuring: Philip Schwartz
Cross-Discipline
Philip Schwartz (Gore Mountain, Maple Ski Ridge) delves into how discovering and embracing your personal core values can sustain your passion for snowsports amidst the challenges of injuries, blows to morale, and balancing life's demands. Join us to hear stories of perseverance and learn strategies to ensure you stay committed, curious and energized in the best job in the world. (Originally broadcast September 24, 2024)
#10: How To Plan a Lesson
Featuring: Peter Novom
Cross-Discipline
What is the process of building a killer lesson? Peter Novom joins us for a discussion on strategies for designing impactful lessons no matter if you’re working with a group, preparing for an assessment, or going for a tryout. Gain insight on when to plan in detail or when to modify, and how we make decisions around lesson content. (Originally broadcast August 27, 2024)
#9: Self-Talk For Performance 101
Featuring: Quinn Ferguson
Cross-Discipline
Self-talk is an accessible and direct skill applicable to all snowsports professionals and students. Join Quinn Ferguson, a mental performance consultant, as we delve into the nuances of language and its potential to facilitate greater autonomy not only in one's internal dialogue, but also while communicating with others. (Originally broadcast July 30, 2024)
#8: Practical Biomechanics and Physics
Featuring: Brandon Bock
Alpine-Focused
We get it, trying to read about biomechanics and physics can be a powerful cure for even the worst insomnia. Join us as Brandon explores a fun and unique perspective on some of the most important concepts of biomechanics and physics as they apply to skiing with practical applications to apply to your own lessons and movement analysis. (Originally broadcast June 25, 2024)
#7: Off-Season Training For Snowsports
Featuring: Brandon Bock, Doug Stewart, and Myles Cotter-Sparrow
Cross-Discipline
A discussion on the importance of training your body for snowsports during the off-season, ideas on how to approach off-season training, and how your everyday movements can carry into your on-snow performance. (Originally broadcast May 23, 2024)
#6: Cross-Discipline Movement Analysis
Featuring: Mike Ma
Cross-Discipline
A discussion with PSIA-AASI National Team Member Mike Ma on how and why to train your eye to see other equipment sliding. Mike covers some of the benefits you can get for your primary discipline as well as discusses a structure and limits of growing a more diverse eye. (Originally broadcast March 20, 2024)
#5: Understanding & Influencing Motivation
Featuring: Nate Gardner
Cross-Discipline
PSIA-E Alpine Examiner and Eastern Team member Nate Gardner discusses strategies and factors that can help us understand and influence the motivations of our students. (Originally broadcast March 7, 2024)
#4: Express Yourself
Featuring: Angelo Ross
Cross-Discipline
Join PSIA-AASI Education Development Manager and The Fall Line: With Chaos and Co. co-host, Angelo Ross, for a conversation about leveraging curriculum standards to express yourself as a professional snowsports educator. (Originally broadcast February 21, 2024)
#3: Alpine Movement Analysis
Featuring: Brandon Bock
Alpine-Focused
By popular request, an alpine movement analysis session focused on gaining experience with observing and evaluating higher-end skiers and relating observations from those skiers to a level 2 candidate. Brandon also shares some tips on how he’s developed his own movement analysis skills over his career as well as some insights on how our evaluation and prescription processes relate to the Learning Connection model and finding success in our assessments. (Originally broadcast February 7, 2024)
#2: Mental Performance In Snowsports
Featuring: Quinn Ferguson
Cross-Discipline
Discover the motivational orientations behind your goals to better understand yourself and develop mental skills and strategies to help increase performance under pressure. (Originally broadcast January 24, 2024)
#1: Learning From Other Disciplines
Featuring: Brandon Bock and Austin Moody
Cross-Discipline
Whether you have one plank or two, your heels are attached or not, or you’re using outriggers or a sit ski, the mechanics that dictate how our planks perform are all the same. Yet, different disciplines tend to think about how we get our skis and boards to perform in vastly different ways. Join us as we take a look through the perspectives of other disciplines for lessons we can use to make us better at our own skiing, riding, and teaching. (Originally broadcast January 10, 2024)