The Ski Instructor Podcast

I hope you had a good summer. This week, I travelled to Verbier to meet someone I have been wanting to meet for a long time, Julian Griffiths of ES.   We spoke at great length over coffee and in his office about his history in skiing, Brexit and the history of British and French ski relations in Europe. I had a great time making this one and I think there is scope for a follow up because we didn't...

I hope you are all having a great summer.  I took a trip over the Grand St Bernard Pass to go and see Phil Brown of Impulse Racing.  Phil is a year round ski race coach and in heavily involved in the UK schools ski racing scene.   We chat at length about many diverse topics such as skis, running a business, collaboration, the coaching vs instructing and much more. Phil is a real character and this...

This week for episode 7 I had the pleasure of chatting with Tom Gellie.  Spoiler - the sound quality is not amazing on this one as it was done over Skype.  It gets better though - stick with it. Tom has represented Australia with APSI at two Interskis, once on Telemark and once on Alpine. In addition he runs his business, Functional Body, out of Sydney dealing with helping people get out of pain a...

I hope you all had a great winter.  It's not all over for some of us though and this week, I chat to Scott Pleva from Inside Out Skiing. Scott works year round in an indoor Snowdome in Hemel Hempstead in the UK. He also takes his indoor client base on overseas trips to Europe. We had a really good chat about teaching skiing indoors vs outdoors and went in depth about rules and regulations for teac...

This week I travelled to Saint-Gervais-Les-Bains in the Chamonix Valley to interview Derek Tate, the Chairman of the Irish Association of Snowsports Instructors (IASI) and Director of the British Alpine Ski School (BASS) in the Chamonix Valley. The Irish created quite an impression this year at Interski and this was down to Derek and his team's hard work and innovative ideas. We talk extensively a...

For this episode of the Ski Instructor Podcast, I travelled to Verbier to interview Warren Smith of The Warren Smith Ski Academy.   www.warrensmith-skiacademy.com This was the end of something of a journey for me because I initially learnt to ski as an instructor with the Academy years ago in Saas Fee and it was great to return to where it all started for me. We talked about many subjects includin...

For this episode, I interview Ali MacGrain, PSIA and NZSIA instructor, trainer and examiner.  Ali just recently moved to a new role at Squaw Valley in the USA having previously worked at Northstar, Mammoth, Cardrona, Verbier to name but a few. We talk in this episode about differences in national styles and teaching between systems, a bit of tech chat, where the money goes for an all day private l...

In this episode I interview Jaz Lamb.  Jaz is the Director of BASS (British Alpine Ski School) in Morzine as well as the Director of the BASI (British Association of Ski Instructors) National Education Team. Jaz talks at length about his history in skiing, BASI's involvement in the upcoming Interski Congress in Bulgaria, ski instructors and business and much more. We also chatted about ski pole le...

In this, the very first episode of The Ski Instructor podcast, I interview Phil Smith who was here in Champery/Les Crosets for the Welsh Championships. Phil and I talked on a wide variety of topics, the old wild west days of early British ski instructors in France, cultural differences as well as Phil's own unique spin on open and close learning environments.  You can find out more about Phil in t...