The research was performed during 7-day program. It included 126 alpine ski naïve students, randomized into two equally-sized groups, at the study start not differing in morphological characteristics or motor abilities. Participants of one group were taught by parallel technique exclusively, while the other group learned alpine skiing through parallel and snow-plough techniques. Ski knowledge was tested by demonstration of five ski technique elements (traversing, uphill turn, basic turn, short turn and parallel turn) by five independent judges. Metric characteristics of judges were determined by Pearson coefficients (r) between the given grades on five elements, and factor analysis was used to determine judges’ homogeneity. Participants of the two groups differed significantly in the grades obtained for the elements: uphill (3.24 vs. 2.95 ; p=0.03), short (2.85 vs. 2.44 ; p=0.01) and parallel turn (3.20 vs. 2.85 ; p=0.01), where higher grades were achieved by participants combining parallel and snow-plough techniques. As participants of the two groups did not differ in motor abilities or morphological characteristics, their achievement in alpine skiing is attributable to different learning models. So, higher grades obtained by participants taught by parallel and snow-plough techniques are probably result of better basic ski movements. They adopted continuous semicircular leg movements, which helped in better demonstration of short and parallel turns. Desire to faster convey the knowledge of alpine skiing by omitting snow-plough technique, in the end impoverishes alpine ski beginners for ski movements important during more advanced phases of learning. According to our observations, it is more efficient to initially use both parallel and snow-plough techniques in process of teaching alpine ski beginners how to ski.

Education