Why You Should Fail as a Ski Instructor

As ski and snowboard instructors, we try to setup our guests for success. But failure during our own development is crucial for long term success. Are you someone who embraces failure, or leans away from it? The path to becoming a ski or snowboard instructor should be carved with failure along the way.

Failure in sport gives us great benefits. While it can seem counter-intuitive at first, failure leads to bigger gains in the long term. This leads to new techniques, better understanding of your own limits, a stronger desire to improve and greater empathy with guests. Let’s first take a look at a non-failure approach to better understand why we should fail sometimes.

Example of a Non-Failure Approach to Learning

Not being willing to fail can be seen fairly often in kids lessons. If you’re a new ski or snowboard instructor I can guarantee that you’ll meet this type of child. And you’ll meet them multiple times during your lessons and career. This child will be confident and most likely a decent but not amazing skier or snowboarder. They will be able to ski all terrain within their ability level comfortably.

This child will certainly be eager to tell you how good they are at skiing and that they know everything about skiing. They will likely boast that they are faster than the other kids. But, we see something very interesting when tasked with a challenge to their ability level or a change to their skiing.

The non-failure approach child will struggle mentally with something they find challenging. They will back away from the challenge, instead of using their confidence and acquired skill level to rise to it. They are not willing to put themselves out there and possibly fail. Instead, they will default to what they already know and feel confident with. In their mind, they are already amazing at skiing. Anything that could possible shake this image of themselves will be strongly resisted against, sometimes to the point of full denial. Progression will be minimal until this mindset can be changed.

Skiing Myths For New Instructors

Failure Is a Natural Part of Progression

In the example above, we can see that a lack of willing to fail as a skier or snowboarder holds us back. It both blocks us from our full potential and reduces our mental strength to deal with challenging situations. It doesn’t matter what your age, ability level or background is in skiing or snowboarding, failure is a part of any progression.

Failure is something we see everyday from our guests when we teach them to ski or snowboard. As instructors, it’s our job to provide a plan to improve and offer feedback for our guests. This feedback and correction creates change in their skiing or snowboarding. We’re used to dealing with failure from an outside perspective, and you’ll often see the value in this during a lesson progression. But of course, it can be tricky to bring into our own improvement.

When you first learned to ski or snowboard, you will have tried things, failed, figured out why you failed and tried something new. This is no different in your improvement as a ski instructor. It’s also true in both your own skiing and your ability to teach.

Failure Makes You a Better Skier

Have you ever found skiing or snowboarding difficult? If you answered yes then you’re in the same category of every elite level skier out there. If you answered no, it’s probably time to re-evaluate both your ability and potential. You can never know your limits with skiing and snowboarding without failure.

Physically, there is always a something more to achieve. Movements can be refined to an infinite level of possibilities. Changing from one edge to another is a great example. Being willing to try a different timing of this movement can lead to faster and more efficient skiing or snowboarding. But most importantly, you must be willing to get this wrong sometimes. You’ll never know if you can make this movement happen earlier if you never push past you limits.

How to Become a Ski Instructor

Failure Makes You a Better Ski Instructor

Empathy is a highly rated skill as a ski or snowboard instructor. Personal failure helps you understand and appreciate what your guests are going through when they learn. It can become tricky to really connect with a struggling student if you’re a very strong skier.

Even at an elite level of skiing or snowboarding, embracing failure creates an open mind, one that’s able to see the positive in failure. Although your guest may be struggling with lower end skills compared to your ability level, you’ll better connect with them. Having personal experience with failure allows you to change frustrations into learning opportunities. You can pass on how you used failure to your advantage, rather than seeing it as a negative.

Positive Failure Is Good for Mental Strength

Looking back to the child who’s afraid to fail, you might see elements of this in yourself. Why are we sometimes reluctant to fail, or to attempt real change? Often it’s because we associate our skiing or snowboarding ability with our identity.

Subconsciously you might be thinking, “I am a ski/snowboard instructor, therefore I am an excellent skier or snowboarder”. If challenged with something that you may not successfully achieve instantly, one of two things must happen. You have to confront the idea that your identity has been questioned, or you can reject the idea of the new challenge. One of these options is certainly easier than the other, but certainly not the best one for improvement.

You’ll need to separate your identity from your ability. If you try and then fail, it has no bearing on you as a ski or snowboard instructor, it’s just one of the possible results of that action. Changing your mindset is key to using failure as a positive learning tool.

How to Stand Out as a Snowsports Instructor

It can become easy to be boxed in both mentally and physically to your current skill level, especially as you progress through higher certifications as a ski or snowboard instructor. The ability to try something with the possibility of failing gives you the strength to know that no matter how good you are at something, there’s always more to achieve. It teaches you that failure is ok, it can be learned from and doesn’t reflect on you as an individual, unless you let it hold you back.