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While in Spain as coach of
their Olympic team in the late 40's and early 50's, Foeger decided to test his
new theories on a few classes of beginning skiers, while still teaching other
classes the conventional way (snowplow). The results, he found, were dramatically
in favor of this different approach. When he came to Jay Peak, he further developed
his new system which relied on the natural counter-rotational movements of the
upper and lower body while walking, or in sports such as tennis and hockey (sports
at which Walter also excelled), and Natur Teknik was officially launched.
(A brief description of the Natur Teknik method is given below).
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In 1958 in the USA Walter Foeger published
"Learn To Ski In a Week," a concise and well-illustrated book. Here
Foeger described in detail how a complete novice could progress, in a 7-day
ski week, from basic exercises to linked parallel turns in the fall line on
a moderate slope. The sequences were laid out as follows (in abbreviated form):
Day 1 - basic exercises; Day 2 - skating, stationary "hop" turns,
traverse with hop Turns to the Mountain (TM); Day 3 - TM's with hops at varying
speeds, side-sliding (-slipping), connected TM's with kick turns; Day 4 - TM's
with side-sliding, stop turns with hops from fall line; Day 5 - stop turns,
side-sliding on steeper slopes, short "wedel" hop turns in fall line;
Day 6 - Downhill (DT) turns with hops on gentle slope, DT turns with side-sliding;
Day 7 - continuous DT turns moderate slopes, short DT turns, stop (or hockey)
turns, continuous DT turns on moderate trails.
In more detail, Foeger's parallel Downhill
Turn was executed thus: for a left-hand turn the skier was in a balanced position
in a traverse to the right, with weight slightly forward, on the inside (uphill)
edge of the downhill (or left) ski, uphill (right) ski, shoulder and arm slightly
advanced, downhill (left) arm and shoulder trailing. The upper body was bent
lightly at the waist out over the downhill ski in a "comma" position,
chest facing partially downhill. At the start of the turn the skier made a down,
up and forward action (a hop, or coiling-uncoiling) to unweight his/her ski
tails which, while unweighted, were shifted sideways in a heel thrust to the
outside (to the right) of the new turn. The skis were pivoted about their tips,
which never left the snow; the unweighting, pivot, and heel thrust accomplished
an edge change.
To counter the twisting of the lower body,
the upper body would follow with an equal but opposite twist. The upper body
was now leaning out over the right (or new downhill) ski in a mirror-image of
the former "comma" position. As the skis touched the snow at an angle
to the original traverse on new edges, the skier absorbed the small impact of
landing by sinking softly down in the knees and ankles, weight now on the opposite
(or right) ski, inside edge, and still forward. The sideways thrust was feathered
with a smooth and controlled side-slide about the ski tips to produce a rounded
turn, ending in a traverse to the left. (All the above can be more elegantly
demonstrated than explained).
As the student progressed with practice, confidence,
and increased speed, the initial hop, or lifting of the ski tails, was reduced,
then eliminated,. Skills of fore-aft and side-to-side balance, edge-control,
side-sliding, and down-up-down unweighting (rather than hopping) were increasingly
stressed as the ski-week progressed. Natur Teknik taught a skier parallel turns
without the use of snowplow or stem.
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This refreshing method of teaching skiing became a great success,
with the newly converted making the pilgrimage from Philadelphia, Manhattan,
and Boston to learn to 'wedeln' (sorry folks ... wedeln used to mean short rapid
parallel turns in the fall line, and was the smooth-slope precursor of today's
free-style on the bumps). Wedeln was very popular at the time - and Sonny (Laurent)
Cote (Natur Teknik instructor no 12, class of 1960) of Montgomery Center,
VT, was arguably its master at Jay Peak - hence the name of one of the Center's
most popular night spots at the time - Johnny Kennet's 'The Wedel Inn'.
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Ski
Instructor's course December
1960: L to R, Pat Pine, Dean
Loukes, George Stepanek, Betsy
Hanley, Fred Nussbaum, Chic
Case, Ellsworth Moore, Tom
Emrich, Dave Baker, Al Harrington,
Sybil Gagnon, Franz Smith,
D. Shepard, and Laurent (Sonny)
Cote; Walter Foeger (kneeling)
in front |
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Photo courtesy of John Mahoney
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Natur Teknik was no "one-hit-wonder." Hearing
about odd goings-on in the ski world, up near the Vermont/Canada border, an
editor from the New York Times made the long trip north to Jay Peak and took
some lessons. He saw the positive results first hand, and when he got back to
the City, wrote about them. And he wasn't the only journalist to visit and write
about this revolution in ski teaching. As other ski hills heard about this alternative
teaching method, and saw the numbers of skiers Walter was attracting, they wanted
in. One of the distinct benefits of Walter's promise of 'Learn to Ski in a Week'
was that skiers, hundreds of them, came for the weekend and then stayed-for-the-week,
extending badly needed business.
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