Eric Ward At a Glance

• PSIA Level III Trainers Accredited
• USSCA Level II
• Currently attending the University of Oklahoma to become a certified pedorthist

My skiing career started growing up the son of a ski instructor.  I have been working professionally in the ski business for 19 seasons now.  Teaching skiing has been a passion of mine since I can remember, and consider myself to be a life long student of the game.  My current efforts in ski alignment are the culmination of all my education and experience over these years.  My beliefs on alignment and sports have been echoed by many in the business.  The most important thing is that where we are currently is only the tip of the iceberg.  The process that I have developed is evolving and maturing and I am constantly looking for new ways to help people enjoy the sport.  It is important that when dealing with issues like this you must deal with each person with a clean slate.  There is no one way to help everyone with a cookie cutter approach.  Everyone has unique situations that need to be dealt with individualy. 

Educational Evolution

I began teaching skiing at Magic Mountain in Vermont.  After two seasons, I moved to Maine to study skiing at the University of Maine at Farmington.  The ski industries program at UMF required me to be employed by a ski school; I chose to work at Sugarloaf/USA while in school.  I spent 6 seasons there teaching, training instructors and coaching alpine racing.  I became the technical director of the UMF Ski School.

While attending the University of Maine Ski industries program I accumulated over 50 college credits on snow and in ski specific courses that dealt directly with teaching coaching and the biomechanics of skiing specifically.  I know that the UMF Ski Program is a unique experience that is unrivaled in like programs.  The UMF approach is one that truly builds a base of knowledge for the teaching professional that 10 years teaching skiing could not provide.  This education was overlapped by studying and preparing myself for exams given by the Professional Ski instructors of America, and The Unites States Ski Coaches Association. 

Other education that I received was working for a company called biosymmetrics.  This company did a workman’s compensation loss control program for ski schools all over the east coast.  We would go in and measure body posture and muscle balance and would be able to predict who was not fit for work.  We would then prescribe exercises that could balance out poor posture and that would bring back to balance muscular strength.  The purpose of this was to reduce knee and shoulder injuries within the staffs of many ski schools.  In the first year we reduced workman’s compensation claims by 90% from the season before. 

We also began “The Performance Center” at Sugarloaf.  This was when I began working with alignment for skiing as a spin off of the program we offered to ski school.  We worked with the only aligment process available in the industry at the time which largely was developed by Warren Witherall.  I dutifly followed this philosophy for some time until I began to find holes in the system.  This was when I decided that it cold not answer some of the questions I was asking.  These questions needed to be answered to continue so I then began to theorize about what it would take to create alignment that actually took the whole picture into consideration.