Practice won’t make you better. But deliberate practice will!

About this episode

Mark Sedgwick shares insights on achieving high Ski IQ through deliberate practice and data-driven coaching techniques.

Mark Sedgwick finished this winter as #1 on the CARV global leaderboard for short turns, with a Ski IQ of 180 — the highest recorded this season. In this episode, I sit down with Mark to find out exactly how he got there. Mark is an Australian-born ski professional who started at age 10 and never looked back. He's worked through the APSI, CSIA, and Austrian instructor systems, raced in Europe, ran ski resorts, and now plays a senior role in the PSIC (Professional Ski Instructors of Canada) — including integrating CARV data into Level 4 certification exams. This is one of the most practical, data-rich ski improvement conversations I've had on the show. We cover: → The difference between play, purposeful practice, and deliberate practice → Why just trying harder keeps you stuck at the same score → The #1 and #2 metrics that drive short turn Ski IQ → Mark's philosophy: make something exist before you make it better → Turn-by-turn breakdowns of parallel, carving, short turns, and moguls → Why function before form is reshaping how ski instructors are trained → A live coaching session using my real CARV data → How Mark used AI to reverse-engineer the CARV scoring algorithm → The future…

People in this episode

Host: Tom Gellie

Guest: Mark Sedgwick

Topics covered

• deliberate practice
• ski improvement
• performance metrics
• ski instruction
• CARV data
• coaching techniques

Keywords

• Ski IQ
• deliberate practice
• short turns
• CARV
• ski instruction
• performance metrics
• coaching
• AI in skiing

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: CARV, APSI, CSIA, PSIC

Places: Australia, Europe

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