Ira Riklis credits ski instructor Mike Bartasuis for helping turn a self-described “fat, Jewish kid from New York” into an expert skier. While skiing is intrinsically a complex ballet of rhythm, motion, movement and shifts of balance, most of his previous instructors taught it as a series of discrete steps. You then try to think your way through the process step by step. But as anyone who’s tried that knows, you’ll inevitably still be thinking about step three when you should performing step twelve! Thus, it won’t be long before you take a tumble.
The whole process reminds Ira Riklis of a cartoon where Goofy was learning to play golf. The narrator tells Goofy to lower his left shoulder, raise his right shoulder, lean his torso in, push his bottom out, bring in his left elbow, lower his right elbow, balance his weight evenly on his feet but bend his knees, lean into the ball, etc., etc., etc.… until Goofy looked like a rubber band wound up tight in a toy airplane. And when the order “OK, now SWING!” finally came, Goofy unwound like an out of control rubber band.