This week, I participated in an introductory certification exam run by the national certifying association for ski instructors. I struggle with the association's methods. They have built an edifice of theory around a complicated physical activity and then insist that everyone else needs to do the same. But I do not believe that a vast intellectualized structure of words is how anyone actually learns a complicated physical task. This is not my experience.
Unfortunately, professional advancement in the field is dependent on their imprimatur, which makes their methods self-justifying.
One of the skills that they test us on is the wedge turn, which is the way that beginners learn to turn their skis. On Monday, I watched one of the examiners do a series of wedge turns, and his were the best I've ever seen. He was a paragon of balance and relaxed execution in the movement. Now, the wedge turn is a simple and effective way for beginners to learn to turn, but it's also fundamentally inefficient, which is why intermediates learn to turn parallel and quickly leave the wedge behind.
To achieve such smoothness in wedge turns, the examiner clearly has devoted many, many hours to their study and practice. Now, for this to be worthwhile, the wedge turn (and the one-legged J-turn and the uphill arc and all the other skills and movements they test us on) have to be the equivalent of scales and arpeggios, that is, foundational to skiing technique, and thus we should practice them no matter how far up the ladder we advance as skiers.
But I strongly suspect that what I witnessed was not a concert pianist practicing scales and arpeggios as a foundation to higher-level technique. I think I was watching a concert pianist who has, for some perverse reason, committed a vast collection of children's pieces to his performance repertoire, then concertizes them, and then insists that anyone who doesn't do the same isn't really a pianist.
I don't know that someone who can play Beethoven really needs to be able to play the hell out of "Hot Cross Buns."