Deb Armstrong/Inside leg activity for the wedge turn

[Plai]

I've been experimenting recently with inside leg wedge movements. Very glad to see that Deb likes this idea also.

 

[Smear]

What I find most interesting with inside leg activity in wedge turns is how little body movements is necessary to use to make a turn. My lesson plan for the next time I end up as emergency stand in coach for 6-7 year olds. Contrasting wedge turn:

Take them to an European red slope. Regress everyone to wedge turns also the ones that are skiing parallell. The task is to make as sharp wedge turns as possible, but still round. Achieved by edging the outside ski with knee as much as possible, getting the upper body out over the outside as much as possible and being really forward on the outside ski. Using as much weight transfer to the outside ski as possible while still being in a wedge. Early weight transfer. Exaggerate everything.

Then take the to a green slope. Now the task is to make turns using as little body movement as possible. Introducing them to flattening the inside ski toward the little toe edge. Using the concept of making turn with just the little toe as input, as opposed to the exaggerated whole body wedge turn above.
-no effort to use weight transfer, just let the weight transfer happen on its own.
-no effort in edging the outside ski other than standing in a wedge

Only input is standing in a wedge and flattening the inside ski a little bit and watch the turn happen with minimal input.

If the outside ski rails and turns get too wide and going too fast for what the person wants: Be more forward, be so forward that the tail of the outside ski start slipping a little bit but still making round turn.

I know this plan works great for teaching people that already can ski about ski mechanics and letting them experience how things works. More unsure how it would work on small kids...

 

[Chris V.]

The task is to make as sharp wedge turns as possible, but still round. Achieved by edging the outside ski with knee as much as possible, getting the upper body out over the outside as much as possible and being really forward on the outside ski. Using as much weight transfer to the outside ski as possible while still being in a wedge. Early weight transfer. Exaggerate everything. ...If the outside ski rails and turns get too wide and going too fast for what the person wants: Be more forward, be so forward that the tail of the outside ski start slipping a little bit but still making round turn.

Often PSIA trainers assert that skidded but rounded wedge turns happen as a result of rotary input, but in fact the bolded text is the essential primary input. Plus beginners need to overcome a possible urge to fight against the resulting turning action that the ski design creates. Can't be reducing the outside ski edging, or leaning in. It's fine to add a little rotary input, but the degree of upper-lower body separation that's achievable in a wedge is actually small.

Contrasting the above with an outside edge-locked wedge "crab walk" is a great way for skiers to experience the differences in input between creating skidded and carved turns. Immediately translatable to parallel turns.

 

[stevo]

the trick to beautiful wedge turns, IMHO, is first, to avoid high edge angles. Wedge turns are slow and don't need high edge angles. At all. The outside ski will self steer itself quite readily with just a minimal edge angle..the flatness helps it to be more of a smeary carved turn type. Reference the first-turn HH video showed a few weeks ago where he essentially does that without a wedge, but its exactly the same physics and biomechanics that needs to happen on the outside ski with wedge turns, the only difference is that with wedge turns the student can use the inside ski as a training wheel to lean on. But keeping the ski closer to flat (not completely flat) will enable the ski to self steer itself in a much sharper turn shape without any leg twisting whatsoever.

Also another key to beautiful wedge turns is to make sure the inside ski is even flatter then the outside ski. If you go do some wedge turns without flattening the inside ski, make some hard wedge turns and look back at the tail of your inside ski and watch how it's gouging into the snow because its tipped on the wrong wedge. Flattening that ski to all the way flat or closer to it, will free up that ski to smoothly steer in that direction. If you're on the BTE of it, you'll be fighting with the snow. If it's flat....no more fighting.

Well back to the topic, of inside leg...how do you flatten the inside ski? It's the same move we've been talking about on other threads...you tip it towards its LTE. Your inside knee has to move inside. Your foot has to evert off of the BTE. Note that students won't be skiing wedge very long if they continue doing that, because pretty soon they'll do it early and be skiing parallel, but its definitely key to getting excellent wedge turns...making that ski flatter on the snow.

There is no need to twist your legs AT ALL, in fact its counter productive

There is no need to have big edge angles, in fact its counter productive.

There is no need to lean way out over your outside ski at these speeds because there is also no need for big edge angles or moving your hip inside, etc. It helps to encourage balance on the outside ski, even though truthfully they are using the inside ski as a training wheel, still getting balance to the outside ski will cause it to self-steer and slarve. But it only takes a movement of an inch or two to be more balanced towards the outside, and the act of lightening and tipping the inside foot to the LTE will also encourage all of that automatically.

I have had people watch me do the slowest you can imagine steered turns, in both wedges and parallel...and they tip their heads to the side and say "how are you doing that?". The skis do it! It's automatic. The only real difference between a well executed wedge turn and a well executed parallel turn is that in parallel, the tipping of the inside foot to the LTE happens firs and better balance is achieved on the outside ski. Either way, the ski turns itself.

 

[JESinstr]

I don't think the objective of using the wedge is to create a beautiful turn but instead to give the student an environment from which to learn the carving process.

I believe there is consensus that it is the inside leg that initiates and enables the carving process of the outside ski. Where there continues to be discussion is on what is the first order of business.

I submit it is a vertical softening/shortening of the inside leg which enables a lateral shift of mass to the inside edge of the new outside ski. Thanks to the wedge configuration, the new outside ski is already on edge and pre-positioned in the direction of the new turn. It is independent vertical leg action, much like pedaling a bicycle, that should be first developed. However, in this application, the up pedal is more important than the down pedal. Tipping of the inside leg is secondary at this point but should become more synchronous as skills develop.

To ask a new student who is in a wedge specifically because of the need for lateral balance assistance to first flatten the new inside ski will, most often than not, cause them to shift mass to the inside and lean up hill in a defensive posture.

I am not trying to teach students to turn. Turns are a result. I am teaching how to invoke the carving properties of the ski. And even though the parallel configuration provides a more robust carving environment, we all use the wedge from time to time and the outside leg to ski relationship should always be the same.

Just throwing this out for those actively teaching to consider.

 

[stevo]

If I am tasked with making wedge turns, they are going to be beautiful

 

[stevo]

And by the way I was not for a minute suggesting they should shift their weight to the inside ski. You have not understood me

 

[JESinstr]

And by the way I was not for a minute suggesting they should shift their weight to the inside ski. You have not understood me

No I didn't.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

the trick to beautiful wedge turns, IMHO, is first, to avoid high edge angles. Wedge turns are slow and don't need high edge angles.

True. I demonstrate this by having my skiers sidestep up the hill a little bit.Then look at your skis. How much angle are they on? And yet the skier has established a connection between ski and snow. Now try and sideslip. The movement is subtle, that is the range of edging we are working with. As you said, not much.

 

[JESinstr]

Regarding the OP Video:

At :35 Armstrong says: A." For some people, the wedge is to slow down, to stop. It's your intro to your first turns ever."
and B. "For others, it's the mechanics and breakdown of the highest performance turn that exists."

I chose to teach "B".

At 1:30 she works with a group on "B" with what she calls the "Taos wedge turn". The mechanics of the demo she shows @ 2:50 is exactly the mechanics I teach. In fact, she states that the inside leg gets "softer and shorter". Nothing about tipping because in the wedge you get that for free. Notice the bicycling effect of her independent leg action. The secret to this approach is that it must be executed from an established center balanced stance.

The only difference between Armstrong's approach and my approach is that she uses traditional turn identification milestones and I use the concept of a carving process which I define as "using the shape of the ski to convert straight line travel into circular travel". aka the ski turns you and this can happen at all levels of skiing.

IMO, the shape of the ski has made a profound impact on the ability to establish a solid base from which to teach the process of carving right from the start. With that being the case, I am puzzled at why we would continue with the traditional approach of trying to establish balance in an unstable sliding environment with the hope of creating a carving state.

 

[stevo]

She may not have said anything about flattening the inside ski, but I am. We differ in this point it seems jeinstr, its counter productive to keep the inside ski on the BTE. Doing so is a braking maneuver and contributes nothing to the turn in fact it detracts.

I agree about softening the inside leg also but this is a subtle move. There is no need to drastically shorten the inside leg because you are basically upright. You still need the balance point to move towards the outside ski somehow and shortening the inside leg will move your CoM away from the outside ski without also bringing in angulation

the ultimate goal is parallel skiing, with some people the very same day. Some people may need a few days but we should be teaching them movements in the feet and legs that will take them down the right path to that. Many of them we won’t get to teach for day 2 and 3; yea?

i do agree with you that the point of this is to establish a sensation of a carving ski and circular travel without the single ski balance requirement, however it’s critically important not to instill braking wedge movements and also we should be guiding them towards the single ski balance goal even if we aren’t talking about it yet.

also we can look around at a great many skiers even at higher levels with wedge entries to their turns, sometimes subtle, sometimes not. This is due to lack of focus on tipping the inside ski. In parallel skiing tipping the outside ski does not come for free like in the wedge where they push the tail out. But if that becomes your go to move then it can de habilitate you for years. Then you will end up heel pushing or twisting with rotary in order to establish edge angle and that will be a problem. Perhaps you feel that heel pushing or using rotary is the acceptable and preferred way to establish outside ski tipping but I do not. And that is primarily how wedge itis will get baked in.

alternatively, if a focus is made on flattening the inside ski, this will rather quickly develop into parallel skiing and it’s already the right needed movement even if it takes a few days to find the balance.

it also turns out that the focus of flattening the inside ski will make your wedge demos more beautiful. Try it.

but you will find out pretty quickly that doing them this way is just a hair away from easy parallel turns, just by tipping the inside ski earlier and even more. And meanwhile the outside ski will be doing the carving action you are taking about the whole time

 

[Smear]

the trick to beautiful wedge turns, IMHO, is first, to avoid high edge angles. Wedge turns are slow and don't need high edge angles. At all. The outside ski will self steer itself quite readily with just a minimal edge angle..the flatness helps it to be more of a smeary carved turn type.

Agree that keeping the edge angle low in wedge turns is generally good stuff.

But also think there is stuff to be learned from exaggerating edging, upper body position and weight transfer in a wedge.

Take them to an European red slope. Regress everyone to wedge turns also the ones that are skiing parallell. The task is to make as sharp wedge turns as possible, but still round. Achieved by edging the outside ski with knee as much as possible, getting the upper body out over the outside as much as possible and being really forward on the outside ski. Using as much weight transfer to the outside ski as possible while still being in a wedge. Early weight transfer. Exaggerate everything.

This was one of the first thing we were subjected to when doing telemark instructor course long time ago. Learning how the skis respond to edging and being forward, feeling the ski come around on a dime on it's own in a skidded round way. When the weight transfer is exaggerated the road to parallell-finish of the turn is short. But I also know that the same is true when not edging much, not focusing on upper body positioning, letting weight transfer just happen on its own and just focusing on flatting the inside ski toward the inside ski.

I like the contrast between the two But not sure on how to make a pedagogic point from this that 6 year olds would relate to. But perhaps experiencing different stuff is enough to get something out of it.

 

[Gina D]

What baffles me is how PSIA and seemingly many of you ignore the effectiveness of pressure. Standing more on one ski makes the skis turn in the opposite direction. This has been a basic principle of ski instruction for many decades.

Now for some reason pressure has been considered an advanced skill not to be taught to beginners. Tipping, softening, rotating the inside ski imo are much harder skills to teach then simply telling a student to stand more on one ski. (Pressure it, shift weight to it, all being the concept, but god forbid we ever say "push on the left ski.") Yes pushing on a ski is not a valid thing in a technical sense, but to a kid it's pretty darn easy to get across, it works, it gives them control over their direction, and it creates an energetic rather than a passive approach to the tools.

Y'all can spend your time on beginners trying to teach them to release, tip, steer their skis. Those of us teaching our grandkids and other people will, and always will teach pressure.

 

[stevo]

If you want to talk about children, 6 year olds and pedagogy that is a completely different and much more complex topic and nothing to do with Deb’s video. Talking about inside leg activation has absolutely no place in 6 year old pedagogy

you can’t even talk about pushing. They don’t know left from right either

you have to talk about imitating elephants, making pizza and stuff like that

 

[Smear]

If you want to talk about children, 6 year olds and pedagogy that is a completely different and much more complex topic and nothing to do with Deb’s video.

If you can't use it to teach wedge turns to 6 year olds, then what is it for? Just internal instructor mastrubation? Tourists? ;-)

 

[Gina D]

I disagree about only being able to imitate elephants or make pizza pies to a 6 year old. My grandson is 5 ½ and although yes we make some games out of turning across the hill, he's perfectly capable to understand simple instructions, as are most 6 year olds. 4 year old maybe closer to what you're saying.

He knows left and right and what pushing is.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

I disagree about only being able to imitate elephants or make pizza pies to a 6 year old. My grandson is 5 ½ and although yes we make some games out of turning across the hill, he's perfectly capable to understand simple instructions, as are most 6 year olds. 4 year old maybe closer to what you're saying.

He knows left and right and what pushing is.

Me too. They are smarter than that.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

What baffles me is how PSIA and seemingly many of you ignore the effectiveness of pressure. Standing more on one ski makes the skis turn in the opposite direction. This has been a basic principle of ski instruction for many decades.

Now for some reason pressure has been considered an advanced skill not to be taught to beginners. Tipping, softening, rotating the inside ski imo are much harder skills to teach then simply telling a student to stand more on one ski. (Pressure it, shift weight to it, all being the concept, but god forbid we ever say "push on the left ski.") Yes pushing on a ski is not a valid thing in a technical sense, but to a kid it's pretty darn easy to get across, it works, it gives them control over their direction, and it creates an energetic rather than a passive approach to the tools.

Y'all can spend your time on beginners trying to teach them to release, tip, steer their skis. Those of us teaching our grandkids and other people will, and always will teach pressure.

That’s great if you wanna teach them to do a wedge. Not so great if you are trying to teach them to ski.

 

[stevo]

@Gina D You might be able to teach them words and perhaps memorize which hand is their left hand versus right, etc, but they struggle with the concept in actual practice of motor skills. Children and pedagogy is a very deep topic...I'm sorry I said anything about it, but someone else brought up 6 year olds in relation to Deb's video and it's completely outside the topic. 6 year olds will not respond to the cerebral kind of talk about inside vs outside ski....left or right barely...inside outside, forget it. As they get older they have more sense of these things and you can increasingly talk technical. if they are 5-6, all i can say is good luck with that. You can get more mileage talking about the foot or leg that is on the side they want to turn towards. Point their knee like a flashlight in that direction, etc..things like that.

@Smear, I certainly didn't say 6 year olds can't be taught pizza wedge turns, quite the contrary, not sure how you come to that conclusion, but I also think the topic of this video was about inside leg and foot activation in wedge turns...and yes it was primarily targeted at adults. If you want to talk about how to get kids going, that is IMHO a completely seperate topic, one I am not much interested in anymore, so I will bow out now if you want to discuss how to teach your grandkids to ski, its an interesting topic for sure, but I got out of the kids coaching game a long time ago and I'm more interested in the nuts and bolts of high end skiing. How to get kids from pizza wedge to high end skiing over time is an extremely deep and complex topic. Trying to apply Deb's concepts from this video to 6 year olds will not work unless you come up with ways to yes, mimic animals and other forms of games and imitations that will help them to do the actions you want without trying to describe them in cerebral adult terms how to do it. They can sometimes follow you and mimic what you're doing and learn that way too.

good luck

 

[Gina D]

Fair enough, but isn't pressuring the outside ski a fundamental part of all skiing? You know lots more than I do about teaching Erik, so don't get me wrong, I'm not challenging your experience. Could you elaborate? That would help us with our grandson.