This year I've been working on figuring out how to carve, ie watching videos and reading descriptions, and then trying all assortment of methods out on the slope. Recently things started fitting together nicely, and I seem to be leaving two lines in the snow while enjoying the exhilaration of shooting out of turns.
However, as I thought about how that worked out, as if the goal were to teach it to someone else, the way I would describe its essential character is different than how it's taught/explained elsewhere, which is frankly puzzling to me.
In short, when I'm looking to carve, I see it as a balance management exercise (pressing into the snow) of the momentum and inertia of the body going across the slope. To elaborate, as I squirt out of a turn, my legs/skis are going in a certain direction, and upper body is similarly moving but at slightly more downhill angle. Then as the legs come around downwards as the skis initiate the turn, the upper body "intercepts" and compresses against the lower, and if you balanced that "flight path" correctly, everything stacks to apply max pressure mostly to the outside ski. And as that ski compressing into a shorter radius, physics dictates that the body slingshots out the other way (hopefully with the skis pushing behind your center of mass). The essential part of this for me is judging speed to reckon how much of an angle to stack the upper body into the turn, and of course how long to stay in the turn before the slingshot depending on how you balance back into flat skis.
Now this misses out some details of leg/boot geometry, or how much to get the skis behind you so as to avoid getting into backseat and whatnot, but the point here is that most all descriptions of how to carve instead involve movement patterns of some sort (eg flex this then that), which when I tried easily fell out of sync with what I wanted to do. For example, a key movement might be tipping the feet, but as I try to focus on that everything else is moving way too fast down even a flat corduroy blue run, and the slightest out of balance can lead to wobbly recoveries at best. But in contrast, when I focus on aligning the upper to lower body and compressing into the snow, everything else largely works itself out.
So the question here if is anyone else understands carving as I described it, and if so why it differs so much from orthodox curriculum (and presumably how most others approach it)? I'm not a natural skiing talent nor any kind of athlete. Also as a side question, now that I'm carving more or less I'm on the lookup for other folks who might be doing similar movements, and at least around here maybe at most 5-10% of the skiers stack/pressure with no rotary/skid? Would that typically be the case elsewhere or am I not looking for the right things?
Appreciate any guidance, thanks.
However, as I thought about how that worked out, as if the goal were to teach it to someone else, the way I would describe its essential character is different than how it's taught/explained elsewhere, which is frankly puzzling to me.
In short, when I'm looking to carve, I see it as a balance management exercise (pressing into the snow) of the momentum and inertia of the body going across the slope. To elaborate, as I squirt out of a turn, my legs/skis are going in a certain direction, and upper body is similarly moving but at slightly more downhill angle. Then as the legs come around downwards as the skis initiate the turn, the upper body "intercepts" and compresses against the lower, and if you balanced that "flight path" correctly, everything stacks to apply max pressure mostly to the outside ski. And as that ski compressing into a shorter radius, physics dictates that the body slingshots out the other way (hopefully with the skis pushing behind your center of mass). The essential part of this for me is judging speed to reckon how much of an angle to stack the upper body into the turn, and of course how long to stay in the turn before the slingshot depending on how you balance back into flat skis.
Now this misses out some details of leg/boot geometry, or how much to get the skis behind you so as to avoid getting into backseat and whatnot, but the point here is that most all descriptions of how to carve instead involve movement patterns of some sort (eg flex this then that), which when I tried easily fell out of sync with what I wanted to do. For example, a key movement might be tipping the feet, but as I try to focus on that everything else is moving way too fast down even a flat corduroy blue run, and the slightest out of balance can lead to wobbly recoveries at best. But in contrast, when I focus on aligning the upper to lower body and compressing into the snow, everything else largely works itself out.
So the question here if is anyone else understands carving as I described it, and if so why it differs so much from orthodox curriculum (and presumably how most others approach it)? I'm not a natural skiing talent nor any kind of athlete. Also as a side question, now that I'm carving more or less I'm on the lookup for other folks who might be doing similar movements, and at least around here maybe at most 5-10% of the skiers stack/pressure with no rotary/skid? Would that typically be the case elsewhere or am I not looking for the right things?
Appreciate any guidance, thanks.