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Ozan

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Hi all. First post in pugski.

This is basic skiing. Slowly and surely. Nothing fancy.

Looks like from 0:42 to 0:56 i see 2 different issues on right and left turns.

On left turn inside leg too close to outside leg and inside ski diverges. Not sure why but its not because i press on inside ski. Maybe i should load it about 20% and be more careful about where it is?

On my right turns legs look fine but something is off. Is it the hip position?

Thx

 

Philpug

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Lets move this over to Ski School.
 

Dwight

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You can thank Snapchat, instagram and FB for bad vertical video, but that digresses this thread even more. Or the phone makers should get smarter and have all video be HD 16:9.

@Josh Matta care to give any MA?
 

Chris V.

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Lighten up. I could actually make this video fill my entire phone screen. And a good closeup view following the skier. How about some MA?
 

T-Square

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Good skiing, nice flow and movement. First thing I see is that your inside ski gets a bit too far forward. This causes the divergence that you note. It also means you have to move forward on the inside ski at transition before you tip into the next turn. That results in the up movement you make with your body during transition.

Try to hold your inside ski "back" a bit more. You still want the inside ski to lead, just not too much. I normally tell a student to draw that inside ski back so they feel firm pressure on the boot tongue. That should make you more efficient and allow for a quicker edge change at transition. Give it a try and see what happens.

————————

When the inside foot gets too far forward even though you may be forward and properly driving the outside ski you are in "the backseat" on the inside ski. This means at transition you must move forward on the inside ski before you can release the old turn to start the new one.
 

VickieH

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Thanks for explaining the 'why' of reducing tip lead. This is something I am working on myself. Understanding it helps me with the change.
 

Mike King

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Well, I see things a bit differently than @T-Square. In general, you are too far forward on the skis. I'm guessing that you are crushing the tongue of the boot.

There are three things that I see that are leading to diminished ski performance in your skiing. First, you are so far forward on the ski that the tails of the skis wash out. Second, you extend off of the uphill (old outside ski) and come up, losing contact with the outside ski in the early part of the turn. Third, you continue that push of the outside ski to push it to edge, rather than tipping the lower leg to create the edge angle.

What would be more ideal? With modern ski design, we want to travel with the ski and create the edge angle by tipping the lower leg. Here's my favorite video clip demonstrating the same:


See how the upper body remains stable and (almost entirely) uninvolved? They aren't sending their upper body anywhere. Rather, the lower legs tip under the upper body and the skier allows the legs to travel away from the upper body. This is very different from your actions, where you are sending your upper body inside by the extension movement off of the upper foot.

Also, notice that these skiers are not crushing the front of the boot. At transition, you might even think that they were aft. You should feel contact with the front of the boot, but not that you are crushing it, or bending the boot. This will allow the tail to follow the trajectory of the tip.

My $.02.

Mike
 
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Ozan

Ozan

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This means at transition you must move forward on the inside ski before you can release the old turn to start the new one.

Thanks for you reply. Do you mean the new inside ski (old outside) here? I try to move up on the old inside ski in transition. Otherwise i would be on the inside ski in the beginning of turn no?
I noted the inside ski lead. I will try holding it back a bit and see how it feels.
 
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Ozan

Ozan

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Second, you extend off of the uphill (old outside ski) and come up, losing contact with the outside ski in the early part of the turn.

Not clear what you meant here. Which ski loses contact? The one im extending off of?

Also looks like you are recomending a whole different type of transition. I prefer the old up movement rather than retraction. I like the feeling more and it gives my legs a moment to relax. I use retraction only when i have to change edges very quickly and there is simply no time for an up move. I also feel like it happens automatically when i try to do carved short turns.

In this video i tried to do perfect (as much as i could) basic turns. That is little or no carving in the beginning of the turns.
 
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T-Square

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"I try to move up on the old inside ski in transition."

That is what I am seeing. It is an "extra" move that slows down your transition to the new turn. By deceasing your inside ski lead, your transition will be quicker. Also as @Mike King stated you are crushing your outside boot. Drawing the inside foot back may also have the effect of making you a little more upright on that outside ski.

Something to consider, you might need a stiffer boot since you can flex it so well.
 

Mike King

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Not clear what you meant here. Which ski loses contact? The one im extending off of?

Also looks like you are recomending a whole different type of transition. I prefer the old up movement rather than retraction. I like the feeling more and it gives my legs a moment to relax. I use retraction only when i have to change edges very quickly and there is simply no time for an up move. I also feel like it happens automatically when i try to do carved short turns.

In this video i tried to do perfect (as much as i could) basic turns. That is little or no carving in the beginning of the turns.

The transition I described is not a retraction -- a retraction would be both legs shortening. Rather, it is flex the old outside leg to release. You still need to allow the new outside leg to extend, but the extension starts after edge change -- not before (which is what you are doing now). You just have the timing of the extension and flexion movements out of phase.

Did you watch the video I posted? Notice the difference between what is happening to the upper body of all of those skiers as opposed to what you are doing.

Mike
 
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Ozan

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You still need to allow the new outside leg to extend, but the extension starts after edge change -- not before (which is what you are doing now). You just have the timing of the extension and flexion movements out of phase.

Got it ! Will try. Thanks
 
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Ozan

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That is what I am seeing. It is an "extra" move that slows down your transition to the new turn

In this video i overdid that move. So that i have no failed initiation in the video. Sometimes i do that move very weak and i fail to enter the new turn which sucks. But you are saying to keep the inside foot a bit back and it will fix the whole thing. Excited to try it. Also feeling the tounge of the inside boot means there should be a slight load on it correct?
 
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Ozan

Ozan

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Also yes i press the boots hard. I had 110 flex boots they were really getting crushed so i got these new ones. They are head challenger 130s. But am i not suppose to do that to pressure outside ski? Everybody talking about ankle flexion?
 

Chris V.

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Ozan, there are two ways to go about this. You can seek to refine your current movement patterns. Or you can look at the big picture, and decide if your current movement pattern is the best choice for the kind of skiing that you want to do, and possibly make some very fundamental changes.

In reality, there's a whole range of potential styles for turn transitions. You can make the transition with a big extension. You can do it with a big retraction move (flexion). You can do it with a movement that's somewhere in between, incorporating some degree of either extension or flextion or neither with each leg, independently. It's a continuum. There's also the question of where in the development of a turn you become most extended, and where you're most flexed.

The points that you raised in self-critique seem minor to me. I concur with T-Square that there's a nice flow to your movement. So the movement pattern that you're displaying is working pretty well for you on the terrain and in the snow conditions you were skiing when you made the video clip. Maybe the $64 question is, how well does that movement pattern function in other situations? Steeper terrain, hard slick surfaces, heavy sticky cut up powder, moguls? In a race course? And in what conditions do you want to ski? What are your goals? Also, do you currently ski with the same movements under all conditions? There are limits to the conclusions that can be drawn from watching a single video clip. We are forced to assume that your style is the same under other conditions, and that could be incorrect.

What stands out most in your skiing is that you are using quite a large extension move to facilitate the release from the old turn. Also, it's pretty vertical, as opposed to projected outward toward the center of the new turn. The effect is close to the old up-hup-and-around from the days of straight skis, although maybe not as complete an unweighting. Your skis do not become edged, weighted, and (critically) bent until almost halfway into the new turn. Notice how there is a point in each turn at which you visibly settle onto the skis and exert force on them, and how this produces an abrupt spray of snow--watch your clip in slow motion. Observe how your center of mass doesn't trace smoothly linked S shapes down the mountain. Instead, from the point that you settle onto the skis, they kind of shoot you across the hill. Here the skis sometimes get locked into a path where they are no longer turning nearly as tightly as higher in the turn. So your linked turns are characterized by sharp, hooky, pivoty starts, connected by straighter sections.

I will say that in the second half of the run, which is a gentler slope, you look much different. Your turns are much carvier, you are getting much earlier edge engagement, and your turns are much more rounded. You might take this as an indication that your current style is less well suited to steeper slopes.

How are your current movement patterns, with pivoty turn initiations, going to treat you on steep, icy slopes? When you are in untracked snow that you sink into, but that is sticky or dense to the point that it doesn't easily give way laterally?

There is more than one school of thought on what is the optimal go-to transition style, on that flexion-extension spectrum. Some go in for a substantial, two-footed flexion move. Others favor what Mike King has described--flexion of only the old outside leg to release, and then allowing the new outside leg to extend, starting after the edge change. I'm sure there are other variations on this. They all work. Pick one style, and work hard on only that for a while.

Your poling needs work. Your pole touches are a small fraction of a second late, and they are too far forward--too much of a pole swing and too close to the body. These pole touches are inhibiting you from moving your center of mass across the skis, and tipping your feet to create strong, early edging. Frankly the best thing would probably be just to lose the poling entirely while you develop the footwork, then add it back in later.

I concur with the observations of Mike King and T-Square that you're letting your inside foot come too far forward. For the reasons already discussed, you want to minimize inside tip lead. Work on tucking back and tipping over the inside foot through the entire turn, from the point of transition to the end. This will be the result of a combination of dorsiflexion--lifting your toes to close the ankle joint--and bending the knee to allow the foot to come back. Try this standing still in a traverse position on a moderate slope. You still want to keep your inside hip bone forward and out, so that your pelvis is oriented substantially down the hill, so don't bring the inside foot back by moving your hips. If you do it as described, by dorsiflecting the ankle and bending the knee, you'll feel quite a stretch in certain muscles in the leg that's on the inside ski. That's a cue that you can use while skiing, to let yourself know if you're making the move. This will naturally press the tip of the inside ski into the snow, so yes, it results in a certain "load" on that ski.

Watch the video clip closely, and you'll see that there are occasions on which your inside foot slips forward just prior to transition. This is really going to mess up your turn initiation. You want to be in a position to be able to balance on the little toe edge of the old inside ski just BEFORE initiating the new turn. The focus that you say you've had, of crushing the tongue of the outside ski's boot, can put you so far forward that you compensate by pushing the inside foot forward for balance. Instead try just staying centered. As a generality, inside foot management is the appropriate focus--the outside foot will come along for the ride.
 

LiquidFeet

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^^ What @Chris V. said. That post right there is very thorough.
My suggestion to @Ozan is to read that post very slowly, find the major message in each paragraph, and write those points down using as few words as possible. Then figure out what you want to do about it and get started.
 
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Ozan

Ozan

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Hi LF you are from epic ski with same name right? You had given me ma on my 2015 video back then. Its uploaded under the same youtube account. See it you will remember perhaps.

Many thanks chris for amazing review. I will actually print it out.
 
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dj61

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Great tips in Chris’ MA. I like your skiing. The thing that struck me were your shoulders. You are square to your ski’s throughout the turn. More counter would improve balance against your outside ski.
 
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Mike King

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Great tips in Chris’ MA. I like your skiing. The thing that struck me were your shoulders. You are square to your ski’s throughout the turn. More counter would improve balance against your outside ski.
@dj61, I don't think you are advocating that he counterrotate, right? Counter should be an outcome, not an input. In other words, he needs more leg rotation under a stable upper body rather than turning the upper body against the lower body.

Mike
 

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