@razie
"Deep flexing leads to performance"
There is absolutely no evidence to support that claim whatsoever.
Skiing is about pressure/GRF, not about the way you release a ski. Pintu uses a lot of flexion, Hirscher used flexing and sometimes extension, the Italian women use a lot of extension. One thing they all have in common is that they all won a lot of races.
The way you release a ski has zero impact on ski performance, it only has an impact on when ski performance will start. Edging and releasing should imo be viewed as resistance vs no resistance on the ski. The way you release a ski is merely a choice of when to apply resistance/pressure on the ski. The release itself however has no influence whatsoever on pressure on the ski. There is no paper or law of physics that says it is directly connected. Things that influence the pressure are things like speed, edge angle, position of the CoM along length ski, surface, newtons on the ski and the timing of edge angle and when you move forward.
To put it a bit differently, your ski doesn't care what your release looks like and what movements you use biomechanically. A ski just listens to force/physics, not biomechanics. If it is on edge the ski reacts, if it is not on edge it does not react. The ski does not care how it gets there. So I view releasing as edging and de-edging, resistance vs no resistance and I am less bothered with the mechanics of it. Mechanics that create more grf are the important mechanics imo.
The only way in which you could argue that the transition is connected to ski performance is as following. The later you decide to apply pressure on the ski (slow transition), the more speed you will carry through the apex and peak GRF will be higher. If you transition fast and apply pressure immediately you slow down earlier and peak grf will be lower. But even this is not entirely true, because I can transition fast and delay the angle and I would still have high peak GRF. Which is how Hirscher skied for example. Very short second half of the turn, early edging first half of the turn, but edge angles were developing quite late into the turn. I find Ted vs Marcel a nice comparison. Marcel is earlier on the new edge, but develops his angles later. Ted is later on the new edge, but develops angles earlier. So in that sense you could argue transitioning fast increases performance. But I think that is a false premise, because what allows Hirscher to edge early is not the transition, but the pressure on the ski in the second half of the turn. To be early you need a short and good second half of the turn. If you would analyse this you'd see the transition time is not so different between Ted and Marcel, Marcel just has a shorter steering phase. He bends the ski more in a shorter period of time.
I was in Kuehtai training and teaching the other week and team global racing was there too (consists of wc skiers like Sam Maes, Magnus Walch and some other good wc skiers. Not consistently top 30, but good nonetheless.). None skied like the demo guys. Last year I trained a local race team, if they would ski like Reilly I would immediately change their skiing. It has zero application in gates. That kind of skiing would not win a u16 race, I think u14 would even be difficult.
On a sidenote, imo an overlooked but frequently used way to initiate a release of the ski is by raising the hips. Only after the CoM has been raised a couple of centimers by raising the hips, flexing or extending starts. In high angle turns you really need to get your CoM closer to your BoS before you can use leg movements to change edges. If angles are not to high and therefore the hips are high enough, raising the hips is not needed and leg movements suffice.
