Jonathan Ballou video presentation

[geepers]

Yrag... Aaarrrrg. Blrrrft... you're in Aus... watch Reilly and Tom and you're ok to go. It's that time of year when anything and everything said will be misconstrued, misinterpreted, and misuderstood in electronic instruction land. No patience on my part, so I'll excuse myself from the discussion. Say 'hi' to Cosmic Carl if he's still around and you happen to see him down your way, geepers.

Yeah, I should probably have been a little more direct.

My post was a very round-about way of saying I didn't have a clue what you meant by "stroking the ski through the arc". Despite skiing for over 5 decades and having CSIA L2 cert. (It's only in the last 2 seasons that I've begun to pay more than a passing interest in ski technique/theory so maybe it can be considered as 50 years practice in balancing and 2 years skiing...)

@mike_m is describing "stroking" as utilising tip-middle-tail of the ski through the turn so if that's the understanding then I guess I finally get that point.



I watch everything that R & T post on youtube. It all helps although there is an issue in not being able to see what is going on inside the ski boot!

Sorry, no idea who Cosmic Carl is.

 

[markojp]

@mike_m is describing "stroking" as utilising tip-middle-tail of the ski through the turn so if that's the understanding then I guess I finally get that point.

Sorry, no idea who Cosmic Carl is.

There you go! 'Stroking' is more of a race world thing historically and not something that many people who came up in instruction had heard about. Didn't mean to be surly earlier... just didn't have time to respond properly and was having a bad case of big thumbs/small screen-itis.

(Cosmic Carl would probably be 70 by now... he was one of the old school Auz telemarkers who was doing it before it made the hip blip then faded into oblivion. A lot of folks around Thredbow around the mid-late 80's, early 00's knew him or of him. Skied a few days with him while he was visiting Japan around 2000-2001'ish... good guy. Cosmic. The few telemarkers who made it up before Japan was discovered initially didn't have a great deal of respect for the talent of the locals.... the first run in the morning usually took care of that. I recall him saying something like, "wow, I'm humbled. I'd better start going faster and skiing better." Carl was very good guy with a nice sense of humor and repect for the place...)

 

[Skisailor]

Possibly the disconnect is that you, your mentor and many other high level skiers posting here have developed your edging and the rest of the skill set to the point where you can reliably sense your situation and predict where you need to get to in order to join up with the ski depending on your intended trajectory and a host of conditions affecting the development of the turn.

As a teacher, I am first going to assess the skill level of my client and go from there based on fundamentals. A skier has to first learn the turn mechanics of being with the ski before they can learn to get ahead of it. The ski is the tool. How a master level user of the tool utilizes it can be quite different from a novice.

Interesting post. I focus on the words "where you need to get to". Because when I close my eyes and envision and feel these turns, "getting my body" to a place to meet up with the skis still requires some kind of conscious or subconscious calculation and an active movement of some sort to make sure I'm there - likely a flexion or extension of some joint.

And if I'm starting aft and want to make sure I catch up as the skis come back toward me, it's still likely I will need to do something - flex my ankles, unbend my knees, flex forward in the hips - something.

 

[Skisailor]

Oops. And I also agree that learning to get ahead of the ski is a critical skill. I think I may be addressing that sooner than many of my colleagues - often with lower level intermediate students.

 

[JESinstr]

@Skisailor Yes! And you are able to create your vision as a result of what? Might I suggest skill level, experience and assumptions based on said experience?

I submit that one of the key things we make in skiing when forming a "vision for action" is an assumption of velocity. Unfortunately, there are things we do at high velocity that we don't do at low velocity, Hence a reason, if not the reason, for the differences of opinion and the disconnects between what we profess to be the realities of skiing.

So what is the baseline that takes us to common ground? I think the PSIA fundamentals that Ballou presents in the video attempts to represent this baseline.

Take fundamental #2 "Control pressure from ski to ski and direct pressure toward the outside ski" as it relates to "where you need to get to"

At low velocity, in order to develop pressure toward the outside ski, the beginner needs to get their weight directed to the inside edge of the outside ski. I say weight because at low velocity, Gravity is only game in town to create needed pressure.

At High velocity, the engagement of the new edge is going to rapidly create centripetal force. And since it is the skier's job to create and manage this force, anticipating and moving to "where you need to get to" involves different mechanics than the beginner but with the same fundamentals outcome

Finally, although one person thought Ballou's presentation was "forgettable" I thought it was a solid, baseline on how we ski. What was disappointing was when he tried to get his audience to name any of the 3 basic Newtonian laws of motion and all I heard were crickets.

 

[HardDaysNight]

And in response to the comment about bending the boot, it isn’t necessary and usually is quite detrimental to attempt to deform the boot. It leads to the classic ski instructor problem of being too far forward either the ta

I guess this was prompted by a comment of mine. If the ankle is ever to close (dorsiflect) in a snug boot beyond the angle established by the geometry of the boot then the boot is going to flex (or deform if you prefer) too. It’s not a question of attempting to do so - the forces in a dynamic carved turn acting on a skier in whom the CoM and BoS are appropriately aligned make it inevitable. This is why skiers who make such turns typically wear boots stiff enough to resist these deforming forces and not collapse.

I’ve heard a lot about the classic ski instructor problem of being too far forward but I must say that I’ve very rarely observed it. (And I ski about 140 days a season at a major resort and have done so for more than 30 years.) More classic would be the problem of the ski instructor thrashing around in the back seat along with the other intermediate skiers.

 

[Mike King]

I guess this was prompted by a comment of mine. If the ankle is ever to close (dorsiflect) in a snug boot beyond the angle established by the geometry of the boot then the boot is going to flex (or deform if you prefer) too. It’s not a question of attempting to do so - the forces in a dynamic carved turn acting on a skier in whom the CoM and BoS are appropriately aligned make it inevitable. This is why skiers who make such turns typically wear boots stiff enough to resist these deforming forces and not collapse.

I’ve heard a lot about the classic ski instructor problem of being too far forward but I must say that I’ve very rarely observed it. (And I ski about 140 days a season at a major resort and have done so for more than 30 years.) More classic would be the problem of the ski instructor thrashing around in the back seat along with the other intermediate skiers.

Sure, but https://skimoves.me/2017/09/08/the-...n-the-outside-ski-the-rockerturntable-effect/