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MA Practice Intermediate/advanced medium radius

David Chan

getting after it!
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Nov 13, 2015
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San Francisco, CA
Trying to guide this process more this time.
The goal is to Describe, not Prescribe.
Eliminate the "intent"

Describe what you see going on. Describe the ski/snow interaction. Describe body performance.

Be precise including body parts, part of the turn, etc.. However can be overall run, Do not need to break down each turn. Every run will have oopies and bobbles but a pattern should appear through out the run.

Use what ever process works best for you. BERP, fundamentals, etc

Again NOT looking for fixes of any kind. Just trying to help some of our members to learn to "see" movements, interactions, and get better at identifying "how we move" so they can evaluate skiers better.

Just for context. Medium radius turns, Loose choppy spring snow. pitch is probably medium to upper blue.

 

Karl B

USSA L100
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Nov 14, 2015
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193
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SE Michigan
I see three things going on;

1. Hips behind the feet
2. Stance too narrow
3. Diverging inside ski

Karl
 

karlo

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Skis are parallel. COM is centered, with hip over feet, achieved with bent ankles, knees, and waist.

Turns are a combination of rotation and carving, with considerable rotational input at the start of the turn just after transition is completed, rotation that starts at the feet, then the femur. Angulation starts concurrently, but very gradually. Deepest angulation and edge angle, both low to moderate, are achieved roughly when the tips are roughly pointed downhill, past that if anything. Angulation into and out of turn is smooth with much upper body and lower body separation, resulting in quiet upper body, laterally, and mild inclination.

Turn initiation is achieved with extension of both legs to unweight the skis. Unweighting and leg extension begin when subject is releasing from highest edge angle and deepest angulation. Gradual Flexing of both legs begins immediately upon exiting transtion, with the inside leg flexing more than the outside leg.

Transitions are well past fall line, but not crossing hill. Feet are sometimes wider apart, sometimes quite close together. I don’t know why, but I sense a shift in pressure to the old inside ski before transition (ski’s flat to snow) occurs, with a skater’s roll from edge to edge, outside edge of old inside ski to inside edge of new outside ski. But, it is not aggressive; not much propulsion gained from it.

Waist and torso orientation to slope are relatively steady. Both arms are raised with hands front. Poling is achieved with both raising of the arm at the shoulder and with wrist flicks. (That’s from watching about 6-7 times consecutively. Now I have to look again for more on the pole plants) Pole plants are fore of boot, towards tips of skis in direction of travel, not down the hill; I.e. not a lot of counter rotation.

Shoulders are pointed in direction of pelvis; i.e., no rotation of spine. To face downhill, the head turns at the neck.

Surface roughnesses are absorbed with ankles and knees, ...except when their not.
 
Last edited:
Thread Starter
TS
David Chan

David Chan

getting after it!
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Joined
Nov 13, 2015
Posts
115
Location
San Francisco, CA
Sent Karlo feedback and follow up questions via Private message to allow the thread to be less "influenced" by questions/clarifications for now.
 

Skisailor

Laziest Skier on the Mountain
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Not intended to be an exhaustive MA, but within the framework of the Fundamentals, a few observations:

1) There is very little movement into the turn. As a result, the COM is generally behind the BOS, only catching up to the BOS at transition and then drifting back again (due in part to relatively more knee flex than ankle flex after transition - but see also paragraph 5 below).

2) Slight ski tip divergence is occurring, likely a result of the skier properly directing pressure to the outside ski but with too little attention being paid to tipping the light inside leg/ski. In addition, the COM aft of BOS results in lighter tips which cannot be as precisely controlled, particularly in the uneven snow.

3) Rotation is being employed but is occurring in the spinal column - not being achieved with leg rotation. Hips face the ski tips even when head and possibly shoulders are facing more down the hill.

4) Skier uses rotation in the spinal column coupled with hip flexion to achieve angulation. Skier avoids whole body inclination. Max edge angle occurs after the fall line and snow spray at max pressure confirms COM behind BOS.

5) Skier uses extension of both legs to initiate the turns rather than flexion of both legs or “pedaling”. At transition when skis are flat, skier’s COM finally catches back up to the BOS, but in subsequent moments, the skier’s COM moves laterally inside the turn too quickly (rather than the old “foreagonally”), so the COM quickly gets behind the BOS again.

6) A word on pole touches - Pole touch timing seems pretty good - maybe a bit late once or twice, But in just a couple of the turns - from the "aft/inside COM" position, the skier gives the appearance of reaching down the hill and uses an upward arm motion rather than just a wrist motion. This, coupled with the skier's lateral move inside and lowered inside hand, results in an outside hand that is quite a bit higher than the inside hand - again, not on every turn.
 

karlo

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it is not aggressive; not much propulsion gained from it.

Pole plants are fore of boot, towards tips of skis in direction of travel, not down the hill

Interesting, re-reading what I wrote. When MA is a description of what is happening, coupled with what is not happening, it can come across as judgmental as opposed to clarification. Last April, in a lesson I took at Big Sky, the instructor initiated a discussion regarding the various ways leg extension/flex combinations one can use to transition, then asked us what we think we did or what we saw. From that discussion, it was clear that we were trying to distinguish and discern one ext/flex pattern from another, not judging if one was right or wrong. Im finding this MA stuff to be hard!
 

karlo

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Of course, if we were doing MA on this, there’d be no alternatives to contemplate, since everything MS does is the most apppropriate and perfect. :)

Don’t forget to unmute the audio.

 

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