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LiquidFeet

LiquidFeet

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....And the sad reality is that getting Mr. Orange Pants to undo that very ingrained movement pattern is harder than taking the time to teach it properly at the entry level.

Heel-pushing is indeed very hard to delete when it's deeply embedded.

The skier needs to know that it's happening (skier is often unaware), needs to want to replace it because of its dysfunctional consequences (skier is often aware something goes wrong sometimes but doesn't know why), needs to know how to do the appropriate replacement movement pattern (needs quality coaching, hard to find), needs to do the appropriate replacement movement pattern often enough to know what the replacement feels like (takes effort and involves dealing with sometimes disappointing implementation), needs to be always proprioceptively monitoring whether the heel-pushing is happening or whether the arch-rotation is happening (takes conscious concentration on the issue, which is not necessarily what people want to do while skiing), so that when auto-pilot kicks in and heel-pushing returns that situation can be reversed.

Then the skier needs to be committed to doing this monitoring and enact those corrections on every run, everywhere (which is in direct conflict with "having fun" - for most people).

This is "work." It requires continuous conscious self-evaluation until the new movement pattern is embedded, and this takes a lot of time skiing with the focus to be successful, maybe even seasons. Most adult recreational skiers are not willing to do this. A LIII candidate should be willing, but recreational skiers on vacation - not so much.

T'would be so much better if skiers were willing to take enough lessons at the beginning to get the right motor patterns embedded in the first place, as @JESinstr says.
 
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geepers

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Just going back to my mantra that we should be focusing our teaching on common threads that span the beginner to the expert and a key one is teaching rotation through/around the arch. IMO for most, the natural/default rotary movement pattern is a pushing of the heels vs arch centered rotation. That is so clearly obvious in the above.

And the sad reality is that getting Mr. Orange Pants to undo that very ingrained movement pattern is harder than taking the time to teach it properly at the entry level.

May be the case. Although MOP may ski quite differently when not rushing his turns. Supposedly he's a CSIA L2 by this point.
 

HardDaysNight

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Another sad reality, and one that is rather more important to prospective students, is the fact that Orange Pants is actually a better skier than the large majority of ski instructors you could hope to get as a walk-up at any US ski area, including major destination resorts. The other guy is better but I’m surprised he’s considered great given the relatively low performance he gets from his skis.
 

Mike King

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Another sad reality, and one that is rather more important to prospective students, is the fact that Orange Pants is actually a better skier than the large majority of ski instructors you could hope to get as a walk-up at any US ski area, including major destination resorts. The other guy is better but I’m surprised he’s considered great given the relatively low performance he gets from his skis.
Regarding the L4, what was his intent? You've presumed that he was attempting to get maximum ski performance from his turns. Look back to the task -- pivoting to carving. That's not a maximum performance turn.

Mike
 

Scruffy

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It’s interesting to see how the theme of the moment waxes and wanes in ski instruction circles. Currently counter is out of favour, dismissed by people who don’t understand why it ever existed in the first place and what function it serves in the turns of top racers who use it pervasively. Can anyone suggest what that might be? I mean just for the sake of intellectual curiosity.

Well, it really depends on when/where/who one was taught racing technique; but counter is very much still a part of modern racing techniques, and no Harb didn't invent counter, and yes it's more deliberate and dynamic than simply upper-lower body separation or skiing into counter. Aside from helping to create higher edge angles, and balance against those forces, counter facilitates the outside foot to pronate and direct downward pressure to the turning edge, thus helping the outside turning edge to bite into the snow.
 

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