PSIA wide stance dead end

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Postby dewdman42 » Fri Oct 06, 2006 12:36 pm

yes I know there are many pics of guys with their legs close together. That is how I want to ski also. It seems superior in every way and certainly looks more comfortable and simply more fun to ski that way.

I'm still curious what the WC guys were hoping to accomplish with their legs wide apart, which I have no intention of trying to do myself..but I am just curious to know WHY they were doing it...unless it simply comes down to unintentional situations that happened to be photographed.
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Postby dewdman42 » Fri Oct 06, 2006 12:51 pm

Here are a couple photos that were shown to me last year to try to convince me about a wide stance. (they didn't, don't worry). At the fall line you see the vertical separation as one would expect. However, at the transition when the skiis are flat, the skis are still kind of wide and no vertical seperation.

http://www.ronlemaster.com/images/2004- ... SR-wm.html

http://www.ronlemaster.com/images/2004- ... -SL-1.html

http://www.ronlemaster.com/images/2004- ... -gs-1.html

http://www.ronlemaster.com/images/2004- ... -gs-1.html

http://www.ronlemaster.com/images/2004- ... -2-wm.html

http://www.ronlemaster.com/images/2004- ... -2-wm.html

http://www.ronlemaster.com/images/2004- ... -2-wm.html

There was at least one other photo shown to me last year that was much more exagerated then this and I can still picture it in my mind....but same thing...the skier was at transition in a squatted, riding-a-horse stance, skiis flat on the snow and very wide apart.

Anyway, I'm just curious if this was something that WC guys were trying to do on purpose or were these merely less-then-ideal ski photos, taken out of context to try to support the idea of a wider stance? And by the way, if that is the case, than why the heck is LeMaster showing these photos of his website? (getting back to your previous critique about his understanding of how to ski effectively).
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Postby Harald » Fri Oct 06, 2006 1:34 pm

First throw out all the GS photos as the speed or velocity creates dynamic capabilities we don?t have and can?t use in regular skiing. In fact, neither do the WC skiers. They ski totally differently in SL then in GS. Rocca has never won a GS. Until Grandi changed his skiing he was never in the top three in SL. Bodie with his current set up, can?t win in SL.

http://www.ronlemaster.com/images/2004- ... SR-wm.html

Benni is not wide in transition here with his set up (boot alignment and legs bowed, any narrower and he would look like his feet were together and his knees apart. Boot set up has so much to do with stance width, of course so does hip width. But PSIA says shoulder width or more, so do many of the coaches. I think some of that is beginning to go away now that they see they were far off the mark.
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Postby Harald » Fri Oct 06, 2006 1:37 pm

I can show just as many or more situations that prove how narrow the WC slalom skiers ski.

How about boots touching? Frame 3 and 7
http://www.ronlemaster.com/images/2002- ... 1a-ws.html

Or have a look at the avatar of Kurt Engle
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Postby NoCleverName » Fri Oct 06, 2006 1:40 pm

dewdman42 wrote:I'm still curious what the WC guys were hoping to accomplish with their legs wide apart.


Maybe it's just tactical: they could have ended up too low to get around the next gate and just had to, more or less, step up hill. Like HH says, it's not clear that WC survival runs ought to be posters for recreational skiers. "Do what we say, not what we're forced to do".
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Postby Harald » Fri Oct 06, 2006 1:58 pm

As I demonstrated in the Rocca monage where he was able to hook the very last part of the arc to bring his feet together, sometimes you just don't have time or the gate is not suited for that kind of arc, as the next turn is more in the falline. But the intent is not to ski wide, that's where PSIA oges wrong. If Rocca had to dump the turn earlier, his feet would have been wide in transition.

To me the objective has always been to present the techniques that will give you the capabilities to do more on skis, not less with inferior movements. Just as a ski racer can't win if he knows only how to release with a wide stance, a reacerational skier will have trouble if they can't stay with the outside ski the whole way around the arc in all mountain continions. Bailing out on a steep run in crud and bumps, where you have to have speed control for at least ten turns, isn't a pretty thing to watch.
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Interesting

Postby Sidecut » Fri Oct 06, 2006 2:01 pm

I've always wanted to make it to an HH clinic. So much of this makes sense. I remember the last PSIA event I went to, there was an examiner who kept harping on me to get my skis apart. She was incapable of watching what the skis were doing and how they were tracking. I got so sick of it that at lunch I grabbed an overhead beam and hung there so she could see my legs hanging down and therefore see where at least I was starting from. She still didn't get it. She had been indoctrinated to a philosophy that was based on how wide aprt your skis were. Very strange. Revenge came the next day as we had a nice 2 foot snow fall. There's nothing like watching an eastern examiner try to ski powder. You know once she narowed her stance she almost got it.
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Postby Harald » Fri Oct 06, 2006 2:07 pm

Real situations don't lie, PSIA has been trying to push their agenda for decades but no one has stood up to them. Now we have the knowledge and the power to tell them they are on the wrong track for modern ski teaching with modern skis.
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Re: Interesting

Postby François » Fri Oct 06, 2006 2:09 pm

Sidecut wrote:Revenge came the next day as we had a nice 2 foot snow fall. There's nothing like watching an eastern examiner try to ski powder. You know once she narowed her stance she almost got it.

I remember my first trip to the softer snow. I had been used to skiing with feet moderately far apart (like a typical DH racer in a tuck :D ). A very kind local gentleman told me I should keep my two skis tight together and treat them as one. It helped a lot.
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Postby dewdman42 » Fri Oct 06, 2006 2:17 pm

Harald wrote:But PSIA says shoulder width or more, so do many of the coaches. I think some of that is beginning to go away now that they see they were far off the mark.


Ah.. So it *WAS* intentional at one point. That is the question I am trying to get answered. If the coaches were telling them to do that, what was their reasoning?

Harald please forgive me, it seems you feel that I am trying to support the idea of a wide stance and I am not. I already agree with you 100% and I've seen many pictures of the narrow stance. I'm just trying to understand why there exists even a single photo of wide stanced WC guys on LeMaster's website and other places. And why the coaches were telling them to ski that way.

I'm not asking in order to challenge your assertion of a narrow stance. I'm totally with you!!!!

The reason I would like to understand why WC coaches were telling them to use a wide stance is perhaps so that I have a better answer when I am confronted with this topic again by PSIA types (like my boss this winter for example). Its not enough for me to say, look at these photos of people with narrow stances, because they will just counter that with some wide stance photos. I can't tell thim its because HH said so because they will just quote someone else that they like. I can certainly try to outski them in a game of who-is-the-best, but that is usually pretty subjective and egos usually get in the way of objectivity anyway. I can try to speak intelligently with them about why it makes sense to have a narrow stance, which you have done in your books and on this forum many times (thank you). The one last thing that would help me in those discussions would be to give them a solid understanding of WHY the coaches and PSIA types have been telling their skiers to ski that way..even though it was wrong. I can't simply say "they were doing it because they didn't know what they were doing", even though that is true..because...I don't have the credentials to make such an assertion and have it accepted as fact.

Anyway, I'm beating a dead horse here.... Long live narrow stances!!
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...consequence, not intent

Postby NoCleverName » Fri Oct 06, 2006 2:24 pm

I think of some of "consequence" is due to the fact that skiing analysis completely ignores hysterisis. (To double check that assertion I have just quickly scanned what is probably the most complete paper I've seen on the subject of carving: "Physics of Skiing: The Ideal?Carving Equation and Its Applications" U. D. Jentschura and F. Fahrbach; Universit?at Freiburg, Physikalisches Institut. It's never mentioned there, either).

Hysterisis is essentially the delay between the cause and the effect. I was first thinking about it when Francois was talking about flat vs. steep skiing. There's a delay between when you input a "tip" and when the ski makes contact with the snow and decambers into the carving position. During that time a lot of space can go by in the steeps!

So I'm also thinking some of the "wide body" transitional positions could also be due to the hysterisis effect: Your body says "turn" to the ski and it says, "OK, I'll get to it, just wait". But of course, the biomechanics are already repositioning your body for a turn while the ski, still cambered, is running straight ahead. After a bit, the snow reforms the ski into a carving attitude and it begins to turn.

The study of the hysterisis effect is definitely on the agenda for studying ski physics. By the way, I understand hysterisis is a major component of the physics steering a car.

As an aside, after the paper derived the "ideal carving formula", it noted that WC courses effectively make ideal carving impossible.

More later, but much later as I have to re-charge my math skills :)
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Postby Harald » Fri Oct 20, 2006 2:28 pm

The real reason that PSIA is into the wide stance, as someone pointed out on another thread, is that they have to ski that way. So they teach it to make themsleves look like they ski that way on purpose. They ski with a wide stance and support it because they don't have to make excusses for the way they ski. "That's how we teach it, so that's how we ski", very logical.
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Postby Harald » Fri Oct 20, 2006 7:24 pm

Dewd wrote:
The reason I would like to understand why WC coaches were telling them to use a wide stance is perhaps so that I have a better answer when I am confronted with this topic again by PSIA types (like my boss this winter for example). Its not enough for me to say, look at these photos of people with narrow stances, because they will just counter that with some wide stance photos. I can't tell him its because HH said so because they will just quote someone else that they like.


Actually you can tell them it?s because Harald said so. There are many coaches out there who are out of touch. I know first hand the Austrian coaches and even Jesse Hunt, US Ski Team director is not advocating a wide stance. You have to remember the info down to the regular coach is like the broken telephone. It takes years for them to get the message. PSIA doesn?t have a telephone, they have their own network , own set of biomechanics and own logic, so it doesn?t matter what they hear or what?s really working to them.
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Postby 4Slide » Sat Oct 21, 2006 10:30 am

I also think the wide stance is to an extent less scary initially, as the inside ski is there as a base of support and you don't have to trust the outside ski to "hold" you. Training wheels on a bike are similar in this regard; and both training wheels and dependence on a wide stance can introduce movement patterns that make it hard to learn real dynamic balance later on a bike or on skis.
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Postby Harald » Sat Oct 21, 2006 1:22 pm

There is no doubt that if you are used to leaning on the inside ski with a wide stance (they go together) , your skiing is not part of a balancing sport.

So it will be very scary at first, if you want to really put balance into your skiing.

It's almost as if generally skiers were better balancers on straight skis, as they had to learn some sort of balance to make the stance ski edge hold.

On shaped skis you can cheat too easily and get away with it. Yes, I call it cheating, because it's a lower grade of skiing. It will get you down the hill, but it won't give you any idea of what skiing can be or the potential that is built into the skis.
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