PMTS black box opened

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PMTS black box opened

Postby John Mason » Sun Mar 14, 2004 12:53 am

I got to spend 3 days at mammoth working on my releases, etc.

Well, short story long, the friend I was skiing with (he is 45 and skied since he was 5) gave me a show accidently and cut his thumb pretty bad.

While in our short 1 hour in the emergency room, we saw check in:

2 broken legs
2 broken arms
2 broken wrists
1 knee that didn't look knee like anymore
and
1 ankle that - sorry - little hard do describe (see me cringe here)

and finally
one local non-sking resident with some sort of illness.

This is a dinky little hospital. Of course all these people have insurance and I doubt there is too much indigent care up there that needs to be done. Probably the most profitable hospital per square foot in the nation!

Anyway - my friend gave me some body position tips that helped my PMTS practice quite a bit. Basically, now I always pole plant, even if doing cruising large arc turns. Keeps me out of the back seat. Back last summer I learned a non-pmts drill to drag the tips which is a good drill for keeping the upper body stable and pointing down the hill. For me it stopped my early skiing habit of throwing my shoulder then letting my lower body catch up. But, this drill, with arms out to the side, got me into a persistant habit of being a little on my heels. Pole planting and reaching down the hill to do it, fixes that bad habit that I sometimes found myself in. (and, yes, all my PMTS coaches have told me the same thing, but 3 days spent with a person reminding me constantly does help break a habit)

(he also took me up to my first bowl too, it was pretty fun!)

Oh, also, he builds artificial limbs and he opened the "black box" on how the phantom move on the inside leg makes the external femer rotate. He knew right away because he has to deal with the gait analysis issues all the time in his work. Basically, refering to the phantom move in a doorway test I described in an earlier post, when doing the phantom move the hip tilts towards that foot and rotates in the direction of that foot. The body and tendons etc, that stablize the gait is then out of kilter for the other leg and that leg will, on it's own, seek to find it's way back to equilibriam. Anyway, he knew all the technical medical terms for what this rotation is called as they have to account for it in the way an artificial limb is constructed.

A phantom move, once you study yourself in the doorway, will also naturally move your body into the new turn. In a stem turn, where some or all of the turn has some outside leg active steering component to it, will move your body towards the outside of the turn as compared to the body position the phantom move places you in. (especially true at slow speeds)

All in all a fun 3 days!
John Mason
 
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Postby hh » Sun Mar 14, 2004 7:19 am

John, great discovery, but more disturbing and important was the number of skiing injuries you referred to at Mammoth, in a small hospital. This could all be reduced with proper movement training and boot alignment. Anyway, if you are interested in more technical explanations and anatomy lessons about PMTS and you want to open the PMTS box further, you can read the PMTS Instructor Manual and the Footbed technicians training manual. They have explanations of all the muscles and joints used in PMTS skiing as well as the bio-mech explanations for why PMTS is so effective. They are available though us.
hh
 

Postby milesb » Sun Mar 14, 2004 8:53 am

Sorry Harald, the reason for all the injuries is the popularity of the terrain parks with Los Angeles skiers and snowboarders, and the size of the jumps. This information comes straight from the staff of the hospital. Please don't degrade your excellent product by making statements like that. What would be more helpful is to work on getting some PMTS trained instructors (preferably black level) at Mammoth, so I can take lessons from them.
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milesb
 
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Interesting Premise - Terrain Parks

Postby John Mason » Sun Mar 14, 2004 9:50 am

We did see a really bad (neck or back) injury on a rail on Saturday.

On Friday, while we were in the ER, a couple of commonalities in the group that came in, they were all middle age and older adults, the majority that said hello had skiied or snowboarded for years. The one snowboarder with his broken wrist had never hurt himself snowboarding before and was just twirling in place at the bottom of a lift waiting for people to finish coming down, lost his balance and landed on his wrist. He was about 45 in age.

So, with my small sample, none we saw were terrain park, but I'm sure that has added to the problems.

They had about 6000 on the slopes on Friday and expected 26,000 on Saturday. I had an out of control skier bump me pretty hard while we worked our way to the uncrowded far right side of the mountain. (Mammoth is not a facing ridge of slopes like Breckenridge, but a 3 sided mountain. People tend to follow the sun around for soft but not too soft snow. On a crowded day just seek out the icy or hard stuff that hasn't softened yet and you miss most people. (till the sun softens that side)) Though no one in our ER visit mentioned being hurt by a collision. They were all falls.

So probably crossing tips, not absorbing bumps, basically not being in control all causing falls would be the most likely cause, which all relates to technique as milesb said.

It was weird, we felt we were in a supermarket checkout watching the people go by.

Oh, earlier in the day, the accident the staff were talking about, was a 6 inch scalp cut from a skier collision that needed stiched up. (I'm keeping my helmet on)

I have the PMTS instructor manual, but not the footbed manual.
John Mason
 
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Location: Lafayette, Indiana, USA

Postby hh » Sun Mar 14, 2004 4:57 pm

Any proper instruction for terrain park tricks would reduce injuries.
hh
 


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