Informal poll.

PMTS Forum

Informal poll.

Postby skier_j » Thu Nov 04, 2004 6:06 pm

Can I ask the regulars to chime in on a question?

The answers may shed some light as to what I am beginning to see as a HUGE point for disagreement among those folks posting here.

How many of you guys (or gals as the case may be) started skiing on modern ski's? IE: ski's with a significant sidecut.

OK 2 questions.

How long have you been skiing?

Damn!! 3 questions!

It seems apparent that most posters here are lesson junkies---whether by reading instruction books or camps or group or private coaching. I don't mean that as a negative--by any means---just an observation.

How often do you just "free ski"?

I'm going to compose my thoughts and send them to John Mason by PM and we'll see how closely my thoughts match the answers. I may be all wet--but humor me please.

Jeff
Whee!
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Poll answers

Postby John Mason » Thu Nov 04, 2004 6:25 pm

1. Modern skis only
2. since March 2003 - 76 ski days in so far
3. At this stage of my skiing I go for as much instruction as I can get. I don't want bad habits to start by themselves and then get into my muscle memory. I run about 1 out of every 4 days are "coached" days. About 25% of the time I work on what I learned in the coached days. About 50% of the time I'm hanging with friends that ski and just ski for the fun of it.

As time goes on this ratio will change with more - just ski for fun.

I don't know how to figure "carver" time into the mix. So, it's not included in the above.

For November I will end up with 9 days total, with 4 days for fun, 1 day to work on stuff, and 4 days coached. (since I must make overt plans to ski and can't "ski on impulse" being from the "flatlands", this schedule is pretty set)

December my ratio will shift much more to the fun side with 14 days skiing planned, none coached.

January is 3 day all mountain camp, meet on the slope Epic meet in PA for 2 days, a 5 day Lafayette ski club trip to Aspen, plus day trips for fun to Perfect North.

I see this year as the year where I start skiing much more just for fun.
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Postby Bluey » Thu Nov 04, 2004 8:06 pm

As an observation Polls etc generally do poorly in this forum,.......and understandly so,.......and I can't see the relevance of your questions......but I live in hope......the ski community is generally very diverse but the posters on this forum seem to be a small group and most seem to be happy to assist with any question ( politely asked )...... my concern is that you are about to start yet another "List" this time categorising us.........but I live in hope.........so to specically answer your questions about where my small cog fits into the scheme of things he's me in a nutshell.....

1. First started ? : In my first year, at age 47, I used old style skis, 3 days only, and that was only back in 2000. Not a good start.... with lots of bad experiences stored in the muscle memory....... but essentially I've learnt/unlearnt/relearnt just about everything on modern carve skis.

2. How Many Days? : Since 2000 - say 40-50 ski days ....but none greater than say 10 days at a time
3. Ski Junky? : A few lessons every season.... initially, group but more recently private. I've had one Harb Camp (4-5 days).....so I don't think that's excessive and I spend most of my ski-time free/fun skiing..... however, I'm always working on something, on every run.
I don't consider myself a Physical-lesson junky but according to your definition in your post above than I could be a Recovering, instruction book/instruction website, Junky.............
As an observation, my experience is that I learnt only so much from reading instruction books and trawling websites etc and inevitably I quickly reached a point of diminishing returns/saturation in respect to the fun I got from researching a fun topic like skiing.....

Good luck with the informal poll.......I hope you do better than the other polls ( albeit only a few ) that have been attempted on this site....


Bluey.....
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Postby Pierre » Fri Nov 05, 2004 8:08 am

>> 1.)How many of you guys (or gals as the case may be) started skiing on modern ski's? IE: ski's with a significant sidecut. <<

I did not start skiing on skis with sidecut

>>2.)How long have you been skiing? <<

I started skiing on Christmas day 1959 44years

>>3.)How often do you just "free ski"?<<

Probably about 40% of my time on snow.
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Postby Thor » Fri Nov 05, 2004 8:31 am

I started on snowboard then went to skis after I realized I was too conservative to fit in with the snowboard crowd.
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Postby jclayton » Sat Nov 06, 2004 2:31 am

1. Started with leather lace up boots in Mt Buller Australia at 19 , one weekend in '71 I think . Spent a week the same winter in Coronet Peak NZ . Then did nothing until '90 when I started to ski at Sierra Nevada Spain . stuck it out on trad skis till '99 thinking the new skis were for wimps . I guess after all the work I had done to ski on narrow skis I thought the new skis were just an easy way out until I got myself some Salomon X-Screams and took a lesson from an ex world cup racer who started me skiing with my feet .

2. skiing 14 yrs not including a week or so in '74 . Started at 2 weeks a season for first 5 years then 3 for a couple more and the last 4 years or so I've been getting 35 days plus . Not too bad considering I live on Meditteranean Island . Mallorca . I've even done a day trip , flight to Barcelona , stay overnight , hire a car and drive to the Pyrenees ( 2 hrs or so ) lifts close at 5,00 , back to Barcelona and fly out that night and back at work next morning . Felt great , the day in question was an all day powderday with very few people , a week day . By the way I'm 52 now and just getting into gear .

3. Alway took week long group lesson the first 5 or 6 years , not really getting anywhere so then took private lessons with some improvement but still most often frustrated with technique . Still enjoyed myself greatly and did improve bit by bit each year . Never really understood the transition stage but it waS NEVER EXPLAINED , I wasn't even aware there was one but knew I couldn't link turns the way the " experts " did . I always thought I would never reach this level as I had started too late .

Bingo , the ex-racer I mentioned before watched me ski and told me I was starting the turns with the hips and to concentrate on the feet moving first to start . Big difference and I was able to start carving much nearer the top of the turn not just the bottom third . Then after reading Haralds 2nd book everything started to fall into place . I take weeklong all mountain camps in the Pyrenees once a year with ex spanish team members who I like and respect greatly and a day with Harald last December . I have to admit no-one I have come into contact with has acheived the depth of technique explanation that Harald has .

I remember distinctly during only my 2nd season skiing feeling the base of my foot in the boot and thinking surely you just have to tip the feet over to turn parallel , changing the pressure simultaneously . But I couldn't translate this to any slightly steeper slopes and I couldn't get my upper body to co-operate given what I was taught at the time , skidding heels out etc so I just let it ride .

4. Free ski probably 80% of my time , drilling 15 and lessons 5 . But free skiing is over simplifying I think as always at some point I am conciously thinking about the kind of turn to use , Weighted Release, Super Phantom , High - C etc even when everything is flowing reasonably well I like to be aware of my body in space .

Technique junkie ? Sure , I read all I can , have all the books and videos but now all those other books are gathering dust , Elling , Post Foster etc.. not to mention all the quick fix lessons from the magazines . I remember the articles Harald wrote for Skiing mag. , found them interesting but didn't pay much attention mentally filing them away with all the other quick fixes that I couldn't really translate in any lasting way to my own situation . It was when I saw the whole system that I woke up , finally something all encompassing and consistent !

Sorry about the longwindedness but polls do tend to be a bit onedimensional .
skinut ,among other things
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Postby Jeff Markham » Sat Nov 06, 2004 7:32 pm

Questions #1& #2: I started skiing on straight skis with Spademan (sp?) bindings around 1980.

I probably skied 30 days from 1980 until 1999. Most of the days were from one-week ski vacations with friends. The vacations were to unwind and I wanted to enjoy every minute. Therefore, I never took a lesson -- how could a lesson be any fun? So, I attained a level of mediocrity which enabled me to skid/wedge just about anwhere I was foolish enough to venture. Can you say "terminal intermediate"?

I moved to Sandy, Utah in 1998, only partially for the skiing. Since I now had the opportunity to ski far more frequently and wanted to get better, I decided to take a lesson. Good idea...bad lesson. So, I picked up "Anybody Can Be An Expert Skier", tried the recommended movements, and saw dramatic, instant improvement. "Hmm, these exercises work and they are fun, too. Let's try some more exercises." More improvement. "OK, let's try a camp." More improvement.

I've read all of Harald's books multiple times, watched the videos, attended 5 PMTS and 1 Carver camps. My results with PMTS are really no different than any other PMTS student.

I'm not sure what my answer to #3 is. There have been many days when ALL I did was drills. Once I spent an entire day on nothing but the Upper-Lower Body Coordination drills. I don't have any runs where I'm not thinking about my technique.

Camp junky? Lesson junky? Carver junky? Technique junky? I prefer to think of myself as "improvement junky". After wasting my time for so many years and now seeing the improvement that PMTS has brought to my skiing, I'm trying to make up for lost time. I'm also having a good time at it.
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Postby piggyslayer » Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:47 am

Did you notice that we have 2 bio threads going at the same time?

Q1. I will impress everybody on this one. My first skis where not only without any shape but also, they where wood only, even without metal edges and my binding where more leather than metal! I got my first ?plastic? skis with ?plastic? boots sometime during my high school years.

Q2. I was 6 when I got my first skis (small footprint: it does not mean that I am skiing since I was 6). I always wanted to ski and to get good at it. I got more serious about it in 1993 (still on skinny skis) and I am skiing 20+ days each season starting 1993, and now I will both ski white snow and CARVE the black snow! I have shared my bug with my wife and we are skiing together since 1995. Her first skis have also been skinny. She sometimes posts here as Chicken or as me.

Q3. Yes, I am a drill junky. I do a lot of drills. Partly to keep myself challenged, partly because I think they are fun, and partly to improve.

Not a lot of TTS instruction: In winter of 1993-04, I took good set of ski lessons (a whole course) from a university I worked for at that time. My instructor was a grad student (thankfully, he was not my student) and a very good skier. He told me something that sounds like PMTS: ?do NOT try to steer your skis, have your skis do the turning?. This was before shape skis where invented. His teaching was nothing like traditional TTS.

I have seen my wife take numerous TTS lessons and have been exposed to TTS through her experience.
We have discovered PMTS and attended our first camp some 5 years ago.
Since then, we have attended 4 PMTS camps and have NOT attended the CARVER CAMP :cry: .
Piggy Slayer
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sorry I've kinda lost interest

Postby *skierJ » Wed Nov 10, 2004 5:06 pm

I'm not up to debating what method is better and, quite frankly, I forgot what it was I sent JM a week ago.

I have to bone up on being a crime scene investgator---thats not acurate actually, I have to become an accident scene sleuth this comoing season.

Decreed by the INSURER!!!

When I ski up to you fom now on to treat your injury---expect the first words out of my mouth to change from----

Hey dude, what happened? Can I help? What hurts?

to:

Good afternoon, I'm so and so, what did you do and how could you have prevented it?

you say what hurts? Sorry to hear about it---now tell me what did you do again? Are there any witnesses? No witnesses? Sorry, if thats the case I need you to answer 30 more questions before I can help.

Are you ready?

question one.

blah blah blah
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Poll

Postby Arc » Thu Nov 11, 2004 6:04 pm

Learned to ski at college in Michigan-UP in 1966, on wooden skis/leather lace boots/cable bindings, after breaking the wood ones twice in my first dozen outings I got on metal 210cm Hart GS w/Look-Nevada stepin (total weight = 18-lbs). But I stayed with the leather lace-ups for first 150 days and credit them for my learning to ski with a strong focus on my feet. Now spend 50% freeskiing.
To the ageless sage who can learn from me, I will teach. From the innocent child who can teach me, I will learn.
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Postby Bluey » Tue Nov 30, 2004 4:19 am

I'll bite.......Its been some time since this question/informal poll was asked and enough time has elapsed to get in whatever responses were going to be given........and yes, there were a number of responses to the informal poll.......but not a lot.......so I guess any conclusion could be argued as being statistically skewed.......but let me simply ask...... what was the hypothesis were you testing.......?

Bluey
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Postby Harrison » Tue Nov 30, 2004 5:29 am

1. strait skis
2. been skiing for 14 years (since i was 18 months old)
3. free ski 100% of the time now, about 50 days on snow a year
skinny skiers unite
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Investigator, huh?

Postby comprex » Tue Nov 30, 2004 4:08 pm

1. Straight skis.
2. Started sidecut in '97. Still ski straight skis 6-8days/season. Ski shaped of various flavors 20 day/season.
3. Not a lesson junkie. Freeski min. 75% of the time Still trying to absorb half of what is posted here :shock: so not remotely regular :P only filling out the requirements so I can ask below:

On to the important stuff:

How much of your role is going to be that of on-scene observer,

- first hand: recording conditions, ruts , skid marks, mud streaks, pant rips, bark scrapes, random pieces of orography etc.

- second hand: writing down exactly what was said in the shock of the moment before IWJSA stories gel.

I think both of those roles are entirely proper for ya.

How much do they expect you to pursue evidence beyond the site?
Entirely improper IMO.

How much do they expect you to draw conclusions or form deductions?
Entirely improper IMO.
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