Unweighting

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Unweighting

Postby BigE » Fri Nov 12, 2004 9:33 pm

Does PMTS teach unweighting? If so how?
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Postby jclayton » Sat Nov 13, 2004 8:08 am

BigE,
unweighting is effectively, I think , the release . In order to release some or all the weight has to come off the stance ski . I remember before with the emphasis on unweighting, up or down , I concentrated too much on upper body movements . The release puts the emphasis on the feet movements so the unweighting is much more subtle and balance is maintained more effectively .
Methods taught then would be retraction , weighted release etc ..
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Postby milesb » Sat Nov 13, 2004 9:32 am

I have never seen any mention made of it. I'll go out on a limb here. Judging from things Harald has said here about keeping it as simple as possible, perhaps it's something that will come naturally if needed when the skier is making all the right PMTS moves?
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Postby piggyslayer » Sat Nov 13, 2004 9:43 am

Leg flexion is both described in Harald?s books and taught in camps.
Here is example quote from ACBES II page 78:

? Prepare Pole Plant?
? As soon as you feel the legs flex and the skis flatten, pull your knees aggressively to your chest ?


It is also discussed as part of the "float" in the books, and it relates to the fore-aft balance discussion the both of us had in the other thread (If you remember the picture of Harald on Carvers I have linked, he had legs flexed on it). My fore-aft balance question in that thread was in the context of flexing/pulling knees to chest (or unweighting) movement.

Hope this helps.
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Postby piggyslayer » Sat Nov 13, 2004 9:56 am

Continuing my previous post ...

Am I missing something?
In the thread ?Some questions about PMTS methods? many people have answered that there is no to questions about sinking down posted by skiman123321 and I answered yes.
In this thread the same is happening.

Am I missing something or this is just a lingo conflict?
Maybe I do not understand what un-weighting means?

milesb, jclayton help me out in clearing the confusion.
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Postby milesb » Sat Nov 13, 2004 10:18 am

Alrighty, then. Unwieghting is generally used to make it easier for the skis to pivot at transition. If you don't want the skis to pivot, then you don't need to unwieght, in fact it should be avoided. If you DO want the skis to pivot at transition, it is still often unnecessary, depending on snow conditions. But if it is necessary, then an aggressive retraction will do the trick for most situations. But sometimes a big UP! movement is necessary (or it seems necessary!) Clear as mud, right? :?
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Postby Bluey » Sat Nov 13, 2004 12:49 pm

IMHO, There seems to be 3 parts to whats happening for unweighting.
(I presume its the unweighting of the pressure on the ski's gripping edge).

1. There's the primary movement of what the feet/ankle are doing inside the boot

2. There's the flexion of knees/retraction of the legs

3. There's hip/upper body movement to/for realignment/shift the centre of mass/downward force to maintain dynamic balance

I presume the sequence of unweighting is in the same order as described above but it could be... 2 then 1 then 3...I'm not sure exactly what I consciously do in respect to the sequence but I suspect its 1, 2, then as necessary 3.....


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Postby Ott Gangl » Sat Nov 13, 2004 3:12 pm

Unweighting: it is used to reduce or eliminate weight on the skis allowing the skier to SIMULTANIOUSLY change edges, change weight/pressure and change lead of the skis. There is NO pivoting involved.

Unweighting takes place ONLY on the down movement as the skiers body sinks slower than the legs are retracted. In up-unweighting the duration of the unweighted stage is longer because is starts from a higher point. For up-unweighting the end of the previous turn should be low, with the legs well bent, to allow for a QUICK up movement. As the up movemnet nears the end a retraction of the skis can start and last through the down movement until full weight is again on the skis. In crud, vigerous up movements can allow the skis to leave the snow and be re-directed before landing.

In down-unweighting the unweighted stage is much shorter since it must start from a high point, that is the turn has to finish with extended legs and a quick drop of th body with a quicker retraction of the legs toward the chest, as described in a post above. Again, that move allows simultanious edge/weight/lead change.

I'm not sure of this, but I think in PMTS all transitions are SEQUENTIAL, that is, edge/weight/lead change is not done with both skis at the same time, rather the tipping takes place first by one ski with the other following. Quick as that may be, it is still a one/two move. Nothing wrong with that. It does not require unweighting since edge/weight change takes place first on one ski while the other one still hangs on momentarily on the old track.

In the olden days the stem christies/turns were sequential, the skier would have the weight on the downhill ski while finishing a turn, lift or slide out the uphill ski and putting it on it's new inside edge. Second in th sequence was transferring the weight to the stemmed ski which now would turn. Third in the sequence was closing the now weightless inside ski next to the tracking outside ski with a slight lead.

There is another kind of simultanious unweighting which many of us still use, and that is rebound unweighting. The skier who is finishing the turn on a high edge angle has loaded the skis like a spring board. By stiffening the knee joints at the moment of the skis unloading, the rebounding will momentarily lighten/unweight the skier so he can simultaniosly change edges and weight on the skis before his full weight comes back down on the skis.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that in PMTS rebound can be used like that since, in order to tip the downhill ski on its little toe edge, that ski cannot be still bent in reverse camber and used to rebound. Were the skier to absorb the the reboud on his downhill ski at the end of the turn while still be in reverse camber on his uphill/inside ski, rebound would only help if that edge change would happen while the skier is pushed upward by the bite of the LTE. If he wanted the rebound to vault him downhill he would first need to change edges, or at least flatten the skis, a move which would absorb the rebound.

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The float.... the float....

Postby BigE » Mon Nov 15, 2004 2:23 pm

Does'nt the "float" spoken so much about being quite a fun and and enjoyable part of a PMTS turn strongly suggest that rebound unweighting is used? If you look at Haralds video, it's happening there! Yet this "float" is not mandated....

In other responses, I fear some have confused release and unweight. Especially since there is a move called "weighted release".

It seems to me that unweighting will only happen due to rebound and/or flexion with retraction. It can happen only at the point of transfer in the TRE sequence.

Is that right?
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Postby piggyslayer » Mon Nov 15, 2004 3:03 pm

Lowering CM (flexing both legs, pulling knees up to chest, etc) results in
unweighting: this is as simple as Newton's 3rd.
These movements are part of PMTS.

I believe these movements to be same as "virtual bump" or "down-unweighting".

Are they mandatory? Yes and no. I believe some level of lowering CM is one of the goals in almost every turn for advanced PMTS skier, but you CAN do PMTS without it (relax only the stance leg in classic RTE phantom).
And Big E is right: lowering CM goes nicely with float.

I also think (maybe wrong on that) that for most part (maybe except for powder) the reason for lowering CM is to generate powerful releasing force which propels CM into next turn. The weight reduction is a nice additional consequence but maybe is not primary goal.
This may be the reason why both milesb and jclayton replied "NO" to the question about unweighting. I am sure both know about leg flexing movements.
To me this is academic egg and chicken discussion and I think we should not go there.

Robert

PS. Release in PMTS refers to releasing ski edge and strictly speaking has nothing to do with weight.
I am quite sure people in this forum will not confuse weighted release with un-weighting -- even though lowering CM can be part of the movement which helps in such release.

I REWROTE my post for clarity before anyone else replied.
Last edited by piggyslayer on Mon Nov 15, 2004 7:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Postby piggyslayer » Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:32 pm

Picture being worth 1000s of words, is this un-weighting or not?

http://www.harbskisystems.com/sktk4.htm
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Postby BigE » Tue Nov 16, 2004 11:04 am

piggyslayer wrote:Lowering CM (flexing both legs, pulling knees up to chest, etc) results in
unweighting: this is as simple as Newton's 3rd.
These movements are part of PMTS.

I believe these movements to be same as "virtual bump" or "down-unweighting".
.


The "virtual bump" effect is from the rebound of the skis -- the knees go up to absorb the energy from the rebounding ski, as if skiing over a bump. If your legs are stiffer, the rebound of the ski will provide more float by transferring the energy to lifting your CM. Like a bow and arrow.

piggyslayer wrote:
I also think (maybe wrong on that) that for most part (maybe except for powder) the reason for lowering CM is to generate powerful releasing force which propels CM into next turn. The weight reduction is a nice additional consequence but maybe is not primary goal.
This may be the reason why both milesb and jclayton replied "NO" to the question about unweighting. I am sure both know about leg flexing movements.
To me this is academic egg and chicken discussion and I think we should not go there.


IMO, lowering the CM means many things. When I think of it, I think of relaxing the stance leg or even collapsing the stance leg. I think we are talking about the same thing, since you say "propels CM into next turn". That would be the CM crossing over the skis yes?

That's different from retracting the legs, and I don't consider that unweighting because the uphill leg now bears the weight.

The reason I asked this "academic" :wink: question was that in classical technique, unweighting is used to enable the skis to pivot.

Since PMTS allows the skis to pivot in at least one move (eg. unwinding from a countered state) one would suspect that unweighting would help. Retraction would help in precisely that situtation.

I was basically just trying to see in which situations unweighting was considered useful, and just how that unweighting happens.

What follows is that if unweighting is very important, and primarily of the rebound type, then one should get skiis that have huge rebound energy to give you maximum unweighting.....
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Postby piggyslayer » Tue Nov 16, 2004 5:12 pm

Big E wrote:
The reason I asked this "academic" question was that in classical technique, unweighting is used to enable the skis to pivot.

Since PMTS allows the skis to pivot in at least one move (eg. unwinding from a countered state) one would suspect that unweighting would help. Retraction would help in precisely that situtation.

I was basically just trying to see in which situations unweighting was considered useful, and just how that unweighting happens.

What follows is that if unweighting is very important, and primarily of the rebound type, then one should get skiis that have huge rebound energy to give you maximum unweighting.....


Is the lingo difference only then and both jclayton and milesb are RIGHT!

I believe a required property of every good PMTS turn is that the skis do not change direction between the end of old turn (still on edges) and beginning of next turn (already on edges).
Thus, if there is unweighting in PMTS, its purpose is different than pivoting the skis and if unweighting == prep for pivoting then PMTS does not have it.

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Postby milesb » Tue Nov 16, 2004 5:34 pm

Piggy, I'd say that what's required of every good PMTS turn is controlling the turn through tipping of the free foot. What you described is what's required of every PMTS pure carved turn.
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Postby jclayton » Tue Nov 16, 2004 8:13 pm

If we wanna get down to tin tacks un-weighting is literally removing weight .

It does however seem to have heavier (sic ) connotations for a lot of people i.e. gross un-weighting in the traditional sense needed to pivot i.e. steer or twist the traditional skis .

In the literal sense I think some unweighting occurs in all turns even the "weighted" release . Here "weight" is transferred from one ski to the other . Even one ski skiing needs some un-weighting ( provided by rebound however subtle ) to avoid too much upper body movement to force the turn .

Harald does prefer the term transfer balance , I think precisely to avoid the kind of confusion we are getting here .

So I still think to release an edge requires some weight removal , however slight,but I personally like to concentrate on balance .
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