PMTS standards and results are different

[Harald]

If someone comes to this forum and asks a question about world cup racing or technique we respond with a friendly informed answer.


However, Rusty's comments demonstrate a deficient understanding of ski technique, and application of movement awareness. It's not his fault. It's the system that he has learned. Rubbish that is misleading, inefficient and ineffective will be exposed and filed where it should, in the garbage.


For some people in that system to begin to understand skiing would take a complete mind flushing. I have the energy and motivation to train and help people that want to learn and are motivated, there are many. I don't have time for those who want to argue ridiculus concepts.


I spent hours every week this season and for the past twenty seasons with the best coaches, I have coached side by side with the Austrians for years, (I speak perfect Austrian and can speak to them directly in their own language), the US coaches, and the top junior development teams, US ski teams and US ski team members. I work with the Europeans and do alignment and footbed work on their racers.


In the next two days, out of a World Cup field from the last race at Breckenridge, I will be working on boots of the skiers who finished in the top three Sunday and yesterday.


World cup racers, national racers and junior racers do not try to steer their inside or out side ski, legs, or feet. For someone to insinuate this or even try to introduce the idea is misleading. Do it over on Epic, where they love to suck up that abomination.


Instructors who demonstrate a completely misguided direction of skiing and understanding can not relate to the skiing of racers or advanced skiers. They attempt to diagnose world cup skiers with their limited ability and approaches for movement analysis. This is playing out of their league. Would you have a little league coach give batting training to a major league player?


If you have coaching experience and have worked in development at any level, you know that comments about steering are wrong. There may be some racers who do it, but it is the less successful racer that is using steering and that it's the coach's job to rid the racers of those movements.


In the same way, we know the less successful ski instructor is still trying to find ski performance with steering movements.


Modern skiing is not PSIA skiing and they will never be able to achieve cutting edge performance using their standards. They can't make turns the way high end racers do because their movement progression and understanding doesn't produce modern ski turns.


I have stayed out of the discussion about the skiing demonstrated on video by two of the top PSIA demo team members, trainers, but now I will say something. The skiing demonstrated in those videos, posted here, was pitiful and terrible. The movements were so poor that skiers with even a small amount of good experience and correct understanding see huge flaws.

Look at the posts by the Epic followers after that video was introduced. Glowing words, paragraph after paragraph about the great turns and skiing. We have a different standard, we see huge flaws in those movements and we don?t aspire to ski with such movements. Therein the difference is epitomized; PMTS has different values and standards. No one can evaluate skiing, especially not world cup or racers with the understanding that produces or generates skiing movements like the ones in the video.


This discussion fundamentally is about effective movements vs. ineffective movements. If you look at the discussions over the past years, effective movements are not in dispute here on this forum. We know what they are and we use them. We ski differently than what the PSIA system produces for results. Thank goodness.



We don't need PSIA's convoluted mix of random movements and maneuvers that lead skiers down the frustrating path to mediocre skiing. Our understanding and goals are based in science and what works. Skiers here have an understanding of efficient movements and are not trying to add inefficient movement to their skiing approaches.


Drop this thread and move on. Arguing with someone who's turns are based in leg steering about high performance turns is like arguing with the blind about colors.

[Mike Wilson]

How many world cup racers stood on a podium (or finished top 10) last season using, predominantly, your technique?

What were their names and the races so we can search out video and study their performance.

Thanks,

Mike Wilson

[Rusty Guy]

Harald I'm truely amazed.

I have often wondered where your students got their heads filled with their ideas about PSIA. I wondered where all the vitriolic venom originated.

Silly me. I now have my answer.

I'm sorry but you exhibit a level of bitterness towards PSIA that is truely remarkable. I'm sorry you had a bad experience with the organization.

You are right. I have taught skiing full time for five years and have not learned a thing. Had I come to you I would have found the fountain of wisdom. Pity me for I have learned at the feet of "paper gurus "and PSIA demo team members who exhibit skiing that in your words is "pitiful and terrible".

I am sorely tempted to go through a little video exercise. From time to time I see PMTS certs on the slopes. They are your green certs. I regularly see four of them.

Would it be fair to shoot a little video of these folks and compare it to the "pitiful and terrible" skiing that you have described?

Some of the less athletic among these folks can barely pick their way down an ungroomed blue run. You want pitiful? We can get you something to pity.

No, I won't do that. Those folks are good people. I know most of them. They sought your advice and teaching and don't deserve to be put under such a microscope.

I will as you suggest drop it and move on.

[Guest]

I don't have time for those who want to argue ridiculus concepts.


I work with the Europeans and do alignment and footbed work on their racers.


In the next two days, out of a World Cup field from the last race at Breckenridge, I will be working on boots of the skiers who finished in the top three Sunday and yesterday.

Harald if I had known you were working on their boots I wouldn't have asked you to take the time to address my ridiculous questions.

Do you ever get to actually....you know...like, carry their skis?

I honestly never realized you were actually doing their boots. That's unreal....a horse of a different color.

[Rusty Guy]

Mike,

Does this remind you a bit of "Signboy" and Davis Love III?

P.S.- Yes that was me above!

[Harald]

Rusty, I honestly and truly feel sorry for you. I wish I could help you, but you have to want to help yourself first.

[Rusty Guy]

I've got a bootfitter.

[tommy]

Someone wrote re. PMTS Green certs:

Some of the less athletic among these folks can barely pick their way down an ungroomed blue run. You want pitiful? We can get you something to pity.

I've seen a few PMTS green certs skiing. Do most of them ski better than I do (considering myself an intermediate, maybe postfixed by ++) ... ? Personally, I don't think so, at least if I by skiing better mean being faster, in better balance, in more control, more athletic, willing to try out "crazy things" etc.

BUT:

they all have a much better (theoretical) understanding of technique, alignment, biomechanics etc than I will ever have,and they can direct me, and help me to better ways to ski.

And to be a coach/instructor/teacher, you don't necessarily have to outperform your diciple *in execution*, it's more important that you can point your student in the right direction. I wouldn't expect that Anja Paerson's father, Anders, can outperform Anja in a race course, but I know that his knowledge & guidance is, and has been, key to Anja's success.

PMTS is not a "bunch of disjunct techniques";instead,it is a *systematic* approach of teaching that is proven to quickly enable any skier at whatever level to make a quantum leap in their skiing.

Until I find something better in terms of enhancing my skiing ability, I will consider PMTS superior to any other skiing teaching system. In fact, I'm still looking for any other *systematic* approach for ski instruction...

Anyways, I welcome other opinions, and I found it very refreshing to see Ott, Rusty and a few other "non-PMTS enthusiasts" (to put it mildly showing up in this forum, and hope they will stay; but at the same time, I get booooored by some of the anthagonistic postings that tend to recycle over and over again...

OO,
Tommy

[harrison]

stop being bitchass idiots and realize that if you completely disagree with PMTS, you suck at skiing and dont know anything about it at all

any compitent skier will say that PMTS works...you're dumb and i hate you all

-H

[Sam]

Rusty wrote:
Would it be fair to shoot a little video of these folks and compare it to the "pitiful and terrible" skiing that you have described?

Some of the less athletic among these folks can barely pick their way down an ungroomed blue run. You want pitiful? We can get you something to pity.


I?m just an attorney from Chicago who likes to ski. I don?t particularly care for or enjoy the back and forth insulting, but in this case I have to point out that Rusty is off base. I can?t fathom the logic.

How can a comparison be invented between lack of skiing quality of a Demo teach member and a Green PMTS instructor? Harald and Ski Syn have demonstrated without doubt that the level of skiing in the video of a Demo Team member, who is the best of PSIA, doesn?t match up or would not be a model for any efficient ski technique or PMTS technique. Where is the logic in using Green level PMTS instructors to compare or review?

I model my skiing after clean, efficient movements demonstrated in Harald?s Video 2. He looks like he isn?t working. The video I saw posted on the forum with the PSIA elite scared me. I would not try to fling my body around like the skiers in that footage.

I skied last week with many Green Level PMTS instructors and found them more than adequate from a movement and clean skiing perspective. In one case a new PMTS instructor named Joe, showed outstanding skiing.

I do not want my skiing to evolve into what I see from most instructors in uniform skiing the slopes. I see most of the good skiers and racers skiing on their edges. I see most of the instructors skiing on their bases. I can?t understand how the organization can let that image be displayed in front of potential customers. When I see the PMTS crowd in their red jackets, I see skiing the way I want to ski.

[Joseph]

Yes, Rusty it would be fair to shoot a little video of a green level PMTS instructor and compare it to those pitiful and and terrible demo team members. Shoot me, any day of the week, on any slope, in any conditon. As a matter of fact, video of me will be coming soon. What sort of ridiculousness will you have to say then? None of those guys could stay in my tracks on their best day. I know PMTS instructors who have yet to pass green who make those guys look pitiful and terrible. Go back to Epic where you belong and stop pretending to be open minded about the whole thing. Keep pushing your skiis around and leave the rest of us (those who want to be the best skiers we can be) alone.

Thanks Sam for the positive comments on my skiing, It's always good to read nice comments on this forum.

[SkierSynergy]

I'll take you on Joe.

Both you and your shadow guru.

I'll run just outside your tracks on every even turn and just inside your tracks on every odd turn

and I'll even switch half way down.

Then I'll knock you down as I go past on my way to run down the old man.

Bring it on pussies.

And when your panting in the parking lot, slinking off to your Audi,

I'll set SCSA on you to finish you off.

Bring it on!!!!!!!!

[harrison]

^haha

[jclayton]

Only 15 but spirited .

[Joseph]

Jay, my dragon style is far more powerful than your tiger style. You shall taste retribution for the dishonor you have brought on my family. One ski or two?