Stance Foot

[John Mason]

Stance Foot

No two words epitomize the difference between most ski instruction going on and PMTS.

Often the same people who say PMTS is just a subset of what PSIA teaches and a marketing gig, are the same people that gag on those two little words.

Given the power of these two little words to create controversy, anyone aspiring to understand and ski with primary movements, need to have this concept firmly grasped.

Let me share a bit from the camp about what I learned and I hope others will add their 3 cents so I can learn more.

First my confession. I had gotten lazy about the stance foot. I had started to let active tipping of the stance foot (not even steering so much), creep into my skiing. The problem is any active tipping or steering of the stance foot will instantly overpower the angles being created by the free foot.

If anyone doesn't believe me just watch Diana disect someone's skiing with the V1 software.

What I'll be working on my skiing next time I go (boo hoo - looks like next Saturday) is reinforcement of the kinetic chain. My last day we worked on changing simply tipping of the free foot into strong tipping. We worked on changing the mental cue of "tip to the LTE", to "tip strong enough to forcefully feel the top of the foot pressing against the top of the boot" while our instructor held the front of our ski flat. The difference in tipping vs TIPPING with the two cues was very apparent to everyone.

Then, we all re-did our railroad turns. We were instructed to tip just as strongly the free foot while standing on the stance foot. No tip on that stance foot, but stand on it and extend the stance foot while tipping the free foot.

These mental cues really helped my railroad turns and my actual turns as well. The kinetic chain does indeed tip the stance foot.

Please expound everyone. Help me learn.

[milesb]

When on my fat skis, I find it difficult to tell if I am only extending the stance ski, or adding tipping with the extension. This is because the wide waist tends to make the ski flatten as pressure is put on it.
I don't know why the stance ski thing gets such a negative reaction, however something Rusty said may provide a clue. He said (paraphrased) "If inverting the foot has a rotary component, what's wrong with helping it along" So maybe it's like "if tipping the inside ski causes the outside ski to tip, what's wrong with helping it along?" Rusty, is this right?

Please, I don't want to see anything like "they don't like it because they are a bunch of incompetent idiots who couldn't make a good turn even if they were standing on a merry go round!"