milesb wrote:Harald, to tell the truth, I couldn't really tell what point you were trying to make in that post, even though everything in it made sense to me. Especially the part about flexing at the end of the turn to even out the pressure. In my opinion, this is the only way to maintain a carve on a very steep slope. But often I go too far, and I don't have any flex left for a clean release.
Roger Kane - Arcmeister on Epic - spent a lot of time on this at the instructor camp. As I understood it in most people's skiing the greatest pressure is at the bottom of the turn. Roger worked with us to make the greatest pressure be at the "side" of the turn, when your skis are in the direction of the fall line. Basically, his goal was to move the whole pressure gradiant up the turn from where most people have it. The pressure you would normally have at the bottom of the turn, because of the active flexion of the downhill ski, is instead used to propell the body into position for the next turn. Because of countering at the top of the new turn, pressure reexerts at the very top of the new turn and is at it's max at the side.
You're square when your over your skis in transition as your hips roll to the countered position at the start of the new turn. So as the skis reengage your already countered at the top of the turn. At the bottom of the turn, your countered the opposite direction. You don't want to be square here, or you'll lose your edges.
So the hips are flowing from one side of the skis oppisite to the rotation of the skis with neutral/square occuring when your directly over the skis when the skis are flat (which means your body is already down the hill because when your skis are flat to the hill, and your straight over them, your actually down the hill already.
All of the coaches at the instructor camp seemed quite focused on this as a goal and we were given many drills and things to work on to feel this and get it into our turns.
This view of active counter at the top of the new turn, instead of letting it happen naturally by facing the hill only in the bottom of the turn, is quite different than how most people are skiing from what I see on the hill.
We also worked on this a lot at the carver camp. I would bet you this ends up in a new PMTS II book.
Now the question is did I understand and transcribe this correctly. I've been working on this a lot and SCSA can check out and see how well it's comming tomorrow.
Jay also covered a lot of this in his UBLB coordination post. None of this detracts from the tipping of the old downhill ski to create the release while extending the new leg. This just increases the edging in a way that is very balanced and strong so your carving continuous arcs.