PMTS Mental Keys

[HighAngles]

Of course the mantra is practice, practice, practice - ingrain the PMTS movements into your natural skiing, but I'm still a proponent of using mental keys to establish focus for a particular run or ski day.

So what are your mental keys for the coming season that help you stay on track with your PMTS skiing? What do you focus on while skiing that works to keep everything else together?

I'll post some of mine after others get a chance to chime in.

[JMD]

I'm looking forward to the Dec. Blue Dark Blue Camp. I have improved my tipping and flexing (certainly not perfected). My on going challenge has been fore-aft balance. My mental focus on every run is a strong free foot pull-back. Geoffda has been working with me on all the PMTS movements and the camp instructors will have plenty to add.

[Max_501]

Create a mental rolodex of the Essentials. Select one for each run and OWN it.

[Ken]

For me, it is to keep flexing the inside leg more and more. And to tip more and more.

For counterbalancing, I can test myself anywhere in the firm-snow turn by momentarily lifting the inside ski off the snow, then I know that I'm CB'ing and flexing the inside leg OK.

[MonsterMan]

Like Max said, but to keep your interest try to coordinate changing focus every two or four turns. BAFT

Combine with specific excercises eg Target Tipping for the entire run.

[razie]

i can visualize most of what i have to work on - flex/extend rather than hop, play with the CB/CA ranges etc.

the one thing i really want to work on is getting my bum to grind the snow in GS turns I think that means being early in the transition, hanging upside down more and getting that inside leg out of the way quick - it's the only thing I can't quite visualize... and seems to need snow to work on go figure

otherwise, I have a 3 page list of check-boxes i will progress through during the season.

so: two things to keep me on track: a complex goal and an actual checklist.

cheers

[geoffda]

i can visualize most of what i have to work on - flex/extend rather than hop, play with the CB/CA ranges etc.

the one thing i really want to work on is getting my bum to grind the snow in GS turns I think that means being early in the transition, hanging upside down more and getting that inside leg out of the way quick - it's the only thing I can't quite visualize... and seems to need snow to work on go figure

Just be careful that you don't move into the turn too quickly. The idea is that you need to be increasing your tipping throughout the turn and you want to have the ability to pull the radius in and really hook the bottom of the turn. You can't do that if you try to dump into the turn right away and exhaust all of your tipping. Think of using the top third of the arc to get set up. Try to stay light and balance through that part while you are getting your feet back and getting ready to handle the pressure when it comes. Do not try to generate pressure. Wait for it. If you do that, you will be able to build deep angles while still controlling speed.

[razie]

very helpful - thank you

[Erik]

In the spirit of the original question and the mental keys we use:

Essential: Tipping
Key: Concentrate on continuing to tip the inner foot more and more, continuously until release.
My brief mental cues: "Finish the turn!" or "Decrease the radius!" (by tipping) or "More!" (tipping) - this is where I play my mental tape of Rich Messer yelling in my ear. For me, the mental cues have to be very short and simple.
Areas for turn-to-turn self-feedback: Did the skis pop on release? (assuming dynamic skiing speed/slope, not slow drill on gentle slope). Was there a quick, clean transition?

So, when I am skiing, and this is my focus, the mental process goes something like:
Finish Turn!
Good pop.
Finish Turn!
Pop not as good.
Finish Turn!
Good pop again - did I fix the problem?
Finish Turn!
Mediocre pop again - is this a consistent problem on turns to this side?
Finish Turn!
Good pop, quick transition
Finish Turn!
Yep, the turns to the left suck.
Decrease the Radius!
That makes the release better on my good side - stick with that thought!
Decrease the Radius!
Improved the pop at the end of the turn on the bad side -stay with the Decreasing Radius cue for a while.
Usually about here I remember to breathe...

Any suggestions for other cues or items to monitor turn-to-turn that don't involve the word "feel"?

[razie]

ok, i must have misunderstood - so what's a mental key? Google says it's either a book on learning golf or a "pendulum for divination ".

https://www.google.ca/search?q=mental+key

[Erik]

In golf, it would be a "swing thought" - a short, simple mental thought you could focus on during your swing.

For skiing, it would be a simple thought to help you execute PMTS principles. The mental key would either help you execute a drill which exercises one of the fundamentals, or a thought that you could incorporate in free skiing. For example, in the Performance Free Skiing DVD, at one point Harald says that his only mental thought during one run in chopped up powder, on every turn, was to hold his free foot in close to his stance foot.

The mental keys have to be simple, and there are some comments in the PMTS Instructor Manual about proprioception, internal and external cues, etc.

The most important part is to pair a mental key with the feedback mechanism of how you will know if you were successful. Sometimes only a video or observer feedback can tell if you have done it right. Anyone on this forum who has been to a PMTS camp will have seen many examples where people were not executing the mental key and had no clue that they were not doing it. For example, to help reinforce the PMTS Essential movement of Counterbalancing, there is a drill which involves touching the outside hand to the boot of the (outside) stance foot. (There is more than one "boot touch" drill, and the variations have different purposes.) The mental thought is "touch the boot." If you watch people do this for the first time, some people touch the boot, some only touch the leg, some hold their hand in the air somewhere, some touch the wrong boot, and a few do absolutely nothing.When you ask them how well they did, many people don't have the slightest idea of how well they execute this step. Most of them don't know or are wrong about what they did. Ultimately for this drill, the idea is: "Are you aware of whether you really physically touched the boot or not?" In this case, the touching of the boot is a very objective measure - either you did or you didn't. Once you understand that, "touch the boot" is a very simple, reliable mental key with a built-in feedback mechanism. In free skiing, you might have a mental key such as "Early CB", where you do a performance check on every turn to see if you are counterbalanced by the time your skis are pointed down the fall line.

[skifastDDS]

My mental sequence is usually "TIP ... COUNTER ... FLEX" as I ski. It gives me something to focus on in each of the three parts of the turn.

[razie]

Cool. I have to say formme it is more feelings than words that i am looking for - does that work for mental keys?

For instance parallel shins, tip inside little toe, "body check" and "butt behind the boot". Now i will have to find new ones for flexing and fore-aft, didnt know about them . In a run i may combine a few, each for a few turns.

Body check is the feeling i am looking for corresponding to cb and ca - you dont body check with the front of the shoulder...

Butt behind the boot is what you try for in GS turns implies flexion and CB and CA combined - so you can see the progression?

[edit] changed ass high with butt behind boot.

Why i think this is cool - here's a little story: i am a newbie parent-coach so I work with little kids. One day though I manned the start of a K1/K2 course and I asked each kid as they went through: what are you working on this run? And all of them looked at me like i was a monkey... most were not used to this question/thought in their 5-8 years of coaching that they have been through...

[Ken]

butt behind boot

???
Erase that from your list.

Your outside leg is near-straight. Your inside foot is tipped way up on its little toe edge, and tipping more and more as the turn progresses. Your inside leg is deeply flexed, and deeper flexed as the turn progresses. You're able to momentarily lift the inside ski off the snow to test your counterbalance. You allow your inside knee and hip to go toward the snow but there is no effort to push them toward the snow. Your inside foot is pulled back, trying (unsuccessfully, but trying) to keep your toes or tips even. Your hips & shoulders are twisted toward the outside of the turn very early in the turn and as far as possible. Your upper body is counterbalanced toward the outside of the turn. Your arms and hands are in the position you see in Max's avatar. Your pole tap is merely a tap caused by a flick of the wrist. Your release of the turn is just a relaxation of the old outside leg where you flex it and tip that foot up on its little toe edge while the tension in your body relaxes and pulls you across your skis while you allow your new outside leg to extend--you're now turning the other direction and you repeat the movements with the other side of your body. Note the things we don't DO but we allow to happen.

There are slight variations to these movements for different snow conditions and different speeds and turn radii, but these are the basics.

Flexion?--that's when we flex both legs to absorb a bump, not an action to turn.

When coaching and the student gets the movement right, I ask just how they did that and how to express the description of the correct actions in their own words. Later I suggest to them, or ask them for their suggestion, of what movement they want to work on and how they'll achieve it. If needed I'll correct their description of the actions and send them out to make correct movements, one movement at a time. Get tipping right. Then get tipping and flexing right. Then get tipping and flexing and inside foot pullback right. Then get tipping and flexing and pullback and counterbalance right. Then get tipping and flexing and pullback and counterbalance and counteracting right. Then get t & f & p & cb & ca and the release right. Then all the others plus the pole tap (or maybe learn the pole tap before learning the release).

[HighAngles]

Erik and Ken - thanks for your posts, top quality information that I'm sure everyone can get some value from.

As noted, mental keys should be short thoughts that aren't overly complicated or contrived. They should help you focus on a key movement or part of your turn. For example, while skiing with Geoffda we had a lot of discussion about being "light" at the transition. The idea being that the mental key of trying to be as light as possible will ensure that you are flexing sufficiently enough that you truly have decreased the pressure on your skis so that you can tip effectively. It's amazing how the simple thought of being "light" through the transition yields tons of edge grip as you hit the apex of the turn and the ability to further decrease the radius through the belly of the turn because you have something left to further increasing tipping. We discussed how it's common to be too aggressive in applying ski pressure at the top of the turn and that will undo all of the good things that should be happening.

Personally I've been trying to get rid of my abominable pole plants that are far too arm and shoulder "heavy". My mental key when working on my pole plants is "wrists". That reminds me to only use my wrists and to lightly tap my poles. It also helps keep the pole swing in check so that I don't unwind my CA inadvertently (due to poor pole plants).

Also, since embracing PMTS I have not given any thought to "parallel shins". Instead my focus is always on beginning every turn movement with the free foot (inside leg). As long as my focus is on my free foot tipping I never have to be concerned with whether or not my shins are parallel since my stance leg will always "come along for the ride" as my inside foot/leg continue to tip. Using this mental key also solved my hip dumping problem which I fought for quite some time. I was putting my ass to the snow without really tipping my skis. As long as I tip first (and ask questions later ) I know that my hip dumping will stay in check.

Finally, besides the being "light" mental key, my primary mental key since late last season has been "get long". This mental key is to remind myself to work hard at allowing my stance leg to get long by the time I reach the apex of the turn. "Get long" reminds me to continue tipping my inside leg while pulling it up and allowing my upper body to move into the center of the turn without pushing on the stance ski. If you never get long at the apex then you won't have much movement available when it's time to release the turn through flexion of your legs.