PMTS not Carving

[John Mason]

actually, the inside ski is in the air a tad - but the key is, in the course of frames 5 and 6 that inside ski is brought - dragged sideways to parallel with the outside ski.

Those who look at this and see the stem, also may not realize that the act of bringing that inside leg from it's position in frame 5 to it's position in frame 6 creates very strong rotation. Much stronger than direct leg steering does in fact. Sounds bass ackwards, but try the move on the slope.

On the other head, if the outside leg is twisted inward as the basis of redirecting the skis, then your body isn't lined up.

In this montage there is the stem action of the outside foot - steering, but then the much stronger action of what in PMTS is taught as the phantom drag that actually gets things going again. If you only stem without some sort of recovery action, your over your handlebars. Phantom drag is one of the strongest ways to create rotation while increasing tipping at the same time. Even a slight move of 1/2 inch does it. This is clearly happening between frames 5 and 6. (though I'm not saying there wasn't direct steering going on either, because there is - in fact most people don't ski parallel - they either stem or diverge)

Just popping in to bring up what no one spoke of yet in that montage. Phantom Drag - big time rotation.

[John Mason]

couple more useless thoughts

the example of the wc skier using foot rotation is a good one

it shows a big time stem entry - skis are not parallel

so the useless thought comes to mind:

Since even the traditional instruction standards levels 1 through 9 views a stem entry as not as good as a parallel entry, why is this an example of something we should try to incoorporate into our day to day skiing style?

Is the picture sequence trying to prove that even WC skiers stem from time to time? It does a very good job of that.

the 2nd useless thought that comes to mind is about foot steering in general. This is somewhat repetitive of my Ski Doc recap post.

When you are riding a bike if you simply turn the wheel without any other actions in balance leading that wheel turn, you'll fall down. In a bike you are coordinating what you do with that wheel turn.

In exploring and discussing with John Clendenon what different people advocate for turning skis, foot steering is the weakest method. It disturbs balance. By definition the body is not in the place for the new turn angle's g forces.

In the racers stem entry pictured earlier, without the action sliding and bringing the tails together of the inside ski right after the stem, the balance for the new turn would have been near critical. You are watching 2 almost similtaneous recovery moves.

On the ski deck John showed us clearly that a parallel turn is actually a sequential turn. Tip the inside leg, stand on the outside leg and this creates a parallel turn. Active turning does not create a parallel turn. John called this "opening the door".

In all the methods we worked with on the hill where the inside leg tipped or was phantom dragged in slightly or the body was facing down the bump for the new direction, or we swiched from aft to fore balance, etc -- all these ways of creating or playing with rotation, the body was in balance for the new turn. Foot steering reverses the order. The new turn starts and then the body must recover balance. Passive rotation employed by these methods is only passive in that your not steering or pointing the feet. Rotation generated these ways is quite powerful - and you maintain balance.

I wonder at the wisdom or purpose of showing a WC skier in a set of 2 recovery moves as a preferred way to ski.

But I'll bite:

Hail to the stem!

[Tiehackburger]

"Now Diana can out ski and teach everyone on the PSIA Demo Team, on any day. Did she learn how to ski the way she does now from PSIA methods, did she learn her skiing from the Demo Team or PSIA trainers? No, she learned by stopping steering and rotary, just as the rest of the world cup does."
-HH on pg. 1 of this thread

"This whole uproar was over a simple challenge to the idea that rotary is not used by expert level skiers and WC racers. I didn't suggest that PMST was a worthless instructional model, or that it was inferior to others. ...What I did here was challenge a single concept promoted by the PMTS founder, and I will reiterate: that concept is totally wrong."
Ffastman pg.3 of this thread

We are now on page 10 of this thread, and the conclusion is obvious.

[GateBasher]

It seems to me that HH is saying Diana achieved her high level of skill using PMTS methods not PSIA methods. That NO rotary moves are desired for skillfull, fast, effective skiing. The mere fact that WC racers and everyone elsr for that matter may use rotary for a RECOVERY!! does not negate the argument for not purposely using rotary as a desired technique. It's a fallacious argument to attempt to discredit or even challange HH's statement by this rotary/recovery act. When a car goes into a skid you turn into it. If you used that move any other time you would drive off the cliff. In a perfect ski run with no bobbles or mistakes there would NEVER be a need to steer the foot.

[Guest]

Here's Erik Schlopy talking about this years World Cup races

"Alta Badia?s never been a good place for me, and the streak continues (I finished 20th this year)?I was disappointed because I?m skiing well, and at Val d?Isere I blew it with a DNF. Alta Badia is just not a hill that fits my natural flow. It?s really steep, and they set it kind of straight, so basically you have to go direct at the gate and slide and hit, and I?m more of a carving skier. This and Soelden have been the toughest hills during my whole career.

Bode talks about liking to slide a little above the turn, and people say I go arc to arc. That might be true ? maybe more so than other guys. But you gotta be able to skid it when you need to skid it. There are certain sections that are difficult to get through if you try to arc through them. Alta Badia?s like that for a lot of the hill."

[BigE]

This thread is a glorious waste of bandwidth. Rick, you are dealing with those that would believe anything HH says rather than fact. Dogma upon dogma. Even closing a stemmed entry has a new name: Phantom drag.

I can see the response to this post now:

"You can skid without actively steering your feet -- it's called a brushed carve......"

I promised myself I'd stop posting here. It is exactly this sort of lunacy that needs to be avoided.

Let's face it, if it ain't in the book, it's wrong....

[TiehackBurger]

Actually here's what Joseph said when I asked him how exactly Schlopy skidded on the Alta Badia course:

"He flattens out the edge angle of the stance ski by backing of on (sic) eversion of the ankle inside the boot. If someone knows how to use their feet properly, they can skid turns all day without using rotary."

So now you know.

[Tiehackburger]

Of course that explains why schlopy finished 20th; apparently the other guys were actually steering around the gates, when poor Schlopy was just flattening his edge and just...well..what exactly was he doing after he flattened his edge? Joseph never told me.

[BigE]

Sheesh, more lunacy.

Schlopy has been offered as the poster child by PMTS. Apparently he can't do what was required on the course, steering or not. In his words:

It?s really steep, and they set it kind of straight, so basically you have to go direct at the gate and slide and hit, and I?m more of a carving skier.

I guess he needs more lessons huh?

[Guest]

Let's face it, if it ain't in the book, it's wrong....

This may just be the most insightful and accurate post ever made on this site.

[Guest]

How nice to have a little gapic department in our liittle forum
Big Brother is watching you
Soon we all will ski like racers from the WC circuit

[John Mason]

This thread is a glorious waste of bandwidth. Rick, you are dealing with those that would believe anything HH says rather than fact. Dogma upon dogma. Even closing a stemmed entry has a new name: Phantom drag.

Probably a waste of my time to post on a gonged post, but since others might be reading I'll force myself to continue. Closing the inside ski after a stem pulls the body into a tighter bank and creates rotation. In the PMTS progression you learn this effect and it has a name. We are aware of the conseqences of doing that move.

I don't care if you give it a name or not I was just pointing out the rotary component that was passively created in the picture sequence that returned the turn to parallel while adding its own rotation component that's actually a stronger component than the stem.

I see that and recognize the effect that move has on the skier. You stare at the steering and focus on that. I'm looking at the package and all the effects on the skier and how they are being derived.

You guys are now taking turns posting a saying "see - we proved it". Your talking about nothing. What is the positive aspect of foot steering in skiing? Is the usual resultant stem desired? Both camps that are brought in a terminal intermediate stemming their entries look at that as a problem in technique. Yet here you use it in the context of a WC skier as proof HH should teach foot steering?

I can pivot slip, I can step a turn at the top, I can unweight and twist. Is HH myopic because he sees how many intermediate skiers don't ski parallel turns and decides to focus on clear movement paterns that encourage clean parallel skiing? All the situations you would use foot steering have passive rotary moves that don't impede balance. Most of the skiers on the WC don't stem but use these very moves. You keep quoting the WC skiers but they are not saying they use foot steering in those quotes. They say the drift or skid an entry. So what. And - if they did use foot steering as the montage clearly shows a big time stem - so what.

You keep harping on HH and PMTS yet he is not the only author that stresses leave the foot steering at the door. He is one of a set of authors and teachers that all teach the same thing.

Leave your chips on your shoulders and discuss technique.

The teacher that sells the most private lessons for the Aspen ski school says he just loves the fact that 95% of the instructors out there teach foot steering, because it's what gets him all his business. It's always funny how you guys seem to think HH is the only one teaching don't foot steer. I'd recommend you ride on one of this Apsen teacher's two ski decks and demonstrate without holding on to the hand bars, how you go from end to end doing turns on the deck using foot steering.

Then let him show you how you can make the same tight turns by focusing on lightening and tipping the inside foot while standing on the outside foot. That results in nice parallel turns. The difuculties foot steering create are obvious in that environment. (Or go to a carver camp for the same discoveries)

He also teaches mostly people that are already comfortable on blacks. So his market is not the terminal intermdiate that makes up much of HH's camps though the foot steering focus for rotation is the common biggest problem in the skiing with both groups. It's the thing they are comming to get rid of, yet you guys say it's fine.

But why try to promote foot steering on this venue? Go ahead and do it on Epic and get more business for HH and Clendenon. BigE was correct that you're just wasting your time here. BigE's reasoning is totally flawed as he thinks if it ain't in the book it's wrong. Most people here came from a foot steering environment and converted. That's why it's a waste of time to post this foot steering defense here.

What can you tell former drunks? Now that you're sober, if you really want to get sober lets get some whiskey. Thats a pretty riducules statement. So, I agree with BigE, you're wasting your time here, but not for the reasons BigE says.

Now if you want to not waste your time, explain with something people can experience on the slopes why and where foot steering works better than what is recommened for those same skiing situations by:

1. HH - Anyone can Be an Expert 1 and 2
2. Eric and Rob DesLauries - Ski the Whole Mountain
3. Craig McNeil - Ski the Blacks and Blues
4. John Clendenon (I'd tell you the title but I promised him I wouldn't)
5. Lito Tejada Flores - Breakthru on the new skis.

But, you don't seem to have a desire to actually communicate about technique but to be like little kids on a playground. Envy is the greatest sin. HH is not alone with his anti-foot steering ideas. The non-foot steering mene is propagating faster and faster. (which is too bad since as long as most people don't get it, all the better for the above and their businesses)

[bejes]

John, I vote we give up on trying to argue with the gapicers. They come here wanting us to 'acknowledge' the use of rotary or foot steering or whatever it is they teach.
Probably so they can feel secure in their understanding of skiing.
Well as you said, people here don't ski like that, so why are they wasting their time?
Who else is going to PMTS training in fernie?

[ydnar]

John,

As you said this is probably a waste of time but here goes anyway.

About the phantom drag and the posted sequence. The pd happens in this sequence after most of the rotation has happened so it has little to do with the rotation that is being discussed here. In fact, because the drag appears to happens after the outside ski has engaged in a carve it will have litle effect on the path of the skis and will serve mainly to bring the skis back into a parallel relationship.

About the pd itself. This is a move I have known about for years but I use it very infrequently because rather than generating rotation what it can do is create a tail displacing skid and as I pointed out earlier I hate the feel of a skid. Now, I suppose that a skid is a form of rotary move because it results in the skis being pointed in a different direction but in my view it is the poorest form of rotary because it has little effect in redirecting the path of the body.

By the way, of the several ways of using foot steering that I know of only one can result in a stem. You seem to imply that any foot steering must result in a stem. As for the positive aspect of foot steering, it plays a huge part in allowing me to go precisely where I want to go at the speed I want to get there.

yd

[Rusty Guy]

Please don't mention chips on shoulders. Harald wrote the book on that.

I have never mentioned the term foot steering. I asked the PMTS crowd to examine the entire leg.