Report from Ski Doctors

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Report from Ski Doctors

Postby John Mason » Sat Jan 15, 2005 10:02 pm

I was deck training at Ski Doctors today. John Clendenon is Black PMTS certified and takes his own approach to teaching primary movements.

Tommorrow is a full day of bump training with him on Ajax here at Aspen.

Two of my Lafayette Ski Club friends are also doing this with me and for them it's there very first exposure to PMTS. The deck training was for them a real eye opener.

John went through preliminary explanations for them that covered why knee pointing was bad, why foot steering was bad, and related them all to connecting the CM to your feet. Then proceeded to re-program my two friends on the deck. On the deck non-primary movements disrupted balance. While primary movements enhanced balance. This was obvious. My two friends with decades of skiing experience were amazed and are estactic about their coming bump ski day tomorrow with John Clendenon.

It just interesting to see the results of PMTS instruction on a deck show the realities of some of the silly discussions of late. That's where the theory meets the road so to speak. The differences of approaches were obvious.

Of other interesting note, we saw a video of all of John's coaches which includes one of the newest National Demo team members. John said kidding around that they almost got him skiing where they want him.

At least in Aspen a primary movements approach is making real headway in a number of different directions. The PMTS mene is hard to stop since it's so effective.

John was telling me how the use of the deck was how this style of instruction was able to be "proven" to some of the diehards and he is working with the ski school now. You can feel and test different movement patterns instantly on the deck. This is also why carvers work so well. You "die" if you stem a carver. Black snow is hard (SCSA's term for pavement).

So, I'm off to get further brainwashed tomorrow and will love every minute of it.

Oh, and the saliant point was reitereated, you don't steer either with the foot or the hip rotators to ski bumps. You generate all the rotary you need with inside foot tipping. As was demonstrated to my two friends on the deck, to do otherwise disrupts balance.

At the party tonight PMTS style movement patterns was the topic of discussion as my friends (not me) were telling their friends how the way they had skied for years was not very effective on the deck and the other way worked great with finer control and better balance. They couldn't wait to try it on the slopes tomorrow. (coming from people that skied a lot over 30 years for one and 20 years for the other and are two of the better skiers in the club, this was fun to see)

Sorry rambling - good night
John Mason
 
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Location: Lafayette, Indiana, USA

Interesting day

Postby John Mason » Sun Jan 16, 2005 9:45 pm

besides the fun lesson (black bumps on ajax all day)

John Cledenon has this membership to the private club on the top of Aspen Mountain. So we had lunch there. A guy walks up to John and John asks him "how is your mountain". We then got introduced exchanged handshakes. The guy was Jim Crown that owns the whole thing. People were e-mailing him how great the snow was so he flew down with his family from Chicago. His kids (not little) were taking lessons from some of John's trainers today.

They have a slipper room at this club - here is a link to one of my ski club buddies in the "slipper room". This is where you sit on a comfortable carpeted - padded bench room, remove your ski boots and put on slippers.

http://www.fototime.com/839837EB79903EC/standard.jpg

Apparently John Clendenon was going to be teaching Peter Morton whom we also met on the slopes, but decided to have Jason teach Peter since he was interested in talking with someone that was "into" HH's program. I hope he wasn't disappointed because at its core their teaching similar things. (Peter Morton owns the morton steakhouse chain) So, I got lucky and got the head of ski doctors.

While Mr. Ski Doc uses all the primary movements and a student directed approach, he is all about soft edging. As he said, a skid is something you do accidently while a drift is essentially a balanced skid you do on purpose. I must say, the approaches are visible in how these two giants of the teaching profession ski the bumps. However, how I was taught at Big Sky last year and what John was teaching was identical. John added a few touches that helped me, but I've skied another year, I'm sure that helped the most.

We talked a lot about the turning and using and creating rotation without steering of any kind. He told us that all great skiers learn how to initiate turns off their LTE of their uphill ski. He just loves the fact that 95 percent of the skiing world doesn't teach this because it gives him lots and lots of business. We basically worked a lot on the snow on traversing on the LTE of the upper ski then pole planting and flatenning the downhill ski (which because of the slope we were on, amounts to tipping it to the LTE). You feel your LTE passively roll because of the action of the tipping of the downhill ski to. Your uphill ski firsts moves from LTE to flat to BTE passively because of the actions of your downhill ski. (this is at the top of a turn so the downhill ski is your "inside ski" of the turn you are creating)

Where things differed was John's emphasis on "drift" or being able to control like a butter knive a soft carve or side slip mixed with your traverse between bumps on that LTE. In fact, to the point where your a bit aft on your tails so your skis are literally slightly uphill. So, you drift to a bump this way, then plant, tip your downhill/new inside ski, which will make the outside ski passively come around. The moment it comes around, the new uphill ski that was just your downhill ski, catches the otherside of the bump on it's LTE and the drift to the next bump starts all over again.

You see this drift in his own bump skiing. We followed right in his tracks going bump to bump.

In my recollection of watching Diana ski bumps last year, they don't really do this, nor do they seem to need to, but simply hold edges to the top of a bump and come around it. The motions and movement patterns to come around the bump are identical, just the movement between the bumps was sligthly different. (at least in my opinion at this time - I'll have to watch HH and Diana do bumps again, summarization is HH and Diana edge in the bumps, John Clendenon uses a very soft edge approach in the bumps) I have my own questions as to which approach gives more control. Anytime one is sliding sideways in a drift (skid) there is much more room for balance disruption. True, as we worked through things a LTE upper ski side slip is very easy to control compared to any lower ski BTE side slip, personally I'm not sure this will be my goal.

I'm might be seeing SCSA tomorrow at Highlands. He skis bumps all the time and was just at the all mountain camp. So I'll trade observations.

In any case, I consider myself a very lucky person to have been able to ski with these people.

And referencing the other thread which I've long since "gonged" as a waste of time and I see now has grown to 9 pages:

There was tons of rotation, but no active steering or stemming. Ain't PMTS great. (no matter who's teaching it)
John Mason
 
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Joined: Wed Feb 18, 2004 10:52 pm
Location: Lafayette, Indiana, USA

Postby Belskisfast » Sun Jan 16, 2005 10:28 pm

John thanks for sharing what must have been a tremendous experience....you lucky guy! That uphill LTE thing is what I was playing with the other day. It seems to create a great sense of stability. Now I just need to shorten the distance the ski travels before the BTE of that ski engages. It wants to slide a little....probably need more counter early. Any suggestions?
Belskisfast
 

two thoughts

Postby John Mason » Mon Jan 17, 2005 12:06 am

counter is a lot of what we worked on at the instructor camp as part of an overall strategy for very carved turns that are carved very high in the turn

in the bump skiing to make that ski come around you "commit" was John's term, which translated is really like the old 2 footed release out of book 1. You just pole plant the top of the bump and face the new direction while you release and tip the downhill ski. Your uphill ski will roll off it's LTE and come around in a 180 degree turn and your inside ski quickly becomes your uphill ski as you drift/carve balanced on your new uphill ski's LTE down the backside of the bump.

No counter in this move. Just changing from balance on one uphill LTE to the new uphill ski LTE with a passive turn in between.

The other thing we worked a lot on was fore/aft balance shifting. As your drifting on the back side of a bump heading to the next one, John had us go aft so that the skis tended to point slightly uphill then as we planted the pole and "committed" to move fully fore in balance. This helps whip you around the bump very quickly. We spent a lot of time playing with fore/aft and the passive rotation effects it creates while on soft edges. If your side slipping, aft balance makes your tails go down the hill, while fore balance makes your tips go down the hill.

At the end of the day he had us doing a pretty fun drill called "in your neighbor's garage". It is an advanced pivot slip type of drill. The amazing thing about all of this, was it was all done with fore/aft balance shifting and inside leg lateral tipping. Complete control without the outside leg steering.

So, this isn't about a high-performance highly edged turn where counter is needed at all, but about balance, control of passive rotation components while going down the bump run.
John Mason
 
Posts: 1050
Joined: Wed Feb 18, 2004 10:52 pm
Location: Lafayette, Indiana, USA

Postby Guest » Mon Jan 17, 2005 9:49 am

Thanks John. Interesting stuff. My issue the other day was on non bumped steeps where my ski came off the LTE in a skid before engaging the BTE low in the "C"... I think you pointed out how more counter would effect a higher "C" engagement of the ski...thanks
Do you feel like the ski comes around fast in the bumps as a result of the rebalance to the fore? There are sure to be those saying rotary is being used to get the ski around quickly....my PMTS skills are not sufficient yet to abandon rotary when "the ski has to come around NOW!"....I have been staying out of the bumps and real steeps and devoting my ski days to working on my PMTS carves. I believe the great sense of contol and stability I have when and where I preform correct PMTS moves WILL TRANSLATE to rapid ski action in the bumps and steeps for me in time. With every ski day the method is more valid than the last and the old movements are fading. An old Dog can learn new tricks....lol.
Guest
 

Postby Belskisfast » Mon Jan 17, 2005 9:52 am

That was me above.
Belskisfast
 

quick rotation in the bumps

Postby John Mason » Mon Jan 17, 2005 2:20 pm

what we were shown was to pole plant and have your body already turned the new direction. The combination of that "counterotation", the shift from aft to for balance and inside ski tipping do indeed make them easily do a 180 right over the top of the bump. The pole plant was right on top of the bump.

The other thing we worked on a lot was timing this combined move. If you pole plant right on top of the bump, your going to be in teter mode for a very split second as you drift to the high shoulder of the bump. At this point, the shift to aft balance and the counterrotation easily make the skis come around. But, do it when your not tetering, and you won't make it - the ski might edge and not come around the 180 - so this teter point is very key to be aware of. What helped a lot, in getting the pole plant placement and positioning the turn, was we played follow the leader - like inches from his tail. This helped me since I tend to "over analyze" (duh!) and this didn't give me any time to "think and ponder".

Ski Doc's focus was on balancing on upper ski lte and then reestablishing balance on upper ski lte as soon as you come around the bump. Foot steering would make this whole balance on upper ski LTE not work. So he was all for passive rotation.

Another drill we worked on before hitting the bumps was the standard phantom drag. This move creates all sorts of rotation. It was interesting, because at the instructor camp some people came to that camp with this little move ingrained and in the V1 video analysis, it was worked against specifically because it creates so much rotation. However, in the bumps, just tipping the downhill ski and moving it just 1/2 inch closer to the balanced uphill ski really gets you set up for coming around the bump.

Two other styles of bump skiers Ski Doc made comments about as we skied the hill were the twist-em style (lots of active steering) and the hoppers. I suppose people can ski down the bumps anyway they want, but he went over lots of reasons these are not as good a way to do bumps. Chiefly in both cases is the disconnect of feet to cm for establishing balance both of those methods cause. He likes the ski to maintain a relationship with the slope and your balance.

Very interesting day.
John Mason
 
Posts: 1050
Joined: Wed Feb 18, 2004 10:52 pm
Location: Lafayette, Indiana, USA


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