PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby h.harb » Sat Oct 04, 2014 1:59 pm

Many skiers don't have access to include "lateral pelvis tilting" in their skiing, they have to work around it. If they don't have good feet/ankles and not a great boot set up, they will struggle.
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby Max_501 » Sat Oct 04, 2014 4:13 pm

And turning the pelvis around the head of the femur of the outside leg seems to be a very difficult movement for many of us.
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby CO_Steve » Sat Oct 04, 2014 5:08 pm

Max_501 wrote:And turning the pelvis around the head of the femur of the outside leg seems to be a very difficult movement for many of us.


Funny story. I was doing some entro-to-pmts lessons for a friend's wife last season. Try as I might I could not get her to get her hips in the right position. Then I remembered something Jay had said in a camp. We tried pulling back the outside hip. No dice, nothing. We tried rotating about the spine, nope. I'm thinking this isn't going to happen, but there's still one more option. Push the inside hip forward. Perfect! She got in a perfect countered position. The interesting thing was she said it was easy. Now before I found the right words I'm pretty sure the look on her face was trying to say I was asking the impossible. So some of the movements are hard, but sometimes you just need to find the right words.
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby h.harb » Sat Oct 04, 2014 5:32 pm

Steve it is similar to lifting one side of the hip, the inside to get better CB. Then you tell people the same thing except you say "lower the outside hip", and they get it. You can never stop trying to communicate movements.

Remember how long it took Geoffda to get tipping with his feet and skis, instead of hip dumping, same idea, you have keep trying to work through it.
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby Max_501 » Sat Oct 04, 2014 5:45 pm

Steve, good job on finding words that worked. Just be sure to evaluate all aspects of the outcome. I've seen others try to use the concept of pushing the inside hip forward and while there was some CA improvement it resulted in some hip dumping. So, fixed one problem but caused another.
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby CO_Steve » Sat Oct 04, 2014 6:04 pm

Max_501 wrote:Steve, good job on finding words that worked. Just be sure to evaluate all aspects of the outcome. I've seen others try to use the concept of pushing the inside hip forward and while there was some CA improvement it resulted in some hip dumping. So, fixed one problem but caused another.


Sort of like taking a dent out of a ping pong ball by making another, hopefully small one.
Personally, I don't really like the feel of pushing the hip forward but I was completely out of other ideas and was looking for anything else.
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby Max_501 » Sat Oct 04, 2014 6:10 pm

CO_Steve wrote:Sort of like taking a dent out of a ping pong ball by making another, hopefully small one.


True enough. But hip dumping can be worse than lack of CA because tipping is the number one essential and hip dumping means the hip is leading the turn (rather than tipping).
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby h.harb » Sat Oct 04, 2014 6:33 pm

If you understand and are watching for the inside ski moving forward and the result being marginal inside ski tipping, it is definitely not working. Moving the inside hip forward will block tipping movements. If the inside foot is still able to be pulled back and tipping is continuous you are OK. Always look for the inside ski and boot to be tipping, that tells you the whole story. Also if the inside leg can get more bent, that's icing on the cake.
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby HeluvaSkier » Sat Oct 04, 2014 7:06 pm

Harald,
Thank you for the MA. Spot on as usual. Max_501 had me working on these things last season when we skied together. Lots to work on this season! I'm already working in the gym to free up my hips so when I get to the snow things start to actually work...
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby theorist » Mon Oct 13, 2014 6:55 pm

Hi Heluva. I wanted to practice my MA skills, so Max_501 suggested I stop by your thread. I can see the heavy lifting has already been done, so here's the only observation I can think to add (besides that this is great skiing): Regarding your arm position: In slow motion, I played back the first sequence of you in green and black, starting at 0:16. First I focused on just the right hand, then I repeated this focusing on the left. When I did this, I noticed the right hand/arm generally stayed forward/strong; it was principally the left arm/shoulder that had a tendency to rotate back. And I saw this both when it was on the inside and on the outside. I'm not sure if the asymmetry is inherent to your skiing (maybe a difference in hip rotation mobility between the two sides?), or if there's a double fall line there that might be contributing to it.

Also, if you wouldn't mind three bits of speculation (Harald did say we should stick our necks out...):

1) It may be that the hunching during the transition is due to boot ramp angle. However, I'm wondering if it might instead be due to the mental instructions you're giving yourself. I notice you make great effort to keep your CM from rising during the transition. However, if you're monitoring that using the height of your head or upper body as a cue, that could be causing your hunching: At the transition your hips naturally come up a bit, which could cause you to fold at the waist if you're trying to keep the head/upper body at a constant distance from the snow. [Another mental cue that can cause folding at the waist is "stay forward," if it's focused on the upper body, but I think it's less likely you'd be doing that.] Can you recall if you're using a mental cue for your upper body that could be causing the hunching?

2) Regardless of the cause of the hunching, I'm wondering whether starting the transition with somewhat of a hunch might be interfering with subsequent development of CA/CB in the turn, and thus whether your CA/CB would improve if you reduced the folding at the waist -- as you know, our alignment and movement in the transition sets up the rest of the turn. I experimented with this on dryland by supporting myself with my arms between two countertops, and trying to move into counter from a transition starting both with an without a hunch. The former seemed harder. You can experiment with this yourself and see if the internal sensations you feel correspond to what you remember from your skiing.

3) As has already been pointed out, your skiing here is so good that we can only nitpick. If you want to take your skiing to the next level, you may wish to consider making that same variety of turns on steeper and/or icier terrain, and posting the video. If you're human like the rest of us :), that should allow any errors you are making to reveal themselves much more clearly. It's like giving an exam to a grad student on which she gets a near-perfect score: the exam wasn't hard enough to reveal the limits of her understanding, which is the first step to increasing it.

Again, beautiful skiing!
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby Max_501 » Tue Oct 14, 2014 12:30 am

theorist wrote:If you want to take your skiing to the next level, you may wish to consider making that same variety of turns on steeper and/or icier terrain, and posting the video.


He skis ice much of the winter and steep runs don't phase him in the slightest. In fact, one of the pitches he is carving with ease is roughly 40 degrees.
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby h.harb » Tue Oct 14, 2014 7:10 am

There is only so much you can add with your hip and torso to increase CA and CB. When this no longer is an area where there is much to be gained, you have to refine elsewhere. CA and CB are the easy ones to pick. The real difference now, between Gregg's skiing and world's top skiers, and I mean the really evolved technical skiers, like Hirscher and Felix Neureuther, is arm and pole use. This is refinement of CA. Not the actual application of CA. Greg already has that.

I just wrote all the new, "Check Points" and the last one I completed, so far, is Check Point 9, the Check Points have now evolved and each one, besides the photos, (when I get around to it each one will also have video) has 7 categories of description, which are:

Qualities and abilities,
Refinement,
Mechanics and movements,
Objectives,
Quality of movements,
Benefits,
Exercises and Variations.

This is a new level of movement analysis and identification of skiing and has never been done before in such detail. It is an off shoot of the Essentials.

I digress, Check Point 9 is, the no swing pole plant. To evolve and flush out the new Check Point series, I went over hours of photos and video of the best skiing models in the world identifying each point and selecting the best partitioners of that check point. It is truly amazing how much the 3 or 4 best, separate themselves from the next 15 best skiers in the world. When you know and can use the Check Points you really begin to see the difference. They can (and should) all "still" learn from the top 3 and so can we. In many ways, the best of the rest, are un-envolved skiers, using old techniques, yet still competing, but never winning and rarely placing on the podium. And there is a reason for this and it's not subtle.

So back to refinement, Gregg's arm and hand movement changes, toward "no swing", will have the biggest impact on creating more or extra: what some might say is, "not enough CA". This is still a strong focus for me when I'm coaching the young group of skiers from California, I've brought up over the last 6 years. It's an area we are going to really work out this fall. They have all the rest of the good stuff, but are not totally strong enough yet, with Check Point 9.
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby h.harb » Tue Oct 14, 2014 8:25 am

On the point about hunching forward of the shoulders for Gregg in the transition, his shoulders lift and his back is straight in the loaded phase of the arc, that's the most important time to have the back straight, CA helps this.

I agree that boots (ramp etc) have something to do with how much you have to hunch, also the torso to leg length propositions influence the need for bending forward. This you can do nothing about. You can chase boots for a long time and nothing changes.

If you study Hirscher's skiing, there are many situations where his chest is on his knees.
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby HeluvaSkier » Tue Oct 14, 2014 10:15 am

Theorist,
As usual, Harald’s responses are spot on. I’ll give you, and others, a bit of what is going on in my head as we get ready for another season.

My pelvis, and movements that come from it are the areas for improvement in my skiing. When I CB, my pelvis does not stay as level as it should. When I do develop CA, I tend to unwind it with poor control of my arms and shoulders. My CA at the pelvis is also generally weak or not there to begin with. I’ve worked, and will continue to work with drills like the NSPP, angry mother, and hip-o-meter to better train developing and holding CA. I’m also doing some extensive gym work to strengthen these movements before I hit snow, with a lot more work planned once on snow.

As Harald mentions, the hunching is likely a result of my build (has always been present in my skiing regardless of boot setup). I have long legs and a short torso. At 5’ 7” I am very close to Hirscher’s size/build. That said, I will be building a few new pairs of boots this year, and one will initially be different than my current setup to see how a different set up affects my upper body position and fore/aft movement. I won’t sacrifice access to the front of the ski in order to achieve a look though.
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Re: PMTS Pre-Season Stoke

Postby theorist » Tue Oct 14, 2014 7:36 pm

Thanks, guys, for all the detailed info.

Max, thanks for setting me straight on pitch and conditions. 40 degrees is very impressive—about the same as the upper part of Palli!

Harald, really enjoyed the subtle explanation of how CA/CB can be refined with the arm/shoulder when one has done as much as possible with the hip. Will look forward to reading the expanded Checkpoints.

Heluva, good luck working on your hips. I spent a year doing daily work to increase internal rotation, mostly on my right, without much movement, until a month ago when they finally started to let go. I'm still only at a bit over 30 degrees on each side, but at least now the right equals the left. But I believe you're younger than me, so hopefully it won't take as long.
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