by AnI » Fri Jan 15, 2016 11:30 am
Carl_R, I do not know how much experience you have with PMTS, I think a comment from a slightly different perspective may help you understand what is going on.
First of all, Max_501 is one of the PMTS coaches. He has been teaching at PMTS camps, on and off, for many years. I have never been in his group, but I have seen him at the camps. He has as much knowledge about PMTS as other best coaches. He not only answers questions during camps, but also volunteers his time to answer questions on the forum. He answers more often than Harald or Geoff, and we are all grateful for that. Most PMTS'ers are like this, they want to share the knowledge. However, there are several people on this forum who are "black belts" and they are in the best position to answer any difficult questions. Max_501 is one of them.
A reference to the books which Max made has nothing to do with his attitude. It is his "signature answer", I lost count of how many times he wrote it. He believes that many questions have been answered many times already, and he is right.
Having said that, I can relate to what you are thinking. Harald's books are very detailed and contain 90% of what you may hear from the coaches. A few things have changed over the time, some drills are not used much, new drills appeared (e.g., Angry Mom), timing of counteracting has changed slightly (now Harald teaches to hold it through the transition), but the fundamentals did not change and the method did not change either. The problem which you, I, and other readers have experienced with these books are two (and they are not related to the content of the books).
The first one is that most people who come to PMTS have fairly high self-rating of their skiing. They think they are advanced skiers at the very least, if not experts, and that the drills in the book are for beginners. They expect advanced stuff and just do not see themselves working on easy drills. They think they are past them. It is the main reason why people flip through the pages, read the last chapter, and get nothing from the book. It takes a camp or two to see how the true experts ski to re-evaluate your own level and to appreciate the significance of simple drills and their impact on mastering the essentials. Until you went through this, you will continue skipping through pages. PMTS requires a change of one's mindset.
The second issue comes from the way how Harald wrote his books. He talks about critical things quite occasionally, he does not emphasize and repeat five times in bold letters that this word is important and makes a key difference. He expects readers to have open mind and pay attention. When you read his books for the first time, you often make assumptions. You may have done a similar drill in the past, and you may not notice one phrase in the description which totally changes how it is done. You have to read the description of every drill very carefully and many times to discover these small details. It also helps to try every drill and see how it works for you. It is surprising to find how difficult it is to make simple drills!
The books are what they are. Harald is not going to change them to "skiing for dummies" by adding all those explanation marks (even though they could help many readers to get his messages on the first read). He is not going to highlight and emphasize words to make sure that everyone gets it even when flipping through the pages. For better or for worse, one has to read each of his books multiple times. The best is to read the book, go ski, then read it again, then go to the PMTS forum and search for answers to similar questions to validate you got it right. This forum has a lot of additional information, or rather, the same information presented in a different way. All PMTS students use this forum as a resource. Answers from the experts may be short, but they are always to the point.
Many skills and even essentials make increasingly more sense once you start practicing them. Theoretical discussion without practice oftentimes does not make sense, it is hard to get why and how each movement works without practicing it. Many if not all PMTS movements are subtle. It may not make a lot of sense what Max is saying when you first read it, but after a couple of hours of trial and error on the snow it will make more sense. Just give it a try, maybe get a video of yourself taken, and if it still does not work, come back, show what you've done, and ask for help.
This is the only skiing-related forum on the Internet where people get consistent and professional advice and no garbage.