Harald may not completely agree with the catchy title (or he might because what I am talking about is pure PMTS). Its October. For those in Summit Cty CO ski season is about a month away and maybe sooner if the weather cooperates. Every year at this time I pull out video of my skiing from the year before and I also review all my notes from the season. Last year I was really unhappy with hand position and a tendency to let the hands drop mid turn (and this has an obvious and huge effect on one's ability to hold CA into the release and re-engagement). I made huge progress last season with this and my bump skiing soared because of it (at times I was able to nail the zipper line) and all my off piste skiing went to a new level. Whereas my CA was mostly sufficient at times my CB off piste was lazy and or at times late.
So this leads to the title of the post. I remember working on my flexing years ago and very soon into it was obvious that if I wanted to be quick I had to flex and tip in virtually the same movement (yes different muscles but the point holds). So HH, Diana and Max kept telling make sure that every time I flexed that I also tipped. It took some work but after some period of time it becomes ingrained. Are there times when one may want to flex and not tip right away? Yes of course so clearly we need to be able to do both but learning to tip quick enough after flexing is what takes work. Which brings us to the CB that was lazy at times last season. I spent the last few weeks of the season working on making sure that every time I was counteracting that I also was counterbalancing and I worked on making it one move. In 3 weeks I made progress but I will need the first half of this season to further ingrain this. And just like flexing which increases our ROM for our tipping muscles, CA supports our CB and vice versa.
This is nothing new and many will have heard this from coaches at camps and have worked on this and or already have it nailed. But in the terrain I am skiing at the speeds I am skiing I can't have a delay between getting CA and then getting some CB. Many of my off piste arcs just don't last that long.
Both these essential pairs (tipping and flexing and CA and CB) are great to work on as one occurrence; have them occur close to simultaneously.
More than anything I am thinking about my skiing, what I need to work on and what my goals are for the coming season. Its the right time for everyone to do the same.