ma for acali

ma for acali

Postby acali » Mon Apr 05, 2010 8:59 pm

So I've gone back and worked hard on tipping exercises and flexing to release.
What I hope to hear is, hey you are tipping now but need to tip more. Here is how.
I realize before I was getting basically all my angles from inclination.

I still have a hard time with just about all the exercises but I'm out there and trying.
I can do the hold the boots with your hands turns and get my knees well past my arms but I have to really flex to release and sorta phantom move in them.

Also, I really hate to blame equipment but I'm running 88mm wide 21m radius skis.
Hope to get something easier to work with at some point.

Video of me on an easy but somewhat bumpy blue run:


Another just slightly steeper run:


Video of me from my previous post a couple weeks ago before hitting the books:


Pretty much I'd like someone to tell me what I'm doing right (some of the time) and what should be my main focus on improvement. (yeah I know it starts with a "T" and ends with "ipping") But how?
Thanks a ton.
Last edited by acali on Tue Apr 06, 2010 8:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ma for acali

Postby MonsterMan » Mon Apr 05, 2010 9:26 pm

I see a difference in your pole plant for turns to the left and turns to the right.

I like the turns to the left a lot better. Nice and smoooth; no jabbing movement; not destroying your counter.
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Re: ma for acali

Postby MonsterMan » Mon Apr 05, 2010 9:30 pm

The tipping that you seem so eager to work on will come when you learn to finish the turns, do a search on the forum or re-read essentials for detail, but I'd like to see the radius shorten at the end of each turn. Think flex and tip more before the "flex to release".
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Re: ma for acali

Postby jbotti » Tue Apr 06, 2010 11:38 am

Love the wipeout. We definitely need more video of wipeouts.

I agree with your comment on looking for a thinner waisted ski. What you aren't doing is carving or brush carving dynamic arcs. Your grasp of some of the basic PMTS movements is there. Yes you need more tipping and you want to go much deeper into each arc (which requires more tipping. more CB and countercating and more flexing). It is very hard to feel this on 88mm waisted skis. I was skiing yesterday on Head Super Shapes and later in the day I switched to Peak 88's. Wow they just felt so sluggish. I did my very best to ski dynamically. They were good for GS type turns. When I went to do tight brushed carved short radius turns, it was a ton of work and I wasn't really satisfied with what I was doing. And I can ski dynamically (at least some of the time) on true carving skis. So I know what the sensations feel like. Without that feedback from the skis, that will immediately react when put on edge and when the tips are pressured, I know there is now way that I could progress to tearing it up on a wider ski. You will progress so much fatser on a sub 70mm waisted ski made for carving tight arcs. I recommend making this move ASAP.

As for specific drills, you are still using quite a bit of inclination in your skiing. Two ways to attack this. First, tip more (which you know). Inclination occurs to help get the skis over when there isn't enough tipping to make it happen without the leaning in. Second, do any and all the excercises in the books that promote CB. The combo will start to prduce muuch bigger edge angles.
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Re: ma for acali

Postby Mac » Fri Apr 09, 2010 11:07 am

If you are going to wipe out, that's the kind of snow that you want to do it in. Actually, the snow conditions could have contributed to the wipeout. I don't know where that was filmed, but if you ski mainly in softer snow conditions, it can contribute to lazy technique, simply because the snow is so forgiving. Your downhill ski slid out from under you because of too much upper body inclination and too much weight on the inside ski. A more solid commitment to the new stance foot, as well as some CB and CA earlier in the High C part of the turn would have prevented that spill. Skiing on boilerplate here in New England teaches you that real early in your skiing life. If you don't learn that quickly, you'll be spending more time on your butt than a snowboarder, the conditions just won't cut you any slack. And it's commendable not to blame the equipment, but in this case JB is right, you'd be far better off on a narrower pair of skis to practice on, it will cut the learning curve in half.
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Re: ma for acali

Postby acali » Fri Apr 09, 2010 11:30 am

I had first started to add some CB to my skiing without flexing and tipping much at all. It was fun and I was getting more angles in the lower C part but I was falling all the time.
Since I went back and started to add more flexing and tipping that kind of instability has pretty much gone away. Obviously I've got a long road to really connecting all the essentials but I threw that video in there to show what I was doing before more recent improvement.

Yeah I primarily ski in Tahoe and am lucky to have pretty soft snow most of the season.
I've gone ahead and ordered a pair of NOS head xenon 7.0 skis. Hopefully in the three or so more weekends that the resorts will be open I can go from gumby to aspiring expert gumby.

I know now that I have some alignment issues. Traversing left on a slope it is very difficult to balance on the LTE and pretty difficult to balance on the BTE. Going right I can easily balance on either foot.
I won't have a chance this year to get out to a pmts alignment tech but I'll make this a priority at the start of next season.

Would this information and my videos give you some clues to the degree that alignment is affecting me?
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Re: ma for acali

Postby Mac » Fri Apr 09, 2010 11:55 am

Most people do have some alignment issues to some degree, very few of us are born with perfect alignment. You said that you were trying to CB and CA without using much tipping. Tipping and flexing really needs to come first, CB and CA should then be used to compliment your tipping and flexing. Remember, PMTS movements are based on the kenetic chain. That is, all movements should start at the feet, the upper body should then adjust to support these movements. You can get the feeling of this just by standing in your living room. When you roll both your feet up on edge as you would do when you are tipping on skis, you'll find that your body will automactically want to move to stay in balance over your feet to keep you from falling over. But the movements must start at the feet. Movements that start with the upper body have an adverse effect when it comes to skiing, and are a step in the wrong direction.
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Re: ma for acali

Postby acali » Fri Apr 09, 2010 12:05 pm

Thats exactly the conclusion I came too.
I went back to the tipping exercises and realized that instead of doing them like they were written, I was keeping my legs straight and hinging at the waist. Like if you stood in a doorway and put your arms out to the side you could hold yourself up this way, but its hard to ski like that (hence wipeout). I got the essentials DVDs and in the first two minutes, went "oh" and saw immediately what I was doing wrong.
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Re: ma for acali

Postby HeluvaSkier » Sat Apr 10, 2010 7:50 pm

I don't know if anyone else has talked about it, but your use of flexing is very good, however it is putting you in the backseat because you aren't using any foot pullback (and at times may even be over-flexing considering the slow speeds you're traveling at). I'd work on foot pullback exercises both stationary and moving. Pull your feet back while standing still. Once you have pulled them back a few times, pull them back and allow yourself to start to slide - and don't let the skis accelerate in front of you. Stay over the shovels. The same goes for when doing drills where you pull the feet back in transition - always start the turn with your feet pulled very far back. At slower speeds this may require less flexing, but overall you will be making better movements.
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Re: ma for acali

Postby Mac » Mon Apr 12, 2010 5:39 am

Heluva brings up a good point that I think needs to be addressed. With all the attention paid to flexing, I think a lot of people are dropping their hips, in other words, sitting down or crouching instead of actually flexing, leading to a lot of back seat drivers. You can demonstrate this to yourself by traversing a mogul field and trying to suck up or absorb the bumps by relaxing your feet and flexing your legs, bringing your knees up towards your chest, as opposed to squating or dropping your hips. To the naked eye, these to movements may seem to accomplish the same thing, but this exercise will quickly point out the difference between when you are doing it correctly and when you are not. The better you get at flexing, then absorbing the bumps will become almost ridicuously easy. Actually, I find that practicing flexing in a mogul traverse is easier to learn than when on a groomed slope. The bumps will force you to flex, which helps you to establish a rythym, and will also give you immediate feedback as to whether you are doing it properly.
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