Hi All
Thanks again for the carver MA feedback I got from the forum last season. It was of great benefit and set me up well for the skiing season that has just closed. I did fully intend to post skiing for MA during the season but I then arranged with a PMTS instructor to get some coaching and so to my mind it was no longer appropriate, for a variety of reasons.
As like last season, I am planning to post some carver video for MA every month or so, and I will be grateful to receive comments, assuming experienced and expert eyes have the time to view and analyse! This time I will just add video to this same post, as that seems the custom, rather than creating a new post each month. I attended Hintertux Camp again this April, a wonderful constructive and fun learning experience again – the two main issues resulting from Camp for me to work on are CA and keeping my arms/hands wider throughout the turn.
For CA the current focus is ensuring my hips rotate in the correct direction (i.e. pointing uphill and not downhill.) I have/had a habit of creating CA with the shoulders but then undoing it with rotating my hips in the wrong direction. So for these four runs on my carvers, on this video, my main focus is getting my hips to counter correctly.
My second focus was to do with trying to keep my arms/hands sufficiently wide, while at the same time keeping my left arm in particular relaxed. So I am not too concerned at the moment with pole planting, more concerned with keeping them consistently wide and not contributing to rotation. I have a long established habit of tensing my left forearm whenever it is engaged in a task, whatever that task is related to, DIY, driving, skiing… This engrained habit led to significant and diagnosed “tennis elbow”last year and it is a priority that I teach my left arm to relax as much as possible when my left hand is holding a ski pole. Poling uphill for carving runs puts additional demands on the forearm so if I want to be able to practice regularly I need to teach my arm to relax more. That is why I have selected two footed releases and am not currently using my poles for additional ground balance. If I were to use poles for supportive balance at this stage I know my left forearm would instinctively tighten. So I am doing here sort of slow motion two footed release carved short turns, rather than one footed release phantom move short turns because I know I would be then more dependent on my poles for supportive balance from the ground.
Observations and comments on hip CA and its timing, also CB (there are a couple of loss of balance wobbles which I assume were caused by insufficient CB) and arm/hand/pole positions would be especially welcome!
Carving 13 May 2012