Ted Shows it all!

Ted Shows it all!

Postby h.harb » Sun Dec 08, 2013 9:27 am

Well, there is no pivot, no leaning, no inclination. Everything that is done is PMTS. He leans slightly off his High C in the right turn, left leg. Not always, sometimes he catches it in time.

I forgot, there's no extension or hips forward movements either. So why are coaches still coaching this wrong movement pattern into skiers and racers?

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Re: Ted Shows it all!

Postby geoffda » Sun Dec 08, 2013 1:29 pm

Meanwhile, today at the Beav...

"American Ted Ligety holds an astounding 1.10 second lead over his teammate Bode Miller after the first run of giant slalom, further solidifying Ligety’s dominance in the discipline. Austrian Marcel Hirscher, who sits third, shook his head in utter surprise from the leader’s box as Ligety crossed the finish line with a commanding lead. France’s Alexis Pinturault is fourth, only 0.12 of a second off Hirscher."

http://skiracing.com/stories/bodes-back ... ver-creek/
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Re: Ted Shows it all!

Postby Max_501 » Sun Dec 08, 2013 1:56 pm

Ligety's win by 1.3 secs was truly impressive. And congratz to Bode at 2nd place with a very exciting 2nd run.
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Re: Ted Shows it all!

Postby h.harb » Sun Dec 08, 2013 2:48 pm

Amazing race, Bode truly is the story. What a comeback, no one could have called this. Ted continues to "guess what"? "Carve" a High C turn better than anyone!!!!! Where are the dopes on Epic Forum now, eating crow????? It's all about carving the High C, not pivoting, stupid.

Head skis are really the story in GS, 4th was a new Frenchman, Mathieu Faivre, 21 years old, also on Head skis. 3 out of the top 4 on Head skis, and Svindal winning everything on Head in Speed.. Now if they could make a WC slalom ski for men?
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Re: Ted Shows it all!

Postby HighAngles » Sun Dec 08, 2013 5:50 pm

Pinteraut's second run was nuts - unbelievable that he stayed upright. Bode's second was the Bode of old - always seeming to be running it right up against the edge - crazy exciting. But Ted's dominance is the continuing story.
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Re: Ted Shows it all!

Postby theorist » Thu Dec 12, 2013 8:39 pm

After the race, the interviewer asked Ligety what he was doing differently. In reply, he said (I'm paraphrasing): 'It's real simple -- I carve an extra 10% at the top of the turn -- that adds just a few hundredths of a second for each turn, but when you add them up over the race ....'

h.harb wrote:Well, there is no pivot, no leaning, no inclination. Everything that is done is PMTS.


Harald, what about his wide lateral separation during the transitions? I downloaded the above Sochi training video in 720p, went through it frame-by-frame, and did a screen capture of every transition (not including when he was tucking). I then uploaded those into iPhoto and combined them into a single montage: http://www.flickr.com/photos/111386007@N06/11347093566/ You can see his feet are generally quite far apart. I suppose one could argue that WC GS skiers can 'get away with' a wider lateral separation in the transition because the enormous forces they encounter during a race essentially throw them over into the next turn, something that won't happen with typical recreational skiing. But Ligety can't dominate the field so consistently on athleticism alone -- his GS technique has to be extraordinarily good. Given this, it seems unlikely he uses the wider stance merely because he can get away with it -- it must have some functional benefit for him over a narrower stance in WC GS racing (i.e., the narrower stance would be slower/less efficient for him).

I can think of three possibilities, two of which I'll list here:
1) It takes time to get narrower, and he may not have the time. I.e., if you come out of high angles by just flexing the stance leg, that will convert the large "proximal-distal" (i.e., along the length of the leg) separation your feet had (when at high angles) into a large lateral separation at the transition; to get less lateral separation, the old stance foot also has to be drawn in, and he may not have the time to do this.
2) As you've said, the WC skiers operate by different rules. The principal challenge for recreational skiers at the transition is moving properly into the new turn which, according to PMTS, is facilitated by a narrow transition stance. The principal challenge for WC GS skiers at the transition is the same, but in doing this they need to manage forces and speeds not seen in recreational skiing; properly managing those factors may require a wider transition stance.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
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Re: Ted Shows it all!

Postby Max_501 » Fri Dec 13, 2013 8:13 am

theorist wrote:Given this, it seems unlikely he uses the wider stance merely because he can get away with it -- it must have some functional benefit for him over a narrower stance in WC GS racing (i.e., the narrower stance would be slower/less efficient for him).


Look carefully and you will see a range from very narrow (almost touching) to very wide (shoulder width). The best transitions, those in which his body is well balanced and collected, are on the narrower end of the range (hip width or less).

Also consider that Ligety is basically weightless during the float as his CoM launches from one turn to the next. Because of this the width range doesn't matter as much as it would for the average recreational skier, although very wide can still cause unintended consequences like hooking up the inside ski too quickly.

And he's racing to win. Pushing himself to the max on every turn. We aren't going to see many picture perfect turns when a racer is in the course.
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Re: Ted Shows it all!

Postby h.harb » Fri Dec 13, 2013 5:39 pm

Max501's points all well taken. PMTS teaches movements based more closely to slalom type world cup skiers than GS skiing. Not many of our learning PMTS skiers ski at close to 50mph, with no other skiers on the slopes. There is no further comparison, justification or explanation needed beyond that. THis is what a world cup GS skier does and it is not what a recreational skier's needs are for improvement.

World Cup GS is not the model, for learning skiers. However the major reason you see a wider stance in GS, is due to the transition (where it's obvious) And this relates directly to the amount of vertical separation used and needed in the high angles of GS arcs.

As we can all attest to, Ted gets some of the biggest angles. When you release the stance ski in these arcs, you in affect lower your Cg. When the inside ski contacts the snow on it's "Little toe edge", due to the vertical separation in the turn, the skis are the same width as the vertical separation achieved in the arc. In the arc, where the leg (and knee) of the outside ski is actually touching the inside ski boot, a narrower stance than this can not be achieved. When the skis roll off their edges and become flat the "vertical separation", turns into horizontal separation, not because it's desired, but because it's unavoidable. Due to the speed, which translates into momentum; Narrowing the stance is not as desperately required to achieve balance over the outside ski, as in slalom or in free skiing short turns. Although most often you will see the releasing outside ski being lifted by GS skiers, this is to focus balance and stance to the other ski. That being said, there are many instances where in GS, skiers do narrow their stance to set up better balance for the new turn.

Relative to skiers who don't ski GS as well as Ligety or Hirscher, let's say development racers, they require in their development movements a way to establish balance before turn entry. A wide stance in transition doesn't teach balancing over the outside ski, lower body tipping or High C engagement. (remember engagement doesn't mean pressuring the ski) This is due to the fact that development racers don't create the angles and energy to swing their Cg into balance over the outside ski in transition. Therefore you see lots of extension in the transitions to push the Cg into the turn. These are highly counter productive movements that lead to a dead-ends in technique development.

I can teach a GS racer how to get bigger angles and vertical separation from a narrower stance faster than I can teach a wide stance skier to develop vertical separation, because one is skiing with balance the other is not. Narrowing the stance for the development racers (so they can move from one ski to the other and tip their skis in the "High C" phase) develops the right tools so that they can evolve toward, great vertical separation. The reverse is rarely the case.
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Re: Ted Shows it all!

Postby Max_501 » Fri Dec 13, 2013 6:45 pm

h.harb wrote:Not many of our learning PMTS skiers ski at close to 50mph, with no other skiers on the slopes.


And on race stock 35M+ radius skis!
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Re: Ted Shows it all!

Postby Max_501 » Fri Dec 13, 2013 10:33 pm

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Re: Ted Shows it all!

Postby Max_501 » Sat Dec 14, 2013 3:43 pm

Ligety DNF Run 1 Val d'Isere

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Re: Ted Shows it all!

Postby theorist » Mon Dec 16, 2013 8:59 pm

Thanks Harald, that was a great reply, with lots of rich details about your thinking. And thanks, Max, for providing links to more of Harald's writing on this subject (I'd looked prior to posting my question, but didn't see those, probably b/c I'd searched Harald's posts for +stance +Ligety and +width +Ligety, instead of +stance +width). I would have written earlier to say thanks, but I wanted to take the time to digest this info.

From what Harald wrote, I gather/infer the following (the key point that alleviates my confusion is no. 3):

1) PMTS is based on WC ski technique, and WC SL technique in particular. The reason PMTS looks specifically at SL is not that PMTS is interested only in SL turns. Rather, WC SL technique contains all the basic mechanics needed for all types of turns, except it's not permuted (or as permuted) by the additional tactical and technique features that result from the extraordinary speeds seen in WC GS and speed events; such features are not functional for recreational skiing (or even for developing racers) and, more importantly, could compromise development were a learning skier to attempt to emulate them. [His answer goes into why this is the case.]

2) The free-skiing of WC GS specialists may therefore not be a good model for a recreational expert skiing at the same speed and turning radius, because the former may continue to use their in-course movement patterns even at recreational speeds.

3) It's not simply that there's one sort of transition stance width (TSW) for WC GS/SG/DH and another, much narrower one, for everything else. Rather, it's a continuum: there are significant benefits to a narrow TSW (better balance and facilitation of entry into the new turn), and thus the TSW should be as narrow as possible for the skier's expertise and for the forces being generated (with additional adjustments for conditions like moguls and powder). Therefore, as skill/speed/angles/turn radius increase, the TSW requirements are relaxed. Thus, for optimum TSW, we have: intermediate <= recreational expert making controlled slalom turns < recreational expert making fast GS turns on an empty slope < skilled USSA Master competing at the GS Nationals < WC GS competition (where "<" can mean "slightly less than" or "significantly less than"). Indeed, you could say that Ligety's GS TSW (except where he overdoes it) is PMTS, if PMTS were extended to that regime.

Max_501 wrote:And he's racing to win. Pushing himself to the max on every turn. We aren't going to see many picture perfect turns when a racer is in the course.

Just a minor point, but note that one of the nice things about this footage is that it's a training video. I like looking at training videos specifically because, while one still sees mistakes, the skiers are not (usually) at the hairy edge the way they would be in a race, which allows their native movement patterns to come through with less "noise." For that reason, I've tried locating training video of Hirsher in SL, but unfortunately have not found anything more recent than this CSCF/FESC footage from 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuZJim10RXA . [If anyone has a link to newer material, that would be great....]
Last edited by theorist on Mon Dec 16, 2013 9:18 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Ted Shows it all!

Postby Max_501 » Mon Dec 16, 2013 9:09 pm

theorist wrote:Just a minor point, but note that one of the nice things about this footage is that it's a training video. I like looking at training videos specifically because, while one still sees mistakes, the skiers are not (usually) at the hairy edge the way they would be in a race, which allows their native movement patterns to come through with less "noise."


Not necessarily. In fact, racers are often faster during training because they are not worried about blowing out of the course so they can, and do, push even harder then on race day when points gets factored into the equation. You see, they may race to win even during training!
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