"Widen Your Stance"

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"Widen Your Stance"

Postby Vailsteve » Thu Apr 06, 2017 4:45 pm

So this week Vail is hosting a PSIA Cert 2 exam. We have 70+ candidates on the mountain in groups of 8 or 9 skiers plus an examiner for each group.

I was working today and my assignment was to ski the frontside groomers...greens, blues and blacks. I LOVE days like today where I can spend hours mostly doing drills. So I was practing one footed releases, two footed releases, phantom move with lift tip, foot pullback, NSPP, etc. One of the runs I was skiing was Cappuccino, which is a decently steep blue tree run. I was practicing my super phantom turns, skiing as SLOWLY as I could. About 2/3 of the way down, there was a group on the side--obviously Cert 2 candidates.

Since I was in my red jacket, I skied to them to say Hi, welcome to Vail, how is is it going, etc., etc. After some chitchat about me teaching as well, the examiner, who had watched me coming down, said " nice turns. Can I make a suggestion?" Sure, I replied. "Widen your stance!" he said. OK..got it...thanks, and skied off.

Amusing isn't it... "nice turns", but widen your stance to make them better??? Now admittedly, he did say widen it by only three inches, so some credit to him.

Now I am SO torn....do I listen to HH, or do I listen to the gods of skiing...the PSIA examiner? Hmmmm, need some help here...

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Re: "Widen Your Stance"

Postby NoCleverName » Mon Apr 10, 2017 1:39 pm

At a camp a few years ago, HH said, "I seldom say this ... but widen your stance." This because I ski many times with knees touching ... I think it's because I'm not always sure where my legs are at so if they touch I know where they are. I probably have a little trouble with proprioception.
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Re: "Widen Your Stance"

Postby skijim13 » Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:42 am

Lorie and I was just at the Spring Rally to get credits to keep our Certification, our trainer skied with a narrow stance which was a good thing for us since he made no comment on the narrow stance. He did not like our pole usage and told both of us to swing them more and plant them harder. The trainer was made a big deal about pushing on the front of the boots to control fore/aft balance and even made the group repeat the words shin/tongue contact for good skiing. It was very hard for both Lorie and I not to talk about free foot pullback, but we were both good and kept our mouths closed. The examiner/trainer was at a high level in the PSIA, however his skiing was not close to the quality I see with our PMTS coaches. Additionally, he really did not teach anything to anyone in the two days of skiing in his group, there were many words on what good skiing was but no roadmap there or any individual feedback and great coaching we get in camp.
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Re: "Widen Your Stance"

Postby CO_Steve » Fri Apr 14, 2017 5:42 pm

I was skiing Snowmass in some wonderful spring corn today. As the tourists have all but disappeared ski school was doing a lot of clinics. As I skied by one of the groups I stopped a bit below them to see what was going on. The "leader" then began skiing down toward me, skis shoulder width apart or maybe further, doing aggressive hopped turns with a hard edge set at the bottom. Some of the ugliest skiing I've seen all year. I quickly skied off trying to forget what I had just seen. A few dozen short turns later my mind was mostly cleared, but why do they do this? Does anyone think this is good skiing?
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