by tommy » Sun Mar 28, 2004 9:38 am
John,
very good points, and I agree with all of them. An other one, on the technique side I came to think about after reading your post is the focus on flexion ("let the gravity do the work") in transition. Whether we want to call it collapsing, flexing or something else, I think this one is clearly different from what I've been able to absorb from other teaching systems.
Some comments on your list:
#1 I took a carving lesson early spring last season here, before going to Hintertux. The first thing the instructor told me (and I hadn't given much thought to stance width before) was "widen your stance". Then we started practicing "park & ride" type of carving on groomed slopes. Sure, I managed to do these GS turns, but I never got the point nor reason why I should go wide. Maybe my balance at that point wasn't too good, but otherwise I don't know. Now, after having practiced PMTS about a year, I keep a fairly narrow stance as the home base, maybe some 15 cm between my boots, but when doing carving on groomers I increase the vertical distance considerably from midways towards the end of the turn. As been discussed in some other thread, my opinion is that a wide home base might work ok on groomers, but as soon as you get into bumps, powder, slush etc, a wide stance will direct each ski in a separate direction, as well as demand much more work to stay balanced.
#2 For beginners, I've never seen anything else but the wedge being taught here. My guess is that most people taking lessons here don't really care much about becoming better skiers - their goal is instead to be able to "slide down" most green & blue slopes in the resort, with as little study or practice as possible, as soon as possible. And for that purpose, the wedge is probably the quickest and easiest thing to learn. The negative sides of the wedge are probably not that much of concern to someone who "skis" 3-5 days per season, mainly as a form of "socialising".
I've posted in an other thread about the knee problems I used to have before PMTS, and still have, if I'm for some reason forced to wedge. An other experience on the topic is below:
Early December I took a friend of my son (both are 10 years) to a local resort. This boy is quite overweight, non-athletic, and not in a very good physical condition, for instance, he's terrified to fall because he can't get up on his own. He's not skied more than a few times before. The first day he took a lesson, but complained badly after a while about general fatique, and pain in legs & knees. The lesson focused on the wedge as the main mean to get the kids down. He was basically wanting to quit the whole idea of skiing. Next day he basically didn't want to ski, but I persuaded him to practice for a while with me. So, I showed him the stepping/shuffling exercises of PMTS, and maybe after an hour of practicing these, the Phantom move. After 2 hours he was able to link a few turns on green slopes using the phantom move, and he was really exited about skiing again.
#3 for me is perhaps the biggest technical difference of what I try to do now, following PMTS, compared to my previous (mostly home brew) "technique": initiating turns with the free ski. In fact, all the non-PMTS lessons I've taken during the past years, no instructor has actually bothered to explain how a transition is to be done. The only advice, common to all my lessons, was something vague like "stand up in trasition, let the skis go downwards by them selves, and sink down once you've passed the fall line". PMTS, on the other hand, not only has a well defined sequence of "events" that occur in transition (R,T,E), but also a clear description of how the transition is supposed to happen. This clarity has been key to my skiing this season; having a clear description of the various movements in transition, and how to do them, has allowed me to analyze and hopefully correct my skiing on my own.
#4. Before PMTS, the little toe edges were totally unused in my skiing. In fact, after a day of skiing on hard snow, I could always immediately see from vax wear which ski had been left vs right. Now, in similar conditions, the vax wears down much more evenly under the ski. I'm not sure if this is only because I now "load" the little toe edge more during "general" skiing, or if it's because I spend quite a lot of time skiing with one ski only. Before PMTS and the alignment done by Harald, there was no way I could ski on the little toe edge. Today I have no problems linking turns on moderate slopes, nor doing little toe side hockey stops, with one ski only.
An other observation I've made is that my inline riding skills have vastly improved after my PMTS experience - again, before PMTS, I only used the inside "edges" of my inlines, now I can use the little toe "edges" both for turn control, as a mean to increase stroke length.
#5. This one I have some trouble with and would appreciate any thoughts on: in very short turns, even when using PMTS, there has to be an amount of skidding or brushing (i.e. non pure carving) involved. In order to keep speed in control, when travelling in a very narrow corridor, I've found that when doing these very short turns it's beneficial for me to add a slight "heel push" with the feet at end of turn. So I guess this is contrary the idea of "letting the skis turn you". But without this heel push, I have hard time keeping the turns short enough on steeps.
Cheers,
Tommy