by John Mason » Thu Apr 01, 2004 6:01 pm
In PMTS when you tip the inside leg, it does tip the outside leg. So it's a difference of focus. By focusing on the inside leg, you will have a parallel turn whereas if you try to edge the outside ski instead of letting it happen as a result, you can get a wedge entry to your turn. In practice, looking at tracks of the weighted release being demonstrated by top PMTS people, it's two tracks that jump to two tracks instantly. It does not happen with the one leg followed by the other leg.
In the Super Phantom, though, you will see a change in the tracks from weighting the outside leg, to the inside leg right at the fall line. At the point this weight transfer occurs, what is actually happening is that the outside leg bearing the forces of the turn is relaxed, lifted, whatever. This makes the weight go to the current inside ski and starts the bodies CM moving down the hill and accross the skis. In reality, it's better to say the CM keeps moving down the hill because it was already doing that, but it does move the CM accross the skis. In the Super Phantom, by focusing on getting that inside ski little toe edge engaged early while the inside ski is lifted and tipped, ensures a proper entry into the turn so that carving occurs up top.
In reviewing Bob Barne's posts over the last couple of years, of course you can ask him, he is concerned that the little toe edge engagement on the upper ski, the ski that's about to be the outside ski, represents a step uphill. I can see that as in the drill for this as outlined in Eric and Rob's all mountain book and HH's book, you actually are standing on the little toe edge to get the feel of how that feels then tip and let the turn happen. If you do that in a real turn as opposed to the learning drill, you will stop your downhill CM movement. Once implemented the transfer to the little toe edge is momentary while that edge is engaged anyway coming out of the prior turn and will happen by itself if both edges are engaged as the new inside leg is tipped whether lifted or not.
As far as leg steering to shape the turns as Bob describes in his perfect turn, he elaborates on this in other posts saying its done high up in the leg at the hip socket. Of course, this is where we part company as to shape a turn with these large muscles is not very exact or easy to do. If the "lift and tip" can cause the body to cross over the CM over the skis, then certainly it stands to reason that the inside ski tipping can shape that turn.
In the book the Athletic skier you find much overlap to what Bob says. Pressure, tipping, and steering are blended to shape a turn according to both sources. In this book, though, you will see that they state that in pure carving once your good at it, only about 1% of the turn is determined by leg steering. This is getting so weirdly semantical in that, if they really think it's 1% then that could be subjective and it might really be 0%.
Bob also states that in a pure carve where the edge is fully engaged that you can't use leg steering. That makes one wonder what you use then to shape the turn in that case.
In both cases, Witherall's book and Bob's approach, neither recognize that the phantom move itself can develop rotary forces on the external femur. But, in fact, the Phantom move can generate and modulate turning forces in a way that keeps the body and skeletal forces working for you. Bob, at least, describes the "lift and tip" action that Witherall never describes.
May be semantics, but I think when you get down to it, these semantical differences would be visible watching Bob or HH coming down the slopes. This, of course, would mean, though similar in some ways, there are actual differences in the approaches beyond just interpetation of words.
On the other hand, maybe they look the same coming down the slopes and it is just semantics.