MA for DB

Re: MA for DB

Postby meput » Fri Feb 19, 2010 3:17 pm

Liam,

More info re: Glen Scannell in this post: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2703.
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Re: MA for DB

Postby dan.boisvert » Fri Feb 19, 2010 3:50 pm

ginaliam wrote:Who is Glen S. and where is he located (PMTS boot guy in the greater New England Region??? )

Dan, where was your video shot?? Do you regularly ski anywhere is Mass?? I'm at Berkshire East a few times a week-If any PMTS forum types wanted to get together, that is.

Liam


Looks like meput beat me to Glen's info. He works out of the Sport Thoma shop on-mountain at Waterville Valley. You can read my follow-up in the thread there for my experience with him--in short, highly recommended.

The video I posted was shot at Okemo. The first clip was on Wardance and the second on Exhibition, if memory serves. I don't ski in MA much. Southern VT is only 30 minutes further than Charlemont for me, so I tend to skip Berkshire East and head up there instead. I'll PM you about getting together, though--I'm always happy to have people to ski with, and for the past couple weeks have been batting around the idea of coordinating a day for all of us in the area to meet up and ski together.
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Re: MA for DB

Postby dan.boisvert » Fri Feb 19, 2010 4:34 pm

Well, I don't have any more video yet, but I think I might be improving anyway. Last Friday, a couple friends kidnapped me and dragged me to Alberta & BC with them. Sadly, they also forced me to have fun, and wouldn't let me spend all day practicing drills on the bunny hill.

I think I may have thwarted their plans for my ruin through clever use of many traverses at Revelstoke and Sunshine Village, though. I worked the heck out of tipping and seemed to have some success with it there. It was cool to feel clean edge engagement and speed control, especially since my evil snowboarder friends wax their boards less often than I do my skis, and I was generally trying to stay behind them--ready to play tow truck when they got stuck.

On the bright side, I got a couple photos out of the deal:

Image
Image

Yeah, I'm skidding the hell out of the first one. The rentals I was on floated better in the soft stuff we got lost in than my SS Mags did, but they also had a 17 meter radius and I didn't want to make turns that big. I assume at some point I'll learn to tighten a turn by bending the ski more instead of throwing snow around, but I'm definitely not there yet.

It looks to me like the three things I need to drill and focus on most right now are to flex more, get my feet closer together, and get more of my weight on the outside leg. The latter two of these plus tipping seemed to improve significantly when I looked at photos earlier in the day and thought to myself "erm...I could've sworn I was bending my knees..." and focused on bending them lots. I don't know anything about skiing, though. Anybody agree/disagree?
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Re: MA for DB

Postby MonsterMan » Fri Feb 19, 2010 5:49 pm

It's hard to really tell from stills, but I see the stance ski tipped to slightly greater angles than the inside ski in each photo. I think you should work on the tipping sequence of LTE first, then BTE, or in other words, don't tip the big toe edge on OR off until the little toe edge has tipped that way first.

Once this is ingrained, THEN work on the counter balance, ingrain that and THEN work on the fore/aft.
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Re: MA for DB

Postby dan.boisvert » Sat Feb 20, 2010 5:51 am

MonsterMan wrote:It's hard to really tell from stills, but I see the stance ski tipped to slightly greater angles than the inside ski in each photo. I think you should work on the tipping sequence of LTE first, then BTE, or in other words, don't tip the big toe edge on OR off until the little toe edge has tipped that way first.

Once this is ingrained, THEN work on the counter balance, ingrain that and THEN work on the fore/aft.


You're right about the stance ski tipped to slightly greater angles in relationship to the snow--good eye--I had to hold a straightedge up to the screen to make sure my eyes weren't tricking me. :) I've been thinking of tipping as being mostly a knees-down movement, and was looking at it as the ski bases in relationship to my knees, which I think are still too far apart laterally. From that reference, I thought if I got the legs closer together, it would correct the slight difference in the ski->snow angles.

Here's a photo from one run earlier, when I thought I was bending my knees, but apparently wasn't:

Image

It looks to me like my ski base->knee angles might be okay, but that the bases are even worse in relationship to the snow because I'm not keeping my legs together enough. Am I thinking about this backwards? Should I be achieving equal base->snow angles on both feet even with my legs too far apart?

I apologize for the perhaps tedious questions; I'm trying to learn to analyze my own movements so I can get rapid on-hill feedback via a camera with a non-PMTS photographer.

I'm not thinking about counterbalancing or fore/aft yet (aside from on ice, where I've been trying to change my "oh crap--lean!" into "oh crap--strong counter!"). I'm pretty much just letting my body do whatever it needs to not fall over. I'll add those two to the queue. Thanks! :)
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Re: MA for DB

Postby leopold_bloom » Sat Feb 20, 2010 1:02 pm

Hello Dan,

Since you asked, I disagree.

Even in the still photos, it is readily apparent that problem no. 1 for you is fore/aft balance. You will have to address this first because the skis just won't turn from the back seat.

We all know that tipping the skis is an essential element of skiing. When you tip, your CG moves inside and is no longer over your feet.

What is to prevent you from falling over to the inside? When you're in the back seat, nothing. But when you're over the centre of your skis, they engage and create an acceleration and a force that balances the tendency to fall inside. If you're back you won't be able to tip very far to the inside before you feel like going further will make you fall over. Looking at your still photos gives me this feeling.

One other thought. Skiing is movement.

Whether your legs are flexed or not, or your foot are close together or far apart or your skis are tipped to the same angles or different angles--none of this really matters if you're not making the right movements. These are just secondary characteristics or outcomes. A good movement pattern creates positive characteristics and good outcomes and a bad one, negative characteristics and bad outcomes.

As an example, consider the Phantom Move. As the name indicates, it is a movement pattern. It will address all of your present concerns. When you do it right, you will achieve the positive outcomes you desire. It will address your fore/aft problems, improve your tipping, weight transfer etc.

Now, returning to your original problem, it's not much help to say you're in the back seat. Identifying positions isn't going to help you improve. The question is, what movement pattern put you there and what movement pattern should you substitute to correct this?

The Phantom Move is a good place to start.

Leo
Last edited by leopold_bloom on Sun Feb 21, 2010 5:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: MA for DB

Postby dan.boisvert » Sun Feb 21, 2010 7:35 am

leopold_bloom wrote:Even in the still photos, it is readily apparent that problem no. 1 for you is fore/aft balance. You will have to address this first because the skis just won't turn from the back seat.


Awesome! (since it seems my biggest problem has moved since the first set of responses, I'm taking that as progress)

What is to prevent you from fall over to the inside? When you're in the back seat, nothing. But when you're over the centre of your skis, they engage and create an acceleration and a force that balances the tendency to fall inside. If you're back you won't be able to tip very far to the inside before you feel like going further will make you fall over. Looking at your still photos gives me this feeling.


Interesting--when I ski, I have that exact feeling, but didn't know what was causing it. Bending my knees lots more seemed to help a bunch, but I still feel like tipping further will make me fall over. I'll watch & read the Essentials sections on fore/aft, which I've so far been avoiding so as to not distract myself while I focus on tipping.

Thank you for the reminder about movement/action vs position, as well. This is an idea I'm very comfortable with in certain non-skiing activities, but I'm not currently aware enough of what I do when I ski to know what my movement patterns are, much less if various attributes are helping or hurting me. I'll work on the Phantom Move and the fore/aft drills from Essentials and see if I can get more video in a few weeks.

Thanks!
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Re: MA for DB

Postby jclayton » Wed Mar 03, 2010 10:45 am

Great to see newbies , like kids in a candy store !
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