confused on what to buy first

[uavmx]

Hello All,

I'd say I'm advanced intermediate, to intro advanced. Mostly struggling off Piste and bumps. Looking to really improve this year. I'm really comfortable carving and getting on my edges, and doing some of the things mentioned in the youtube videos. I don't think I'm very far off of this system, but I'd like to get to know it and advance my skills. What series should I buy? I see that the essentials are newer, but is that the first material I should be going after? Or get the Expert 1 book.

Thank You, Can't wait to hit the slopes this year!!

Justin Daugherty

Anyone here that has "mastered" this system or is an instructor in the SoCal area? My home mountain is Mountain High, in wrightwood. Always have beer and bbq ready to go!!

[jbotti]

I think you will get different answers from different people on that question. I own them all and bought them as the came out. ACBAES1 and 2 are great books. I personally think the Essentials is really the bible on skiing. If you get the book and the three DVDs you have a comprehensive and systematic guideline to skiing and doing drills that support doing PMTS movements properly. The one and two footed releases that are explained in depth in ACBAES 2 is also kind of essential but I would start with the essentials book and the essentials DVDs.

[Max_501]

Here comes a different answer.

Here's part of a post I put up in another thread:

Start with Book 1. Once you have it mastered move to Book 2. Essentials can be read for extra drills and instruction in conjunction with or after reading Book 2.

[uavmx]

okay, well we have both sides of the spectrum, hah, thats not helping

anyone else?

[richk]

If you're serious about this, you'll surely have all the books and DVDs before you're done shopping, so where you start isn't critical. The materials are complementary to one another so we acolytes study all of them--though Essentials is the Bible. The cost of the 3 books, total, is less than 2 days of lift tickets.

That said, my suggested approach is:
1. watch the video from AnyoneCBES I
2. read the chapters in the "undergraduate course" of ACBES II i.e. about 130 pages
3. read the introductory chapter and the tipping chapter of Essentials.

That's more than enough to occupy the first year of intensive ski improvement with a lot of days and drills!

Enjoy!

[polecat]

And now for something completely different,... my humble opinion.

Well, not different really. Sort of a combination of the same.

Anyway,

I agree with jbotti's assessment that The Essentials is the bible and touches on everything needed, which is why it's a must have.

But, IMHO, it's also why a newcomer to PMTS should not start with it. It's the ultimate reference. But I believe you should always start with intro's before diving into references.

...I'd say I'm advanced intermediate, to intro advanced. Mostly struggling off Piste and bumps. Looking to really improve this year....

"Advanced intermediate" is about where I was (according to the very last PSIA instructor I ever had to deal with) when I found PMTS. At that level you're very comfortable on the snow, except in severe terrain. And you feel like you just need to add something more to your skiing to get to that next level.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG!

The problem is that at that level we've figured out how to make bad techniques almost work OK. But we're still using bad techniques. They're dead ends. They aren't going anywhere. And the really bad part is that we've now got them pretty deeply ingrained.

It's much, much harder to unlearn something wrong than to learn something right from the start.

So I believe one should always start at the beginning and work through it one step at a time. I think you should start with ACBAES 1. It may seem simple at first blush. But there's plenty in there for to keep you busy and progressing for quite a while. If you actually do progress quickly you can move into ACBAES 2 and The Essentials later in the season.

You can buy them all at once and study them all for insight (I would). But start your drills and practice at the beginning.

Since you'll be focusing on unlearning, but are already comfortable on snow and have a sense of balance, you'll progress differently than somebody who's never skied a day in their life. Possibly faster, possibly not. It's an individual thing.

But you'll definitely need to break the old habits that are holding you back so you can build up the basics that will move you forward.


pc.

[jclayton]

I agree with Polecat , unlearning is endless unless you start from scratch . Start with book one and work diligently through the excercises with the caveat as stated in this book - don't progress to the next level until some mastery is acheived in the previous one .

I say some because real mastery takes a lot of work and these basics are worked on continually up to the highest level .

Many of us find that after progressing up the levels we see things we didn't see previously in the earlier ones . Even after several years of training you can look back and refine basic excercises .

the Essentials book is great but a better understanding of it is had by study of book one .An example ; In book 1 the angles are not high ( in the photos ) , the initial excercises are for slow movements . If you go direct to Essentials you could hold yourself back by trying to get these angles too early and making erroneous adjustments in order to do so .

You will be surprised at how bad ( in PMTS terms ) your skiing will seem to you once you get a good understanding of PMTS . In my experience , and that of all others I know , this is a given . So you should start out with the idea that your present technique will need to be deconstructed , from the ground up .

The best way to start is always attending a course .

[uavmx]

Thank you all very much, great responses. I will start with book 1 and see how that goes. I will also look into hooking up with some locals hopefully....


Heres a question though, it seems like everyone is ALWAYS drilling, like thats all you do....anyone actually go ski for the fun of skiing after you start learning PMTS?? I'm young, I like hitting jumps, parks, playing around. But I do want to be able to steeper, off piste skiing. Is this going to wreck my skiing so bad, starting all over from scratch, that I'm going to feel like an idiot on the bunny slope all season? I still want to be able to enjoy the season, not just drill!!!

[geoffda]

Heres a question though, it seems like everyone is ALWAYS drilling, like thats all you do....anyone actually go ski for the fun of skiing after you start learning PMTS?? I'm young, I like hitting jumps, parks, playing around. But I do want to be able to steeper, off piste skiing. Is this going to wreck my skiing so bad, starting all over from scratch, that I'm going to feel like an idiot on the bunny slope all season? I still want to be able to enjoy the season, not just drill!!!

It won't wreck your skiing at all, but you can't improve on terrain that is too challenging. Moreover, when you get on challenging terrain, it can tend to undo what you are working on as you revert to your ingrained movements to survive. Ideally, you would want to avoid any kind of challenging terrain until you have integrated your first pass of the primary movements (tipping, flexion/extension, and ankle-flexion/moving the feet fore and aft underneath your hips). Once you've got these movements in your skiing, you can start skiing some challenging stuff, but you still need to spend most of your time on easier terrain *and* you need to have the awareness to get off the steep stuff if you feel your movements are reverting. This can be hard because your friends are going to want to go do stuff that isn't going to help your skiing. So unless you have some PMTS buddies to work with, you are going to have to spend a bunch of time working on your own. Also, during ski days with your friends, take every opportunity when passing through easy terrain to work on your skiing.

PMTS is the best way to learn skiing there is, but it isn't a magic bullet. If you want to ski like a racer, you have to do the work. You'll get out of it what you put into it, but if you want to truly be a great skier, you need to pay your dues. That means for the next few seasons, at least, you will need to spend the vast majority of your time on green and blue terrain working on your skiing. While this ratio will decrease significantly as you get better, you will always find yourself returning to green and blue terrain at various times to hone your skiing. This is just what great skiers do.

[ibMED]

I don’t know if there is a best way to learn, other than going to a Harb camp. My introduction to PMTS was prior to the publishing of Essentials of Skiing, and, I devoured the Expert Skier 2 book and DVD. That DVD introduces the concept of the “super phantom turn”, shown as the “release from the uphill edge” in the book. My thinking is that Expert Skier 2 provides the foundation concepts for Essentials of Skiing. The sample turn shown in Essentials is sophisticated skiing and, at least to me, learning the basics was beneficial. It’s akin to learning to crawl before walking. One theme that runs through Expert Skier 2 is that Harald has built basic movements into his skiing, and, in each new season he writes that he needs to revisit the basics as rust developed over the summer. Information overload is problematic. Keep it simple and learn tipping skills coupled with flexing movements. There is plenty of material in these concepts to keep most occupied for the first year.

Skiing with friends or just plain free skiing is a great opportunity to reinforce PMTS concepts. There is always a PMTS thought in every turn I make and I try to change it up during runs throughout the day. My bump skiing improved greatly as I incorporated tipping movements and pulled my free foot back, but, it took a lot of practice in flat terrain, then into easy bumps to build the movements into regular skiing. Harald has written “never waste easy terrain” so use flat areas to practice.

Make no mistake, PMTS is about rebuilding your skiing - one movement at a time.

[jclayton]

A concern some people seem to have is that if you go onto steep terrain to quickly you could undo what you have changed in your skiing . And that drilling is to be done a great percentage of the time on the mountain to improve .

I would say that to go onto difficult terrain is not so bad as long as you are aware of the correct movements and feel where they lack . I think we have to give ourselves some credit and not beleive that if we are improving on easy to moderate terrain we are not going to become some inarticulate , disjointed robot as soon as we try more difficult stuff ( within reason of course ).

Also drilling is still skiing and I personally find it a pleasure to quietly work on different drills and feel my co-ordination and skill improve . The improvement in feel of the edges in the snow etc after an hour or two of drilling increases the free skiing pleasure a great deal .

Max 501 and others have several posts regarding this .

[Max_501]

Harald has made the first chapter of Essential available online:

http://www.harbskisystems.com/hhsite/ch00lo.pdf

[richk]

Since we've gone further down the getting started road...

I find it helpful to do some drills and then go ski a section of the run, trying to incorporate the drilled movement into the overall flow of skiing. And it's always critical to at least test how well you have the movement in use in more difficult terrain than that in which you are drilling. Plus, for those innumerable days when the snow is pretty crappy, drills are a pleasant distraction from the lousy snow! So it's not all work and no play and drills can be more fun.

That said, it's tough to incorporate drills or serious learning into skiing with buddies who are just goofing around. Commonly, one is forced to just turn up the speed to keep up with the group which is basically in conflict with learning new movements. As has often been said in these postings, speed allows you to mask sloppy movements. Skiing slowly requires precision and it is by practicing accurate movements that lasting improvement occurs.

[Max_501]

To further complicate matters its difficult to know if you are doing the drills/movements correctly without a knowledgable observer or video to confirm things. That's why its important to make use of the external queues in the books and videos.

[uavmx]

just sounds like no one shows up to a mountain and just goes skiing. I mean, with the other style systems did you guys just do their drills all day long?

Again, just my point being, do you ever get to a point where you have the movements down enough where you can show up to a mountain and just go skiing? Where are the videos of people using PMTS on difficult terrain, off piste, etc? (besides Harb)

Obviously I'm on the training forum, so it just seems that all anyone ever does is do drills. I don't want to get this started and then, as said, not keep up with friends who are playing around, running all over the mountain.

I love doing jumps, playing the park, as do my friends. I'm just concerned that this is going to set me so far back that I won't be able to enjoy a ski season or two because I'm on the bunny slope. And this kinda seems to be the concern of this program in general. As has been stated before, "yeah, but who else can do it besides harb" well? Where are all your awesome PMTS runs coming down a black, off piste, in the bumps, etc?